This is my first year, I need help!

I have planted in the ground three tomato plants, and three cukes. At the bottom of these plants it looks as if roots are growing up the plant. Could these plants be rootbound? All the other plants in my garden look great (gr. beans,squash, gr. pepper). Like I said it is my first year planting in the ground instead of containers and we tilled the ground to 12 inches. Any help?

Do you mean that the roots are showing? Why not just add compost and soil around the stems?

the roots are not growing up from the ground or showing under the soil, it seems the stems of the plants are growing roots, the only thing I can say is that it is like a potato growing eyes.

Tomato plants DO grow roots from the stems. I usually plant them quite deep with just a couple of sets of leaves showing. They will grow roots all along the stem and make them more able to handle our hot weather. It has been so humid here lately that I wouldn't be surprised to see roots growing even above ground. I haven't looked over the cucumbers. I suppose they also might sprout roots at the nodes. If they are in the ground I wouldn't be overly concerned about it.

thank you soo much!

Joy,
Next time you plant them... posthole did down 2 feet and put a good organic soil in the hole. As Vashur said... plant the tomato deep with only a small part of the top of the plant showing. This helps to develop a more robust root system.

12 inches is not enough to break up the soil compaction beneath.
Miricle Grow has a great fertilizer for Tomatoes.

thank you, I have been using miracle grow, we used the garden soil and food, and the tomato plants are growing great, we have several green tomatoes already. Should I go ahead and add more soil and compost on top? Also any idea what the little red bugs are on my tomato plants only? I have used sevin dust and it does not seem to kill them.
thanks Joy

Do the little red bugs look like orange ants with long black legs?

no, they hardly move and they tend to be in clusters together. I will try to get a picture and post it.

Sounds like some sort of aphid. What are you using to try to kill them? I have used a mixture of rotenone with pyrethrum - that always worked for me in the past. I used to get it from Mellinger's but they've closed. GardensAlive carries it, though.

http://www.gardensalive.com/product.asp?pn=8659

Also, if you're talking about mounding up the dirt around the stem, I wouldn't do that. Roots will grow down anyway. As long as you keep it watered you should be fine. I used to do what the other poster said, digging down 2', but I discovered that the plants really only root along the top 12" or so of the stem anyway. So now what I do is dig down around 8" to 10" at most and if there's more stem than that, I dig a trough instead of a hole and lay the plant in sideways (the tip will still look straight). That way it roots all the way along the stem. Planting this way seems to make the plants more drought tolerant than if I plant straight down the old way, probably because the rooted area is bigger around.

If you haven't mulched around the plants, do that. Tomatoes, peppers and eggplants benefit a lot from mulching.

Hope this helps.

Sojourner

Try spraying them with a coupla drops of Lemon Ajax mixed in a 2 gallon sprayer with 6 tbls. of Ortho Max (Bug Be Gone). See if that'll help. Set you sprayer on a medium mist and spray the plants from the undersides of the leaves upwards, and then spray the tops of the leaves downwar, just till you start to get some droplet of runoff spray.

I have tried MITE-X, it seems to help for a week or so and then the bugs are back. I think I will keep on spraying with this as it is all natural and my tomato plants do seem to be doing well.

after several hours online searching pics of bugs, I did find a pic matching my tomato eaters, they do appear to be aphids (red ones). I will try the soap mixture.

If you want to stay organic you can use a couple of tablespoons of baking soda per quart instead of the Bug Be Gone (cheaper, too) + the dish soap liquid (fixative). I had terrible aphids on my tomato plants. I sprayed them twice about three days apart. After that they were gone and have not come back.

Karen

thanks Karen, I will try it today and let you know the results! I sprayed yesterday with Mite-x and this morning the aphids are still there (maybe more).
Joy

OOOH, Karen, thanks for the anti-mite recipe! I've had horrible problems this year with mites, and am going broke buying a commercial spray. Baking soda I can do! Thanks!

the aphids seem to be going away, now my leaves are curling and turning black. What do I do now?!?!?!?!?!?

