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Post by oldsouthernboy on Nov 30, 2017 8:41:34 GMT -6
Hello Folks! Just joined the board and am looking forward to learning more and participating. Thank you for this opportunity. lI live in SC and last year, I really had a tough time with wilt and other tomato diseases taking a toll on my tomato crop. Determined to do better, I am looking for some advice or suggestions from you all about tomato varieties which have proven to be resistant to disease problems. I know heirlooms are particularly susceptible, as the resistance has not been bred into them. Look forward to hearing back on this. Merry Christmas (a bit early) to everyone on here!  |
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Post by macmex on Dec 1, 2017 6:07:18 GMT -6
Hey! Welcome to Green Country Seed Savers! Thank you for posting!
That's a hard one. In general terms, I think that some hybrids are more likely to provide strong disease resistance. For instance, here's a link for a hybrid called Defiant:
Bonnie's Listing for Defiant tomato
I've also heard that tomatoes like Early Girl can provide a measure of disease resistance.
Among the non hybrids, I'd consider both Roma VF and Heidi. I know that Heidi can get late blight, as it had it in my garden this year. However, they were loaded with fruit right up until our hard freeze. Some plants had more tomatoes than leaves! Here's a picture of Heidi, toward the end of the season:
For me, it's usually more of a question of staying away from certain ones which have much less resistance than others. Yet, there are some which do seem to have more.
George
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Post by macmex on Dec 1, 2017 7:23:21 GMT -6
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Post by oldsouthernboy on Dec 1, 2017 11:37:32 GMT -6
Awesome, macmex. This is what I was looking for, and I appreciate your inputs! Yeah, I see what you mean about the blight in that picture. And yes, those fruits still look great!
Will be curious to see if anybody else will chime in on this thread. God bless.
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Post by macmex on Dec 1, 2017 21:24:19 GMT -6
I hope someone else contributes some ideas or experience! We have plenty of it represented here. Sometimes, however, a thread will "get buried" and people won't notice that it's here. We'll see.
George
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Post by john on Dec 1, 2017 21:35:18 GMT -6
'Better Boy' has always been one of my favorites. It resists disease and it out-yields all other types. They don't split very badly after a rain, and they taste good. They are a large tomato and can weigh a pound or more. They are nicely shaped. (unlike the beefsteak types)
'Celebrity' is another disease resistant one. They aren't as big as better boy and tend to ripen all at once. (they are a semi-determinate type)
I have not had late blight for several years, so I don't worry too much about that. Usually late blight doesn't show up until later in the season (September) where I am located (Connecticut), so I aim to get my crop in early rather than late to hopefully avoid late blight if it is around. I have grown 'Defiant' it is a smaller tomato but it does resist late blight.
In my opinion some of the heirloom types do taste better than the hybrids but often they are much lower yielding and are prone to disease. The heirloom cherry types grow like wild and seem to keep growing and growing right through the season.
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Post by macmex on Dec 2, 2017 7:24:21 GMT -6
Just a few thoughts:
When I lived out East, most of the heirlooms I grew were of the kind I sometimes call "Old German Beefsteaks." This kind of heirloom tends to be large fruited and also not very resistant to the conditions we normally experience in Oklahoma (heat, fluctuating temps, high humidity, etc.). After moving here I had to seriously reconsider the varieties I depended upon. There are some heirlooms which do pretty well. But they are not often the ones that people all across the Northern Midwest and East Coast would commonly choose.
Actually, I kind of steer clear of the term "heirloom," most of the time, now. It's been so overused. Too much emphasis has been placed on it. For me, a real heirloom is a variety which has, indeed, been passed on by family and friends, for decades. However, "open pollinated" or "standard varieties" are really good terms to describe what I want. They include "heirloom" within their scope, but they also encompass a lot of truly excellent varieties which were developed and distributed by commercial means.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Dec 2, 2017 23:42:41 GMT -6
I've found that when the tomato leaves get burned off by disease, leaving tomatoes over-exposed to sunlight, an old burlap coffee bean sack cut along the seam and wrapped around the tomato cage will block out enough direct sunlight to protect the fruits from sunscald. Sometimes, you can find the coffee bean sacks on sale for .99 cents each at Atwoods. I have about 30 of them.
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Post by john on Dec 3, 2017 13:09:20 GMT -6
Often times late blight is confused with diseases on tomatoes such as early blight, verticillium or fusarium, leaf spots etc. If you get late blight your season is over. The fruit will rot and the plant will go down quickly. It is unmanageable, unless you grow a late blight resistant variety, (like Defiant) Or you are willing to spray your plant with copper or another fungicide. Most of the time when people tell me there tomatoes got hit with late blight they are referring to something to another disease which defoliated their plants. Late blight is serious..You will not have anything to harvest. If you do try to harvest, it will be rotten in short order.
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Post by john on Dec 3, 2017 13:13:31 GMT -6
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Post by macmex on Dec 4, 2017 7:00:12 GMT -6
Thanks John! I know I've never been real strong on differentiating the different blights.
George
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Post by oldsouthernboy on Dec 4, 2017 10:05:44 GMT -6
Great thoughts, folks. I really do appreciate it so much. I love this forum!
Down here in SC, the thing that really terrifies me is the wilt virus. One day your tomato plants are loaded with fruit and seemingly in great shape. The next day the plant looks like a flat tire, drooping and sick. Once you see this sight, you know it's over. There is no coming back from that, so you'd best harvest what fruit you can and pull the plant in hopes the virus won't spread to nearby healthy plants.
For some odd reason, I lost a bunch of plants this past summer to Tomato Curly Top Virus also. Really disheartening when things up to that point have been looking so good.
One thing i have learned over the years...there are A LOT of maladies that can afflict a tomato plant. But the great taste of those harvested fruits always seem to leave us coming back for more.
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