Disease resistance

[MissS]

How many people here choose vegetable varieties based on their disease resistance?

It seems like disease pressure is climbing rapidly in recent years. It used to be that you planted a tomato or pepper and it grew and produced until frost or if a determinate until harvest. Today we are having plants that are getting all sorts of conditions in the blink of an eye. So how often do you consider disease resistance when choosing which variety of veggies to grow and how do they work out for you? Do you have a favorite for your zone and growing conditions?

[eyegrotom]

I don't consider disease resistance at all. I go with taste first than production second, some times it is just because the Name is interesting.

[pepperhead212]

I pick a lot of varieties because they are disease resistant, and many varieties are one time only, due to bad disease, right next to others, that got nothing. Humidity and excess rain happens more often than not here, causing the problems. Tomatoes and cucumbers especially, but this year I had a couple of peppers get diseased, as well.

[Seven Bends]

About half our tomatoes -- the main red production varieties -- are disease-resistant hybrids, mainly VFN resistance. I think it helps a little, but our main diseases are early blight, septoria and anthracnose, and there's not much resistance available yet to those diseases. If someone comes out with a large, red, juicy, flavorful tomato resistant to early blight and septoria and able to set fruit in our summer heat, I'll be all over it.

[Tormahto]

I don't consider disease resistance either. I go with taste first and taste second. With 150+ plants, I don't worry much about production, and sometimes just because the naming of the tomatoes is interesting.

[bower]

Disease resistance is important to me. Taste is #1 consideration, but disease prone plants don't get invited back. There are lots of great tomatoes that are not overly susceptible to diseases.
I've been breeding and selecting plants that taste great but are also disease resistant. I have some now that are really low maintenance for the usual cold weather diseases, especially in the greenhouse. In a busy year, I can grow fewer tomatoes, give them more space, and have a hassle free production with little effort.
But I don't have much resistance for the disease pressures in hot and humid weather. We had a much hotter than normal summer this year with a lot of humidity, and it was really rough on the plants. But that's the kind of year, you see a little bit of resistance in a couple of plants and it gives you hope, you may select some that can handle it...
Some plants are good indoors and out, and then there are some that are clean in the greenhouse but get very spotty outdoors. Those plants often do better with a little bit of shelter overhead. So there are ways to tweak the environment to help out against the 'wet leaf' diseases. But still, I would rather try to breed out the susceptibility issues. If I love the taste but not the maintenance issues, I'll cross it to something more robust.
Early blight and grey mold are the big leaf pests for the usual cold wet weather here. In the humid weather it's mildews. Weed control is important, the ones that host mildew are just blasting the tomatoes with spores if they're not removed early season. Red clover, forgetmenots, purple vetch are the biggest problem hosts in my garden.

[Barb_FL]

I do; This year my tomatoes that were sowed in September were either cherry tomatoes or large hybrids with TYLCV resistance. In October, I sowed heirloom and OP tomatoes. So far so good.

Other vegetables I don't pay attention.

[Nan6b]

I pick based on taste, or that my research shows promise of good taste. But then when they're in the ground, if a tomato plant dies off, I write it off as "Not suitable for my garden." So in that sense, I do select based on disease resistance.

The big winners for taste, production and disease resistance in my conditions are: Stump of the World, Big Beef F1, and Dotson's Lebanese Heart.

[rxkeith]

there isn't a lot of disease pressure where i am at other than early blight, and maybe some other fungal issues
with tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers. my main question when choosing a variety of fruit or vegetable to grow is
will it tolerate cooler temperatures during the summer. how will it do when the high is 65, and a low of 48, around say july 4th.
will it ripen fully before a late september frost.
i look for shorter season varieties with superior flavor that don't have to be babied too much.


keith

[Tormahto]

there isn't a lot of disease pressure where i am at other than early blight, and maybe some other fungal issues
with tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers. my main question when choosing a variety of fruit or vegetable to grow is
will it tolerate cooler temperatures during the summer. how will it do when the high is 65, and a low of 48, around say july 4th.
will it ripen fully before a late september frost.
i look for shorter season varieties with superior flavor that don't have to be babied too much.


keith

You looked, and found, Pervaya Lyubov. Any others?

[rxkeith]

matina grows very well here, last year being an exception when they all damped off in the garden after
several days of crap cold rainy weather.
potato leaf varieties not late season, seem to do ok too. brandywine remains the only full size tomato to produce
ripe fruit from a volunteer plant that i let grow one year in a row of potatoes.
anna russian if i could only grow one heart.
milkas red bulgarian usually grows well for me.
azoychka for an early decent yellow
jds special c-tex has done well the number of times i have grown it.
mcclintock the pink one did well for a number of years until i lost the seeds.
alston everlasting has always done well if you want a good dependable cherry tomato.
sun gold of course
my uncle steve grows till frost kills it. yield varies from year to year, but i have to grow this one.

the anna russian cross that i am working on, has shown vigor. plants grow season long until frost kills them.
the different lines have been productive, and tending toward smaller two bite sized tomatoes.
there are probably some that i am forgetting. i will add names as i think of them.


keith

[Julianna]

@rxkeith I didn't realize we had such similar climates for temps. Mine is just what you described but just year round and with daily fog and no summer rain. Powdery mildew and dampening off are the biggest diseases. Ones that have done well for me so far are black brandywine, frog princess, subarctic plenty (best so far), big green dwarf, dwarf Laura's Bounty, sweet 100, Yellow Marble. EM Champion and Swoon both produced 3 fruits each. It wasn't a fair trial of either since they got going later. The flavors were good but not remarkable which means with heat they would be stunning.

Pink German, Azoychka, white oxheart, and cherokee purple all had good yields but tasted mealy and bland.

To answer the question, I do not consider disease resistance but I also rarely regrow any time soon.

[GoDawgs]

I'm concerned with taste but I'm real concerned with heat tolerance more than disease resistance. However two years ago I found that even those touted as being heat resistant failed to perform when out in all day full sun in 100 degrees. Those same tomatoes did miles better this past year when grown in a different location (up by the house) with sun from 9:30-4:00. The only problem with that is that there's only room for 11 tomatoes there so the rest went elsewhere.

I used to only grow hybrids with long strings of resistance letters behind the names. Then I started trying the heirlooms with almost no resistance codes and found that there's really not much difference here in this location. Hybrids and heirlooms all get early blight sooner or later and I've had very little encounters with septoria here. The biggest bane of my tomatoes existence is squirrels!

[mama_lor]

A healthy tomato plant will often make better tasting fruit than a diseased one. And more too. Sure, if that particular variety simply sucks at taste, it's a pass, but this year with late blight, any variety without resistance produced a total amount of 0 tomatoes (there are literally no OPs, except a couple of cherrys). Sure, I grow other things as well but it's a gamble, depending on the year.