As I walk around my garden in the morning like most every morning inspecting the developing tomato plants, I wonder what kind of season it will be. Did I plant too many new to me and unproven and possibly unreliable, disease prone and unproductive varieties? One bed seems to have some sort of disease already affecting a few plants. Will some plants not set any fruit at all or will disease claim what does set? Do you ever get buyer’s remorse and ever wished you planted more tried and true rather than chasing unicorns and rainbows? I have 33 plants and only 7 have I grown in past seasons. Did I go too far out on a limb, these kind of thoughts creep into the picture. So far, Some tomatoes are setting fruit and some aren’t so much, but that’s pretty normal this early. What will the weather do going forward?

So any horror stories out there? More or less Disatrous seasons, has anyone experienced those and how did you respond? Did you chalk it up to part of the deal or play it safer next time? Or did you play it safe and plant the bulletproof tomatoes and even those failed you? What’s you perspective on tomato garden setbacks and tomato garden calamities or is it you’ve not had any of those, either through benign providence or highly developed skill or particular favorable growing conditions year in and year out?

So far, in my limited experience compared to many here on growing tomatoes, things have mostly worked out. I got plenty of tasty tomatoes and the set backs have been more of a minor annoyance than anything else. Limited bouts of disease, scattered bug and squirrel attacks, some dud varieties, but overall good enough production and quality on the tomatoes to be an overall win. I’m just wondering if I’m overdue for a disaster or something where the season is a draw or even a loss?

@karstopography
A bird in the hand beats two in the bush.
I've grown out probably 100 varieties and found a few that do well down here.
Stopped chasing the rainbow years ago.
I look for tomatoes that produce over all before some fantasy flavor.
Anything is better than store bought.

Without experiencing failure, I would never be this successful. So failures, to a degree, are always welcome, if I learn from them.

This is much like fishing. Catching no fish, or getting no bites, makes me a better fisherman the next time out.

I think my worst year ever was the first year growing heirlooms - all unknowns to me. It just happened to be one of our most awful summers with a really cold and wet July (usually our hottest month). My greenhouse filled with vines, but not with fruit. Only 3 of 7 tried produced fruit! And then the vines started to rot in the wet cold... so much rotting tomato leaves and stems... oh yuck. That's definitely a worst year ever.
Hope that makes you feel reassured!

That was my summer last year I had such beautiful tomato plants hardly any fruit my corn never got taller than a foot stopped growing all together all my squash never grew agsin epic fail my cucumber never grew everything in my garden never grew even onions. Wich was a huge shock and disappointment. It was redone with what was supposed to be the best top soil around I beg to differ the only thing I got was green beans from a planter box with soil I got from Walmart… why I’m kinda nervous this year… so I get it

My worst year was five years ago. We did not get the first tomato, due to several reasons.
We always plant some Big Beef. Not the best, but pretty good, and I can count it producing.

Last year I bought plants very early and tried to take advantage of the sunlight,but they all got diseased due to the cold weather and most never made it
til the usual planting time.This was slightly offset by the fact that Agway had plants until almost september,I was able to buy 2 gal plants that normally go for $16 for $5.

The worst year for tomatoes that I remember was maybe the first or second year I started helping a lot with the tomatoes. It was just, "dig a hole in the garden and put these tomato plants in. And when they get big then you need to tie them up to some wooden stakes." Basically.

It turned out to be a very wet year, so they grew all over the place, and then there was this plague that killed everything dead, bang, just like that. That was either gray mold or late blight.

Soon afterwards I got serious about growing stuff. Built CRW cages to get them off the ground. Redid the garden with double dug rows. Trenched the plants in. Started burying lots of fish for nutrition. Soon I was growing from seed instead of plants. Eventually, raised rows. Florida weave. Carolyn's book. Soil blocks. AVCT. Row covers. Black mulch. Drip tape. Dogs and cats, living together!

Where will it stop...I don't know. I do know I haven't had any tomato crop failures since.

Seems like the more I learned about tomatoes the worse the years got.

For tomatoes, it was 4 or 5 years ago when that bacterial wilt decimated all of the tomatoes. (That resulted in the change to growing them in buckets up by the house after that). A close second was two years ago when I doubled the number of tomatoes and expanded the bucket growing to a second set down in the garden. It was a torrid summer and all of the plants down there suffered immensely, producing very little. Since then things have been better. Still working on better shade.

I admit to being a unicorn chaser only because I'm still looking to add to the list of keepers. And when I finally fill that list I'll still grow new ones just for the heck of it. MMMM made sure of that.

The worst or most exasperating over-all gardening season might have been last year. The corn blew down three times. The squirrels stole or damaged ripening tomatoes (and eventually green ones too) and also stripped about every ear of popcorn clean as a whistle. NEVER have either two of those events ever happened before. It was Squirrel Hell.

Something dug up and and stole my first ever planting of Jerusalem artichokes. Fortunately they missed one and it made plenty to replant.

