Uh! Not coming along here! I’ll complain—a lot!

My tomatoes always get put in the ground late, mostly because of my spring trip, but also because I’ve learned over the years that waiting to put them in warm soil is really good for them and causes them to take off very quickly. But this year the weather was cool/cold while I was gone, so the seedlings in the pots hardly grew at all, then, after I got home the weather stayed cool, so when I finally put them in they were still very small and the ground was still “not warm!” But that’s not the “real” problem! A couple weeks after I planted them many/most of them quite suddenly developed new growth that was totally twisted and distorted! Say what! I had never seen such a thing before! So! I started googling! Everything I saw online said that they had been exposed to ROUNDUP drift from somewhere! I’ll never know for sure, but new people had moved into the house behind me—the house I call the Weed Lot Yard!—and I suspect they sprayed an “unusable” part of the yard, right along their back fence that adjoins my property, with RU to kill the weeds in that area that can’t be mowed! Like I said, I’ll never know for sure!

Before the “whatever” happened to my tomatoes, happened, they were starting to grow slowly but were looking pretty good, and were getting flowers—and a couple plants had set some fruit. AFTER “whatever” happened to them the were still getting “some” flowers, but absolutely NO fruit is setting anymore—and I’ve gone thru them a few times hand pollinating to try to “help” them! The plants have continued to get taller—still with the totally distorted new growth—which gets “somewhat” better as it grows out, but never looks “like it should!” So nothing is “coming along” here!

Then! I had Cheryl over for dinner—she’s the person I used to work with at Paulino’s who grew the perennials there—and who’s now with the Colorado Dept. of Ag, doing phytosanitary certifications—what you need to guarantee your plants are “healthy” and that you’re allowed to ship them out of state! She snipped off some sample leaves and took them in to work with her—where they apparently did a test and “determined” that the problem is Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus! I don’t believe that!!! I googled it and it shows “terrible looking” foliage, spotted and discolored—but no “distortion” of the new growth, and tomatoes that are totally mottled! All of my foliage is completely green, just the color it’s supposed to be!, and one Cherokee Purple tomato that’s now ripening, that set BEFORE “whatever” happened, is colored just like a Cherokee Purple tomato should be! No mottling or discoloration of any sort! I have no idea how/why they came to the conclusion they did, but I just don’t believe it! I see no signs of any “virus” whatsoever!

The RU theory makes more sense to me too, because the leaves on the eggplants that are right next to the tomatoes have new growth leaves that are somewhat “curled in,” similar to but not nearly as bad as the tomatoes, and a paprika pepper in the same area also has foliage that “doesn’t look quite normal!” [I’ve been hand pollinating the eggplants, and at least they are setting fruit!] Also, I have two iris plants and two daylily plants in the same area, and while the leaves on those always “deteriorate” as the summer goes on, this year they seem to be doing it much faster, and more leaves, than ever in the past—and even when the daylilies were blooming, which wasn’t as much as normal, they were already “loosing leaves!” Same with the rhubarb! It’s in a hot spot so it’s always wilting, but this year it just never got “big,” and the leaves are dying off pretty much as soon as they grow! Everything over there seems to have “something” wrong with it! So I don’t know where the Colorado DOA came up with their verdict, but it doesn’t make any sense at all to me!

And that’s a recap of my Tomato Year this year! And I’m complaining—a lot! Basically it’s a Non-Year for my tomatoes! The good news is that when Cheryl was here she brought me enough tomatoes to take along on my soon-upcoming fall trip, so at least I will get a few Real Tomatoes to eat this year!

I’m glad that, even if it’s slow this year, you do have some Good Things coming along for you, Digit! I hope your weather holds so you eventually wind up with a good crop of most things!

Skybird

Skybird, it may be other herbicides as well, I'm sure tomato plants are susceptible to any number of them. If you scroll down, you can see examples:

Cornell University

Too much carelessness: I bet, 90% of the people I see applying what is obviously a weed killer in their yards are doing it without gloves. They probably think, "well, I'm not a weed." We used to say something like that with DDT. "Well, I'm not a bug."

