Wilting Tomato Plants! Best Disease Resistant Plants Are???

[Brandywinegirl]

The last three years, no matter where in my community garden I plant my tomatoes, they wilt out of nowhere. My local garden store said its wilt and that for 5 years I should plant them in pots, not in the same ground.

Do any of you have a favorite disease resistant favorite as I plan for 2014?? I am so disappointed but got a batch of green ones for pickling.
Thanks!

[ion]

Do you know which wilt causing disease it is? Also, which tomato varieties did you grow?
Some examples of wilt causing diseases: Verticillium Wilt, Fusarium Wilt, Bacterial Wilt, Southern Blight, etc.

[Brandywinegirl]

Fusarium wilt. I grew Early Girl, Sungold, White Lady and Paul Robeson. I planted them 3 feet or more away from each other, and used salt hay around the base. I used worm castings and Nature's Harvest seaweed/kelp fertilizer. I live in a humid area (SE Pennsylvania) so that doesn't help either.

[PaulF]

Many of those diseases can be avoided by a mulching program to keep the soil from splashing up on the leaves. Avoid overhead watering for the same reason. Most of those diseases are soil borne, so be sure to clean up the debris every fall. It sounds like you are doing that right. If one plant gets diseased, be sure to not handle any others if you touch the diseased plant. Do you stake or cage your plants? If you do, be sure to sterilize the cages before you use them. The wilts and blights will stay on the cages from one year to the next. Use a bleach solution and soak them down well.

I am not convinced you should avoid planting in the garden for that long. Wilt will be in any soil so if you take the preventative measures you should avoid the problem.

[imafan26]

Below is a table from Cornell on tomato varieties and disease resistance. The real trick is to find a tomato that is disease resistance and tastes good. there a three strains of fusarium so it helps to know which strain you have. Many tomatoes have fusarium resistance but not to all strains. Some that do don't always taste good.

Celebrity is a commercial variety with good disease resistance it is ok as a slicer but not great. Big Beef and husky had good resistance. Sweet 100 cherry, gold nugget was resistant and sweet, Rutgers has been around a while, it is not a large tomato but has good disease resistence. I had new big dwarf, the tomatoes were great but it is determinate and I planted early so I did have any problems with fungal disease. Where I live it is humid most of the time, so if tomatoes can get past the mildews here, they do ok. All of the Hawaii varieties including Kewalo have very good resistance to TMV, three strains of fusarium and verticillium wilts. The skins are tough though, but they should be ok for sauce.

Other than that if you have such severe infections, it is important to keep up with the sanitation, fertilizing to make sure the plants are vigorous and careful watering. You may have to institute a prophylactic fungicide program when conditions are ripe for fungal growth.

It may actually help to rotate your crops to reduce the spore counts. That means not planting anything in the solanaceous family, eggplants, peppers or tomatoes and alternate hosts which are some weeds and strawberries. The fungus is soil borne and persists in crop residues.

You could try solarizing the soil to try to reduce the pathogen in the soil.

Since this is in a community garden and you don't know what diseases the other plants in the garden have, looking for a resistant cultivar and prophylactic sprays are probably your best bet.

https://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell. ... Table.html

[Brandywinegirl]

Thanks so much for the information and strategies!

[ion]

It's kinda weird early girl did poorly. The current EG has resistance for Fol race 1&2 and sungold is resistant to Fol 1. So, it may be Fol race 3 or resistance broke down or something else causing wilt.
It's been shown Root Knot Nematodes can break resistance for Verticillium and Fusarium Wilt. If you have nematode problems, you may also want nematode resistance.
Check out Amelia (HM/NCSU) and Katana(Takii). They have resistance to all three Fol races and root knot nematodes.

[Brandywinegirl]

ion, I have never heard of those tomato varieties! Thanks so much. I Bought beneficial nematodes last year for my plot. I don't know if they did anything. I may try them again before it gets too cool in September.