There was a serious bout of powdery mildew on all the cucurbit plants and I couldn't get rid of it.

I learned summer planting of more bush beans doesn't work here as both day and night temps are too high.

The red Black Diamond watermelons ended up creamy yellow in the middle and were all tossed out.

One variety of corn got hit with a really late cold snap as it was coming up, got stunted and ended up tasseling when they were about 2' tall.

Yep, I'm glad last year's spring/summer garden is over. Fall's was decent. Hopefully this new season will be great.

i tend to be an optimist with the garden.
we can have snow on the ground 7 months of the year, so one needs to be optimistic.
something always does really well. some things do just ok, and something always fails or gets destroyed by weather,
varmints or chickens. we had a great lettuce crop two years ago. last year, we had baby bunnies,
and chicks hatched by broody mama that were small enough to get through the fencing, and enjoyed
the lettuce we were eagerly anticipating. you just never know from one year to another what's going to happen.
two disasters stand out with the tomatoes, and peppers. one year, we had a frost warning the night before i was leaving
on my canadian fly in fishing trip. i had put the trays of plants in one of the cars thinking that would be sufficient protection.
that didn't turn out well. temps must have dipped into the 20s. this is the end of may mind you. most of the plants had mild to
severe frost damage. some were just dead. the plants that had the least damage did come back, and grow. the badly frosted plants
that were still alive, never did recover.
the second event occurred when we were down state for a couple years. i was fixing to have an awesome garden. i had enough growing
season to grow any kind of tomato i wanted to. everything started from seed except a couple plants we bought from an amish farm.
everything was going well, lots of tomatoes on the vines, getting bigger, and bigger, starting to show color, oh boy oh boy oh boy. can't wait.

that was the year i first experienced late blight. mighta been 2009.
i had never before seen a near fully ripe tomato turn to mush on such a scale in so little time.
that year was a big let down. i still wonder if it was from the tomatoes from the amish farm.
blight was bad that year in different parts of the country. it just coulda been bad luck.
learn something new each year. thats how it goes.


keith

worth1 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 5:57 pm Seems like the more I learned about tomatoes the worse the years got.

More words of wisdom from Worth.

I remember being on a business trip with a colleague years ago, visiting a very sophisticated customer. On the ride back, we agreed that the more we learned, we realized the less we knew.

GoDawgs wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 6:34 pm For tomatoes, it was 4 or 5 years ago when that bacterial wilt decimated all of the tomatoes. (That resulted in the change to growing them in buckets up by the house after that). A close second was two years ago when I doubled the number of tomatoes and expanded the bucket growing to a second set down in the garden. It was a torrid summer and all of the plants down there suffered immensely, producing very little. Since then things have been better. Still working on better shade.

I admit to being a unicorn chaser only because I'm still looking to add to the list of keepers. And when I finally fill that list I'll still grow new ones just for the heck of it. MMMM made sure of that.

The worst or most exasperating over-all gardening season might have been last year. The corn blew down three times. The squirrels stole or damaged ripening tomatoes (and eventually green ones too) and also stripped about every ear of popcorn clean as a whistle. NEVER have either two of those events ever happened before. It was Squirrel Hell.

Something dug up and and stole my first ever planting of Jerusalem artichokes. Fortunately they missed one and it made plenty to replant.

There was a serious bout of powdery mildew on all the cucurbit plants and I couldn't get rid of it.

I learned summer planting of more bush beans doesn't work here as both day and night temps are too high.

The red Black Diamond watermelons ended up creamy yellow in the middle and were all tossed out.

One variety of corn got hit with a really late cold snap as it was coming up, got stunted and ended up tasseling when they were about 2' tall.

Yep, I'm glad last year's spring/summer garden is over. Fall's was decent. Hopefully this new season will be great.

I love posts like this, as it makes me think that I'm a great gardener. NOT!

I have a corn variety this year that is supposed to tassel at 1' tall, and the ears grow inches from the ground, That gets me thinking the bizarre thought that slugs will damage the ears.

Since I don't have the space for growing a lot of corn, I plant then in 4' X 4' blocks, a foot apart in each direction, 16 plants to a block. I put a roughly 8' stake in each corner, about 1' into the soil. Then 4 cross members at about 3 1/2', and 4 more at 7' above the soil line. Finally a Florida weave. Hawaiian #9 has very thin stalks, the top of the tassels get to 11 1/2', and this variety has not lodged in my garden. When the tassels open, I reach in and start shaking the plants. Then, I either hose the pollen off of myself, or take a shower. I usually wear an old yellow t-shirt on pollination day.

The new MMMM non-tomato/pepper thread has a cucumber list. I slightly over did it with cucumber plans for this year. I can look for mildew resistant varieties, if you'd like.

Bush Asian long beans thrive in the heat. In a good year, I get two crops and a third set of flowers, and then the hard frost comes. Perhaps in the south, they could produce three crops.