Steve

Ah Cherokee Purple. We think we got some of those at the swap and they are delicious! Unfortunately one zucchini this year, yes you heard that right, only one. Several pumpkins setting fruit.

Looks like late and limited are the words this year.

We have had dribble of tomatoes until I picked a 15LB haul off 6 plants last Friday. Three Kellogg's Breakfast in the 1.5LB range. My wife picked another 6LB today.

mmmm12, my one yellow zucchini plant has produced nothing, but the yellow wart squash have been pumping them out.

We have had maybe 6 patti pans off 4 plants but there are close to 20 babies now.

Grape production is off 90%.

I am now a firm believer on WOWs. The WOW plants have far outperformed even though they were practically denuded by the hail.

We have had some nice sweet corn ... and more tonight.

The pumpkins are the stars of the 2019 garden! They have grown like mad all season. I don't know why except that there has only been one year, since I got smart enuf to start growing early varieties, that pumpkins didn't have very good years. I wish that I had more use for them.

Kellogg's Breakfast are one of my favorites. I should grow one in the backyard because the open garden is a little too tuff for these tomatoes. Last days of the seasons that I've grown KB, they ripened.

Right now, I have lost most of the plant markers by setting them too close to the tomato stems. Maybe half of the plants, I can't identify because most of what little fruit harvested are weird-looking, early stuff. It's not too different than usual except we must be about 2 weeks late. There is nice looking green fruit in the tomato patch. I should be able to ID things as soon as they begin to change colors. The cherries are fine and finally producing beyond an intermittent trickle.

Steve

Edit: the 2019 peppers and eggplant are disasters.

Things are evening out.

Having ripe melons, now. They are galia and the cantaloupe, which were most effected by the yo yo early season. Both have small fruit but there are several galia and a few cantaloupe.

I wasn't sure 6 weeks ago if we would have any Buttercup winter squash. There will be a few of those, too. A first time spaghetti squash grower - those vines have done just fine. A stellar pumpkin year might better be stated as a: stellar C. pepo year. Do NOT understand how!

Steve

Tomatoes have mostly kicked into high gear in the two gardens. With about a month until the average first frost, hopefully later than average this year, there should be an abundance of tomatoes. Melons have done well. We got 6 watermelons and have 6 Alacati melons on the vine plus about 10 cantaloupes which are not ready yet. Best melon year ever despite the slow start.

Skybird, do you use mulch around your tomatoes? I've given up using straw as mulch because I always had problems with tomatoes like you described. I believe the straw had residual herbicide. Quite possibly your tomatoes have a virus as well but that's not their main problem. Does sound like drift. Next year you should let your neighbors know your concerns.

I know that I have said it elsewhere on RMG, I can almost see Blacktail Mountain from my garden. Not kidding! I won't bother you with posting the pictures again of my attempt (2nd :o( to grow Blacktail Mountain watermelon. Growing Sugar Baby was disappointing. I imagine that a yellow watermelon variety would be worth a try but DW doesn't like the idea.

Diplomat galia has valiantly overcome much of the problems Yo-Yo spring inflicted upon it. I have grown Goddess cantaloupe for several years. It has always delighted me ... it hasn't come through the 2019 growing season very well ... sniff

Steve

Late and limited here, too! I got one acorn squash, two zucchini (not two plants—two squashes), and my biggest disappointment: my thornless blackberries started producing this year, and the fruit are so tart that nobody wants to eat them! I’m super bummed; picking blackberries and eating them off the vine was one of my favorite activities as a kid. I c bake them into a tart I think, but I don’t have quite enough ripe at one time for that. My delicious raspberries are just starting to set fruit.

Of my four grapevines, one died off, two produced a couple of. Clusters, but the fourth one has been very productive! Skins are a little bitter, but overall quite yummy. I also had a young apple tree die and I don’t know why...it was fine at the beginning of July and by the end of July it was brown and dead. It was three years old so I have no idea.

Yesterday, I harvested green tomatoes and other things. We may have a most unusual storm on its way. My distant garden has already had a light frost but frost is on its way to my gardens and it may be over several days and impossible for me to fend off with frost mitigation techniques.

