Raybo, I meant to tell you another thing I read about tomato russet mites that might help with your war against them. They can't fly and must crawl to get on your plants. If you can keep your vines pruned and tied up to the cage, that might help to prevent them from spreading from one planter to another. You could also spray the outside of the containers with a long acting bug killer that would never come in contact with the plants or fruit. An organic alternative would be to put a coat of TangleTrap on the outside of the container so they can't craw up an onto the plants. good luck Greg

Maybe the white round radish y'all are thinking of is the variety called Hailstone. (If ever there was an appropriate name for a radish in our state, Hailstone would be it.) And, just to show that whoever names varieties has a sense of humor, there's a long, pointy white radish named Icicle too. Alexis, Those poor tomato plants! Maybe it was all those changes over a few days that stressed them more so than the neem. When hardened-off plants go back indoors after already being outside for some time, they can lose some of their hardening-off. I know I had that happen with some pepper, flower and herb seedlings while they were hardening off. I think I already had most all the tomato plants in the ground by then. I battle spider mites every year. They are everywhere here in our rural area, and the hotter and drier it is, the worse they are. I started seeing them on some plants back in March. March! It used to be that they wouldn't reach high enough population levels for me to worry about them until July....and gradually it became May....and now that I am resigned to seeing them in May, they arrived in March. Here in this state, you never know with tomatoes. Sometimes we get periodic "cold fronts", which bring us slightly cooler weather, even in the middle of summer and we can get fruit set at that time. If a cold front is coming that will put temperatures back into the right range for fruit set, I'll buy some Super Bloom or another brand of a bloom-booster fertilizer and feed it to the plants about 5-7 days before the expected arrival of the cold front to ensure they are in bloom when the cold front arrives. When I have done that in some previous years, I got great fruitset even if that cold front only brought us temperatures in the right range for a couple of days. I saw something interesting at the Ardmore Wal-Mart a couple of days ago. The way retail usually works is that tomato plants in six-packs are common in March here, but as we move into April, the tomato plants are in increasingly larger containers, as people buying them later want larger plants to make up for the fact they are planting later, right? Right now, I am seeing half-grown tomato plants with almost full-sized fruit in roughly 3 gallon containers in stores....for about $20-25 per plant. A couple of days ago, though, the Ardmore Wal-mart had six-packs of tomato plants with plants that are maybe 4-5" tall. Irrationally, I wanted to buy some. Being rational most of the time, I didn't do it. I cannot imagine that anyone buying tomato plants that small and putting them in the ground now would get any fruit from them until fall.....and that would be strongly dependent on daytime and nighttime air temperatures at the time they finally got large enough to blossom. This is sort of an awkward time to plant tiny tomato plants---too late to consider them part of the spring planting but too early to plant them for fall. Still, I bet lots of people will buy them, especially if their spring-planted tomatoes have major issues. Some years I don't aim for keeping plants alive all summer. Some years I just keep them going as long as I can, and then I cry "uncle" and surrender to the summer and stop watering. You'd be amazed what might survive even after you cut off the water. In 2011, Piricicaba broccoli at the shady west end of the garden survived at least 6 weeks in July-August with no irrigation and probably no rainfall. I didn't even realize it was still alive until maybe October or November, and there it was producing! I had been gone to wildfires day and night and night and day all summer, and after I stopped watering in July, I really didn't step foot in the garden. When I went back into it after the wildfire activity dropped after rain returned in September, I found I had broccoli to harvest. It was just bizarre. Despite it seeming all wrong, we harvested broccoli from that Piricicaba until the plant froze in December. So, sometimes gardens just surprise us, and in the oddest of ways. I hope the forecasts of the return of El Nino come true. I almost always have a great garden in El Nino years because we get plentiful rainfall those years. Dawn

Yes, this is a disease. As it progresses it looks more and more like early blight to me, which is ugly but rarely fatal if you start treating it. You should start regular applications of a fungicide soon (tomorrow). Daconil (chlorothalonil) is an effective preventative product. If you're going the organic route, use a copper fungicide. There are other commercially available organic anti-fungal products, but I don't know how effective they are. Apply according to label directions, making sure to cover stems and leaves (including the undersides) and be particularly fastidious about applying after rain. Also make sure that the product indicates that it is for use in vegetable gardens. This will not reverse the existing damage to the leaves, but will prevent it from getting worse and spreading. I don't know which part of the country you're in -- folks in warmer climates and other parts of the county get diseases that we don't see in this climate/location -- but sometimes these issues are transient and weather-dependent, and will abate as the temps rise and the rain diminishes. Still, I would start some sort of preventative program very soon, based on whether or not you are growing organically, so that the problem doesn't get worse.

kendra, what are you using for your spider mite issue? i have mites too....and i HATE THEM with a passion! i've been using neem and it's been very effective! i DO have a little bit of a problem with getting the spray UNDER the leaves....but i try my best. what i also do is rinse the plant down with my hose...(i use a shower head end) about two days before i'm going to spray with neem. i'm sure to do this first thing in the morning so that the plant will have time to dry out and not get fungus. it's much easier to shower the undersides of the leaves than it is to spray with neem...or any other spray for that matter! between doing both of these things, i've kept the mite situation to a minimum. i DID have russet mites for a little while, but once i knew what they were, i kept the same regimen and they're gone now. maybe you can try this on your mite infested plant and hopefully you can buy some time until harvest... ~a