My neighbor said he grew Porter tomatoes in abundance in west Texas, but has not had much luck here in the Houston area due to tomato blight.
What is your experience and are you in a humid area?
Thanks!
I've potted up my tomato plants, and they look great.
Question re Porter tomatoes
Do you know if your friend was talking about early blight? There are several tomato diseases that affect us in S.E. Texas, specifically early blight, bacterial spot, bacterial speck, and anthracnose fruit rot. There are also much more rarely seen soil-based problems including fusarium wilt, verticillium wilt, and root knot nematodes. Perhaps your neighbor could look at Texas A&M Tomato Problem Solver ( http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/tomatoproblemsolver/index.html ) and see which pictures look like his plants?
The biggest problems I have are early blight, bacterial spot, and anthracnose. Alas, there are no decent tomato varieties with any resistance or tolerance to any of these problems. Fortunately, there are preventative fungicides like Daconil which keep these problems under control long enough to get a good harvest.
Providing a thick layer of mulch, watering the soil (not the leaves) in the morning rather than the evening, never handling the foliage when the leaves are wet, and removing any diseased foliage especially towards the bottom of each plant are all recommended methods to keep your plants healthy as long as possible.
I have not grown Porter. So far I've had great success with Jet Star, Arkansas Traveler, Gregori's Altai, Sungold, Black Cherry, Paul Robeson, and JD's Special C-Tex.
Did you hear about the South East Texas Tomato Fest ( http://www.settfest.com/ ) ? :)
This message was edited Apr 15, 2008 2:13 PM
My neighbor was giving those away at the round up here last weekend. They're growing volunteer in abundance in her garden. While she was out of town last year those that rotted on the vine and fell to the ground seeded. So she has/had quite a few.
Anne
Joni (Jo-in-Tx) and husband Guy.
Man...did my hair ever look like crap that day....lol!!!!
Anne...did any of your stuff get frosted? Mine was ok but I covered the veggies.
Bad hair day for lots of us! It was that wind! (yea, that's right, blame the wind!) LOL
Lol!! Yea, CJ commented that every time we have a RU here it seems to be windy...but it isn't always, I swear!
I think everything did ok. We had frost but not enough to damage anything.
Anne