A frost by this time is not unusual and there was an August frost one year. (Now that was unusual!) A storm is on the horizon and that storm will be somewhat different from the one that dumped hail on the garden yesterday afternoon. Snow is "likely."

The Weather Service isn't backing away from the forecasts that first began about 5 days ago. "On track," they say; temperatures "10° below normal," they say.

NW Montana will really feel the brunt of this. As a westerner, I've heard about Cut Bank Montana my entire life. Always, it's been about bad weather! I don't think that I ever want to go there ... Cut Bank, you can expect 30+ inches of September snow.

While record heat continues to make life difficult on the other side of the continent, I can expect hail, rain, wind gusts above 30 mph, and snow ... freezing temperatures can be expected right through the next 7 days. Highs may not even make it out of the 30's. The summer weather was fairly "normal" after a very fickle spring but this storm is a fitting end to the 2019 gardening season.

Steve

I got all of my complaining out of the way pretty early on when everything died by the beginning of July. We did end up getting a decent haul of watermelons, which was surprising for a northern Colorado garden. Not big ones, but hey it was something I guess.

Anyways, I know I’m late to the party but I just wanted to mention something about Skybird’s tomato damage. I don’t think it was roundup (glyphosate) since it is an amino acid inhibitor, it doesn’t cause the curling, cupping, and twisting of the plants. That is caused by growth regulator herbicides, usually in form of synthetic auxins that overload the plant with growth hormone causing it grow itself to death. The distorted growth is a dead ringer for herbicides like 2, 4-D and Dicamba (and the aminopyralid I believe I wound up with, but since it’s not available to average homeowners doubtful that you got it, at least not from your neighbor). Glyphosate doesn’t change plant growth at all, the only visual symptoms are that the plant with start to yellow, usually from the new growth on top first and then about 10 days later just be dead.
If you have a lot of leafhoppers around, you could also potentially have been affected by curly top virus but otherwise probably damage from a herbicide like Weed B Gon, which is a 2, 4-D + Dicamba product.

Not sure if that is helpful to anyone, since herbicide damage is herbicide damage. But Steve touched on another important topic and that is improper use of herbicide. Every pesticide has a label and that label is actually back up by the force of law. It is CRUCIAL that those label are read and heeded carefully. I promise you that it mentions how to mitigate drift and mentions the required PPE (hint: it includes at least long sleeved shirt, long pants, closed toed shoes plus socks, and gloves). I often wish that these products weren’t as readily available as they are. Far too many people assume that because they can buy them off the shelf they are perfectly safe. Far too many others believe in the “some’s good, more’s better” philosophy and way over apply. Overall, I bet that almost no one who purches roundup or weed b gon from Home Depot even peels open the label before they just “get after it” spraying willy billy all over their yard. I still believe that herbicides are useful tool but we need to be far more educated about them than we are.

Zach, you are correct that nobody probably reads the warnings. It doesn't help that they are in very fine print and then also they have a sticky fold out paper.

Besides herbicides there's also heavy over application of fertilizer.

What would residential regulations look like? Maybe before purchasing one would need to pass a written test?

Unfortunately the label size is dependent on the container it's stuck to. The little hand held bottles of premix solution doesn't have a lot of room for a label so they have to cram a lot of info into a small space thus the fine print. It's a lot more legible on the 2.5 gallon jugs.

At some point someone decided to start marketing phosphorus as a the miracle nutrient to produce untold numbers of flowers and fruits. We'd be swimming in seas of tomatoes and waves of roses (or buds, if that's more your style). It is a great marketing ploy, but not exactly how plant biology works. Big ag is not much better. The amount of nitrogen and other nutrients dumped into our soil and that ends up in our waterways causes harmful eutrophication. The excess nitrogen in the soil is also detrimental to native plants that evolved in the nitrogen poor environment of the great plains. Most invasive species are highly adapted to excess nitrogen giving them a competitive edge over native species. Homeowners who think that a golf course fairway is some kind status symbol are equally as guilty.

A solution? I don't really know. I don't think that every person in America is going to go out and become a certified applicator just to kill dandelions in their lawn and just because I think it's highly unnecessary and damaging, I doubt I'm going have any luck convincing everyone in their mcmansions of that.