several vegetable issues
Posted: Fri May 01, 2015 5:39 pm
Hello, I'm new here.
I've gardened before and grown tomatoes successfully from seed before, but this is my first dedicated vegetable garden. The spot is in full sun ~ 13 hours a day, and the sun shines every day.
Background: I live in the Sacramento, California area where we have really hot dry summers. It's been around 90F (32c) lately (for a week now) and my soil is rather clayey - about 30%. I put plenty of compost and tilled it in to make raised beds and am growing 10 tomato plants (all heirlooms: purple cherokee, green zebra, chocolate pear and golden siberian) and a couple of habanero plants, water melons and zucchini. It easily gets over 100F/40c here during the summer.
My issue is that first of all the tomato plants I grew from seed suffered from transplant shock when I put them outside. Unfortunately I did not really harden them off because I live in an apartment and the only outside area I have is a completely shaded balcony. I did leave the window open where I grew them for about 2 weeks before I put them out, and they got direct sun there in the afternoon, but I guess it wasn't enough. That was about a month ago, and a lot of leaves turned white and fell off.
While some have really grown a lot of branches and leaves since, there really isn't much vertical growth, only horizontally. I'm wondering if that will improve or if the shock will mean the plant will stay permanently small. But since I replaced one of the plants with a nursery bought variety, and that hasn't grown much vertically in the last 3 weeks either, I am wondering if there is some other cause.
Other plants have put out very little growth of new leaves at all and only have a few left at the top. I'm wondering what's wrong with those. The leaves at the top look healthy, but the edges of new leaves on all my tomato plants keep turning white or yellow, dry and curl up and get these little holes in them. I'm not sure if it's a bug - might be flea beetles - or a bacterial disease, but I already applied an organic insecticide to all my veggies and the holes keep showing up on new plants.
With this warmth and the amount of time the tomatoes had to get settled with their roots now, I am surprised that they have been growing so slowly. This hasn't been my experience in the past, but I also haven't grown in a climate this hot before. Any idea if the plants will recover and what the strange leaf curling and discoloration might be?
Things haven't really been establishing well in the garden when I buy plants from the nursery, and I'm not sure why. I usually plant at dusk so the plants are not immediately exposed to the intense sun we have.
The pictures I attached are of the tomatoes that haven't changed much at all (besides the burnt leaves falling off) since I transplanted them. A few plants have vigorously grown new branches, but not at all in height. They were all about 1 foot tall when I transplanted them, and seemed at the time healthy. I have fertilized all with fish emulsion twice in the last month and added an organic slow release fertilizer for tomatoes (tomato tone) shortly after transplanting.
Any advice will be much appreciated. Thanks!
- Kevin
I've gardened before and grown tomatoes successfully from seed before, but this is my first dedicated vegetable garden. The spot is in full sun ~ 13 hours a day, and the sun shines every day.
Background: I live in the Sacramento, California area where we have really hot dry summers. It's been around 90F (32c) lately (for a week now) and my soil is rather clayey - about 30%. I put plenty of compost and tilled it in to make raised beds and am growing 10 tomato plants (all heirlooms: purple cherokee, green zebra, chocolate pear and golden siberian) and a couple of habanero plants, water melons and zucchini. It easily gets over 100F/40c here during the summer.
My issue is that first of all the tomato plants I grew from seed suffered from transplant shock when I put them outside. Unfortunately I did not really harden them off because I live in an apartment and the only outside area I have is a completely shaded balcony. I did leave the window open where I grew them for about 2 weeks before I put them out, and they got direct sun there in the afternoon, but I guess it wasn't enough. That was about a month ago, and a lot of leaves turned white and fell off.
While some have really grown a lot of branches and leaves since, there really isn't much vertical growth, only horizontally. I'm wondering if that will improve or if the shock will mean the plant will stay permanently small. But since I replaced one of the plants with a nursery bought variety, and that hasn't grown much vertically in the last 3 weeks either, I am wondering if there is some other cause.
Other plants have put out very little growth of new leaves at all and only have a few left at the top. I'm wondering what's wrong with those. The leaves at the top look healthy, but the edges of new leaves on all my tomato plants keep turning white or yellow, dry and curl up and get these little holes in them. I'm not sure if it's a bug - might be flea beetles - or a bacterial disease, but I already applied an organic insecticide to all my veggies and the holes keep showing up on new plants.
With this warmth and the amount of time the tomatoes had to get settled with their roots now, I am surprised that they have been growing so slowly. This hasn't been my experience in the past, but I also haven't grown in a climate this hot before. Any idea if the plants will recover and what the strange leaf curling and discoloration might be?
Things haven't really been establishing well in the garden when I buy plants from the nursery, and I'm not sure why. I usually plant at dusk so the plants are not immediately exposed to the intense sun we have.
The pictures I attached are of the tomatoes that haven't changed much at all (besides the burnt leaves falling off) since I transplanted them. A few plants have vigorously grown new branches, but not at all in height. They were all about 1 foot tall when I transplanted them, and seemed at the time healthy. I have fertilized all with fish emulsion twice in the last month and added an organic slow release fertilizer for tomatoes (tomato tone) shortly after transplanting.
Any advice will be much appreciated. Thanks!
- Kevin