All my tomato plants died

7 years ago

I live near Clarksville.

My veg garden has been a near total failure this summer. The green beans quit producing and the tomato plants began to fizzle weeks ago. Plenty of fruit but they rotted on the vine while still green. Now every one of my 19 plants is dead. Normally, at this date they are in peak production and we get enough to eat on through September and sometimes even into October. This summer we barely had a few to eat on through July and early August.

This summer has been extremely hot, humid and rainy. In this area, we got three times the normal rainfall in July, about 12 inches. Normal rainfall for July is more like 4 inches. I don't know if the plants couldn't take the weather, or if the rainforest-like environment this year caused diseases that normally are minor problems to go out of control. Another year like this one, and I'll consider giving up trying to raise a veg garden altogether. We have lived here since 1979 and have always had a summer garden, but never anything like this. Others in the area say theirs was poor as well.

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Comments (4)

rgreen48
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
I'm east of Knoxville. It's been very dry here this summer, and tomatoes did very well until just these past 2 weeks when the rains set in. The plants are still producing, but the leaves are showing lots of disease. Some diseases are much less destructive than others, and some live through the winter. If you can look up the symptoms to get a diagnosis, you can get the info needed to prevent the worst of them from reoccurring next year.

Cukes and squash though did terrible this year. Lots and lots of bugs. And the cuke beetles are carriers of bacterial wilt. Beans are still growing. And most of the other crops did okay. I've got more eggplants than I can give away. I love 'em, but it seems they aren't a popular veggie in this area.
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AMRadiohead3885
Original Author
7 years ago
I haven't raised eggplants for several years. I love them too, but we have some kind of little bug here that looks like a cat or dog flea, that strips the foliage, and the only way I have been able to control them is to apply Sevin dust every few days, and I like to avoid chemical insecticides as much as possible. For the past 4-5 years, vine borers have devastated my attempts to grow summer squash. That usen't to be a problem, but lately they kill the vines before they can produce anything. I have managed to keep them under control to a certain extent by injecting the hollow stalks with a bacterial insecticide (can't remember the name off the top of my head) using a large gauge hypodermic needle.

I think our problem with tomatoes this year was the rain. From the 1st week in July to now, it has rained practically every day. Normally the soil is dusty this time of year, but this year, it's still muddy, like in April. The lawn grass has grown like madness, requiring mowing every 6-7 days. Usually this time of year we can go a couple of weeks between cutting.
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rgreen48
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
Yeah, the flea beetles absolutely devastate eggplants. I too dislike chemical pesticides. I don't use them at all. After a bad year last summer, I did some research and found a few strategies that worked great this year. The basic ideas were 'trap cropping' and row covers. I didn't know too much about trap crops, so I read a bunch of info on the web. Insects prefer some plants over others. Flea beetles like eggplant - a lot - but they also like potatoes, some radishes, and Chinese mustard (I'm sure there are others.)

I grow eggplants from seed, so I started more than I needed. I combined the 2 strategies by planting a main bed with the strongest eggplant seedlings and placed a row cover over them. I put a row of the weaker ones in an adjacent bed planted with cucumbers and peppers and left them uncovered as the trap crop.

As expected, the flea beetles went for the uncovered eggplants. I squished and squished for weeks lol - the trap crop only works if you not only draw the bugs away from the main crop, but you find a way of killing them too. If you do use chemicals, I really don't ever recommend it, but since you won't be harvesting anything off the trap crop... well, it's your garden.

Once the main crop got about 1 1/2' - 2' tall, and strong enough to withstand the flea beetles, I uncovered them. Soon afterward, I pulled the trap crop plants to not give space for more to breed.

The combined two strategies worked fantastic. Lots of fruits, and they are still flowering! Definitely will be my new method.

I think all of Tn. has the squash vine borers pretty bad. I put mine under row covers or they get wiped out. It's work though, because all the flowers have to be hand-pollinated. I've read about others who do the injections. One guy who posts on the Vegetable forum uses Bt injections. Next year I hope to get a Moshcata variety. The borers have a tougher time infecting those.
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Guns and Gardening 1974
7 years ago
I'm in Lafollette and although this is only our second year gardening, last year was much better. I agree, the excessive heat, humidity, and rain has caused a lot of our tomatoes to crack and get diseases. Most plants only producing a few tomatoes or undersized tomatoes. I noticed our Better Boy, Black Krim, and a couple of others are developing some kind of water sack in them. It is the size of a quarter and if you push on it you can tell it's full of water. It does not protrude, it is flush with the rest of the outer tomato. I have never seen this before. We invested a lot of money and time in this year's garden and if every year was like this I would quit, also!
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