I’ve been doing a little bit of what I call “comparison growing”. A friend of mine told me to plant some tomatoes plants outside and see what results exposure to the elements would produce. Would they be stronger than the ones planted in the greenhouse? Would they be more susceptible to disease? What would exposure to strong UV rays do to them. Would the fruit taste better?
I found that this year, I didn’t have as much success outside of the greenhouse as I did inside. True, plant species were different, but I was looking for overall general health of the plants. For me, planting outside really took a toll on the plant itself. I had to worry about frost, yes, frost, even in the middle of July. And then the frost would be gone, and I’d have to sorry about the effects of UV light and possible sunspots on the fruit stemming from 100+ degree heat, often in the same day. We can get crazy 50+ degree swings in temperature where we live.
And then there was the disease issue. At least I think it was disease. The Roma tomato plant seems to have been more susceptible this year than the Beef tomato that was planted in the same bed about 4’ away from the Roma.
I think one of my major problems started with how I set up the raised bed. I had a bunch of leftover cardboard boxes that I flattened and put into the bottom of the raised bed, so I didn’t have to use so much soil. I left room for about a foot of soil between the cardboard and the top of the bed but didn’t fill it up as much as I probably should have. Natural settling seems to have reduced the level of the soil by quite a bit. I could probably have added another 6” of soil and still not have brought it up to the top of the bed.
I noticed that there was some sort of fungal growth, like a weird type of mushroom (see the screenshot below), growing at the base of the Roma tomato. And as I don’t really want to ingest something that looks like that (one wouldn’t pluck the mushroom out and eat it), I decided to just harvest the fruit that has started to rip on the vine and cut the tomato plant itself completely out.
The beef tomato did not seem to have any of the same symptoms, so I don’t know how solid my cardboard theory is. I did, however, decided to do the same thing with it as I did the Roma in case there were any soil or air transferred particles that landed on the plant. I did notice that when I pulled the Roma root ball out of the location where it had been planted, there was only fungus. When I pulled the root ball of the Beef tomato, there was active soil with worms producing their castings in it.
So, it may just have been the Roma plant itself. In doing some research, I found the following information from seedtime.us regarding how to deal with disease in your garden. Here is the link. https://borntogrow.net/master-classes/grow/handling-diseases/
So, next year, I’m going to take everything out of the raised bed and get rid of it. I’ll replace it with amended soil and place something else in it. For our growing conditions, I found that it is better to grow tomatoes inside the greenhouse. Growth factors just seem to be easier to control that way.