As for Jerusalem artichokes, some would say that you are unfortunate that one was missed.

All I know is this I woke up this morning checked on all my tomatoes even the ones that haven’t popped up yet and I Did what my husband calls the mater dance and said to myself

this is gonna be an epic year haha cause I got this!!!

Last year was complete disaster. I planted my usual 125 plants. I started them way too early and was overwhelmed with dealing with over sized starts. My age is catching up to me and that is too many plants. I had nothing to add to the planting hole-not even fertilizer due to the pandemic. I plant more than I need knowing I will always get a good harvest even if the plants don't get the best of care and I always do. I was over run with weeds. I ended up with less than 50 tomatoes.

This year my timing has been better. Lowes now lets me enter their nursery without having to walk through their main store. I have amendments and fertilizer. I have targeted about 50% of my usual. I am optimistic it will be better than last year. I no longer believe that you can just stick them in the ground with at least some decent results.

I think it is normally about this point of the season I tend to second guess my tomato choices. The thoughts become why did I ever want to grow half the ones I ended up with, it seems like I forget the original reason I ever was interested in some of them, especially if they seem to be lagging behind some of their peers.

I went out late this afternoon and see I’m getting more fruit setting on more plants. The majority of the sixteen plants I transplanted out in the beds mid February have at least one tomato on them, some have several. Maybe 3 or 4 of those plants don’t have a for sure rock solid tomato set yet, but all are flowering to one degree or another. I’m already feeling more optimistic about the season. Imagination cuts both ways and can swing from wild optimism to gloomy pessimism and back again in a short amount of time. Lose a number of healthy looking tomato blossoms for whatever reason and the sky is falling. Losing good looking tomato blossoms, having them drop off after seemingly setting is something I’m still trying to understand, what are all the reasons this happens. Today, I called my nearby tomato growing buddy that put some of his 50 plus tomato plants in at the same time I did and he’s getting a lot of blossom drop, more than me actually, and only his cherry tomatoes seem to be setting fruit.

Most likely, the season I’ll have will be somewhere in between near perfection and absolutely terrible. Whatever happens or however the season goes, it’ll be alright.

karstopography wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 10:26 pm I think it is normally about this point of the season I tend to second guess my tomato choices. The thoughts become why did I ever want to grow half the ones I ended up with, it seems like I forget the original reason I ever was interested in some of them, especially if they seem to be lagging behind some of their peers.

I went out late this afternoon and see I’m getting more fruit setting on more plants. The majority of the sixteen plants I transplanted out in the beds mid February have at least one tomato on them, some have several. Maybe 3 or 4 of those plants don’t have a for sure rock solid tomato set yet, but all are flowering to one degree or another. I’m already feeling more optimistic about the season. Imagination cuts both ways and can swing from wild optimism to gloomy pessimism and back again in a short amount of time. Lose a number of healthy looking tomato blossoms for whatever reason and the sky is falling. Losing good looking tomato blossoms, having them drop off after seemingly setting is something I’m still trying to understand, what are all the reasons this happens. Today, I called my nearby tomato growing buddy that put some of his 50 plus tomato plants in at the same time I did and he’s getting a lot of blossom drop, more than me actually, and only his cherry tomatoes seem to be setting fruit.

Most likely, the season I’ll have will be somewhere in between near perfection and absolutely terrible. Whatever happens or however the season goes, it’ll be alright.

"...having them drop off after seemingly setting..."

As a mostly optimist, but partly pessimist due to reality, I've found it easy to spot the blossoms that will eventually drop off. The knuckle on the blossom stem will lose its greenness. A pessimist may go searching for such, at his/her own peril.

I look for the yellowing at the knuckle. Some are clear cut, aged flower looks robust, but knuckle is clearly yellow at the weld, it will be gone by the endof the day. Some blossoms seem to be fighting it, faint yellowing, incomplete yellowing, partial yellowing. I swear I believe I have witnessed some blossoms survive a bit of yellowing and go on to set normal fruit. I’m going to look at this more, though.

lol @GoDawgs that does sound like a bad season last year. But, down your way, the season is so much longer with the heat in the middle, it has to be hard for everything to come up good, your luck would need to stay high for the whole year practically. Here, it is basically, maybe, mid April you could have radishes or lettuce to eat if you have them in a plastic tunnel. And then last thing is pulling in the last bit of stuff around Nov 1. So, 6-1/2 mo of possible harvest. Okay, well, sure we could dig some parsnips in Jan/Feb.

But the whole no hard freeze, allowing crazy unspeakable things in the soil year round, and blazing hot middle of summer, I don't get that here! I like the clean break and time off from worrying about the weather.

A friend of mine moved down to Lawrenceville area, more than a few years back now, but I was at a loss trying to help him with garden ideas for down there. I told him, best thing, look around at your neighbors gardens and when you see something you like, ask them.

As a mostly optimist, I have upland rice in the plans for this year.