Tomato plants die after they produce fruit?

[ignorantmonkey]

I grown a nice tomato plant for the first time. I started by seeding it, then it grow on a pot at about 3 feet tall...It produced perhaps 20 little ones with great organic flavor, but smaller in size than a golf ball, even that the seed it came from was from a huge 5.5" wide tomato. BUT...then... a month ago it started fading, as the leaves started to curl and become dry...I picked up more than a dozen of these green worms and throw em away...But then the whole plant faded. So my naive question: Does the tomato plant grow, produce and die after wards?...or these grow, produce and enter into a non productive stage to come back year after year? My grape plant (which is yet to produce its first fruit) grows up, branches away on leaf lines as long as ten feet...then winter come and they just recede (but don't die)...Any feedback will be appreciated. Regards from Baja Mexico! Thanks.

[top_dollar_bread]

I believe tomatoes are perennials, which means they can keep growing without dying(if conditions are right). Its usually the weather (cold) that kills tomatoes and that usually happens around winter, So I think something else is causing you tomatoes to die.

I think you mentioned the tomatoes were planted in containers?
Tomatoes like large pots, around 15 gallons is what id recommend. If the container is to small, the roots can get compact and cause your tomatoes to weakend & die.

there also other disease like fusarium and veriticillium wilt
,tobacco mosaic, or mildew that can also cause a tomatoes demise. a quick google search can help identify witch if any of these are affecting your plant.

But I think its the container,small containers usually result in small tomatoes.THe biger the roots, the bigger the fruits

hope this helped

[Zuni]

I have never heard of a tomato that was anything BUT an annual. They produce, then they die. Sometimes they can re-seed themselves the next year.

If you started your from the seed of a hybrid, there is no way to predict what kind of fruit you will get. Often the fruit from hybrid seeds is totally unlike the parent. On the other hand, if you plant open-pollinated types of seeds you will get the same fruit as the parents.

Wilts can be from diseases, weather and a plant that is just beyond it's maturity. I hope your is this last one. Good luck with the 'maters.

[rainbowgardener]

Any indeterminate tomato can be grown as a perennial. Nobody does that in cold climates like Ontario, because they are tropical plants that are killed by cold. But the monkey is in Mexico. So I would think tomatoes could be grown year round there.

HOWEVER, as hendi-alex has pointed out in his posts, if you are pushing your tomato plant to produce a lot, they can tend to get exhausted. Even if the plant is not dead, you can get better production by starting over with new plants.

All that said, I don't think this is a case that they go dormant and then come back. If they were healthy, they would just keep going. These don't sound healthy at all. Agree with TDB, that they are probably in too small a container and have now contracted some kind of disease. Plants that are grown in adverse conditions are always more vulnerable to diseases.

[wolfie]

he also said he found a bunch of green worms and pulled them off, the horn worm could kill the plant right?

[MysticGardener67]

tomato plants, but they would do that by eating them, not by causing them to go all yellow n junk. I would agree with the rest of the respondants about water.

Yes, tomatos, if they get what they need in way of water and warmth, will contuinue growing so long as they don't get frozen out. back in 2006, I had beefstake tomatoes in my zone 6 greenhouse through late november . ran out of propane for just one night and killed them dead.

Made mental note. do not try to grow indeterminate tommies in greenhouse.

I am tending to agree with oithers in this post. Most likely culprit was water stress. Tomatoes need VAST quatities of water compared to other veggies, exception being the gourds and cucumber family.

Baja, huh? I don't think that tapping a major river would be enough to prevent water stress in that climate.

Ummm @ IgnorantMonkey... Let me give you a few things to try out next time --

Don't use dark colored containers. All this will do is over heat the poor plants roots. Light colored containers ( I like the reclaimed 5 gallon paint buckets but terracotta works great as well) will refelct the heat and give essential shade to the roots.

Shading during hottest part of the day.. I would guess that in Baja, that would be from 10am till sunset. You will want to invest in shadecloth. One rated to block 30-40 percent sunlight should do the trick.

Invest in a timed drip irrigation setup. The best thing anyone can do for thier tomatos. Tomatos need a consistant water source. hand watering, especially in zones 9 and 10 will not suffice.

Ummm. actually, Tomatoes as perennials in semitropical and tropical climates will exhibit a seasonal period of non production during the hotter months. Tomatoes will not set fruit unless the night temps are between 55 and 76 F. Day temps over 90 will also cause blossom drop.

I think another part of your problems are fertilizer based. what kind of fertilzer were you feeding them? do you rember the three numbers on the box/bag?

[GerriB]

This is in response to Ignorant Monkey's question about tomato seeds that he planted in Mexico, which I believe were retrieved from a big fat tomato. I'm a novice here, but I'd like to offer a reply. Firstly, tomatoes are perennials but in northern climates it is grown as an annual. This is why people a bit further south of the Mason Dixon Line in the USA experience volunteer tomato vines sprouting from seeds that they pitched into a compost section. If they let the vines grow, they might find smaller, perhaps even tastier, tomatoes growing on their vines. Here in Cincinnati Ohio, we see tomato bushes or plants, seldom vines. A bit further south in Louisville Kentucky my sister sees the vines. Thus, I believe, emerges the "heirloom" varieties after several generations of seed plantings. As I say, this is only a novice's understandings; but I believe that if the Monkey's seeds were replanted season after season -- Mexico has fewer and better growing seasons than we do here in Ohio -- then he would see a very good and tasty tomato emerge within a very short period of time. He would never get a big fat tomato from his seeds: because big fat tomatoes are produced by genetic engineering. But, I think he would garner pretty good tomatoes out of his subsequent crops. The green worms that he talked about are a stage of a butterfly. In southern climates the larvae are considered a pest because they eat so much. In my area, I think I would let one of them live so I could get a butterfly or two in my yard, and I'd plant a couple more tomato plants to accommodate the butterflies.

[GerriB]

No doubt, this post belongs in a different thread, but this is in response to Ignorant Monkey about his tomato seeds in Mexico. Here in Cincinnati Ohio was a drought during a 1970 summer that was devastating. I recall that an old German friend kept his yard garden by running out every day with a cup of water for the tomato plants. I forget whether or not he gave every single plant a cup of water or if this was only for his tomatoes. But I do remember that this old guy had tomatoes growing in his yard when all the rest of us had turned our dead and wilting plants under.