You didn't spray with the sodium bicarb, did you? That can cause leaf damage if its too strong.

Late blight? Here are some pictures:

http://nysipm.cornell.edu/publications/blight/default.asp?metatags_Action=Find('PID','8')

Any chance you can get us some pictures?

Sojourner
Formerly of MO

I used Arm and Hammer baking soda -- sodium bicarbonate. I got the recipe from a thread about homemade bug sprays here on DG. It worked just fine -- not a burnt leaf in the bunch, and the aphids are all gone and haven't come back.

I did have lots of curling leaves, but they were curling from the aphids before I sprayed. I did not have any additional leaves curl. I did use Ivory dish washing soap. Some said other brands are too strong, and not to use the anti-bacterial dish soaps.

I was looking for something simpler and cheaper. I had purchased a spray at the nursery. It cost $6.00. The bottle was made in such a way that the last 20% of the spray could not be used, and I couldn't get the top off. So, I figure I had to throw away $1.25 of the spray. That ticked me off big time. Besides, which it didn't work anyway.

Karen

karen,
when your leaves curled, did they turn black on the edges? I am trying to hold out hope that it is not blight.

Karen (glendalekid),

Can you please show me where I can find the thread about the homemade bug spray that use the Arm and Hammer baking soda, or post the recipe for me. I have a big problems with aphids and some white fly on my tomato plants, I used mixture of a table spoon of cayanne pepper with 2 quart of warm water and couple drops of dish soap....I still can't get rid of all of the bugs.

Thanks.

Joy,

No, they didn't. They just curled under and were kind of dried looking. I could see that these leaves and the stems around them, as well as other leaves and stems, were just covered in aphids. I went ahead and clipped off most of the damaged leaves. Then I sprayed with the baking soda, Ivory dish soap, and water. After the first spraying many aphids were gone, but I still had a lot. So, several days later, I sprayed again. This time the aphids died or left, whatever it is they do, and I have not had any back since nor have I had any more curled or damaged leaves. You need to really drench the plants when spraying, leaves, tops and undersides, and stems -- every part of the plant. I just use a hand-held quart bottle with a sprayer top on it.

My grandma, who did not have running water, always dumped her dishwater on her roses and never had aphids. She did use soap and not modern detergent. I don't know if that makes a difference, but it might.

Karen

HaoQin,

I got the information on homemade bug remedies from a couple of different threads. I copied the recipes off onto a word doc, and did not save the thread as such. I'm not very good at searching for something like that. I alway seem to turn up 300 posts, most of which don't apply to my query. So, I don't know just where those threads are.

I'll copy that info for you and send it in a D-mail. Some are very simple and some are quite elaborate.

Karen

Aphids are gone (YEAH). And I pulled all the dead leaves and stems off of the plants. They do seem to be bouncing back. The tomatoes that were already on the plants are still there and just starting to turn from green. How long does it usually take for maters to ripen?

Hooray!!

I removed the dead leaves and branches, too. Not sure it's necessary, but the dead leaves aren't doing anything for the plants, so why not. I never paid any attention to how long they take to ripen after they start to turn color, but it's several days for me, I think. You will know when they are good and ripe. All you have to do is touch them, and they'll fall right off. I have some yellow pear tomatoes. They pretty much start out light yellow and are ripe when they are a dark yellow, and again just touch them and they fall right off.

Karen

Carolyn, the tomato guru-goddess, posted a link not too long ago on the Tomato forum on the timeline for tomatoes, from blossom to fully ripe and beyond.

Here it is:
http://www.tomatoenthusiast.org/index.php?NT=Cultivation&RE=Truss_Timeline

Hope this helps, I sure found it interesting!

HOW MUCH WATER MAY BE THE 1ST THING UM LET ME KNOW HOW MUCH YOU WATER BEFORE YOU CAN THINK ABOUT ROT OK