Posted on 06/06/2020 6:08:49 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Watch Out for These 10 Tomato Plant Diseases in Your Garden This Summer
Juicy, sun-ripened, easy-to-grow tomatoes are among the most popular edible plants to grow at home. Whether you choose to grow them in containers or an expansive garden plot, tomatoes usually give you a good harvest and often taste much better than what you can find in the store. However, diseases like leaf spots and blights can pop up and ruin your garden party. Don’t let these potential problems scare you away, though. Growing healthy tomato plants is relatively simple when you plant disease-resistant varieties, space plants properly, mulch, and water at least 1 inch per week.
Part of taking good care of your tomatoes means keeping an eye out for diseases caused by fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Many common plant diseases and pests lurk in the soil, so it’s always a good idea to rotate where you place your tomatoes so they grow in the same ground only every four years or so. You may still see a few diseases turning up on your plants, so here’s what to watch out for and what you can do about them.
1. Septoria Leaf Spot
2. Anthracnose
3. Fusarium and Verticillium Wilt
4. Early Blight (Alternaria)
5. Late Blight
6. Mosaic Virus
7. Blossom Drop
8. Blossom-End Rot
9. Damping Off
10. Sunscald
Solutions at link: https://www.bhg.com/gardening/vegetable/vegetables/tomato-plant-diseases/
My 2-cents? Most of these can be avoided by not crowding your tomatoes promoting good airflow around the plant, pruning as necessary, watering at the BASE of the plant versus over-head watering with a sprinkler and a good layer of mulch!
Also - Blossom End Rot is NOT a ‘disease.’ It is caused by a lack of Calcium, so fix that from the start with Bone Meal in your planting hole, and a top dressing which gets slowly watered in when your plant starts setting fruit. :) (Peppers and Summer Squashes also suffer from BER, so treat them to Bone Meal, too!)
GROAN....
PLEASE let us know how we can get in touch with you or Lady Bender if things go south for you!
Message me with an e-mail or phone #, Please! :)
This is not exactly a “garden” question, but this seems like the best place to give it a whirl anyway:
Anybody know why a push mower will run great for 20-30 minutes, then start missing and lose power, then die & won’t restart until it’s cooled down? The entire fuel system has been cleaned, the carb cleaned THREE times, fuel treatment run through twice, the gas is brand new quality gas (Marathon 87 octane “regular”). This is a Cub Cadet push mower, several years old and never previously used, apparently. (My Dad had it in storage.) The choke / throttle is totally “automatic”, the thing doesn’t even have a primer bulb or choke lever. Let ‘er cool down a bit and she runs great again. The mower also won’t start if used for not quite as long as the same length of time that makes it quit, shut off*, and then restart is tried soon thereafter. In this instance it is still running pretty much ok, I shut it off to get a drink, perhaps, come back 5 minutes later, and now I have to let it cool further to start it.*
Egad, I sure prefer the old carbs from 30 years ago! They were less efficient, but if they were clean they freaking worked (the way you wanted to set them) & didn’t (flatulence release) out.
On another forum it was suggested to me that the gas cap might be sealing up too well, causing a vacuum in the tank (sort of a vapor lock?) Indeed, popping the cap off and then screwing it back on seems to help a LITTLE in marginal instances, but does not help at all in others.
In all cases where it was tried when the mower would not start promptly after having run for a while, shooting a little gasoline or starter fluid directly into the carb will get the engine to fire / run briefly, but then it usually dies. (This depends on how much it has cooled off.) So, the problem is definitely one of fuel delivery.
The mower DOES have a linkage from the carb going back into the muffler area: I’m guessing this monitors engine temperature to adjust the automatic choke / fuel mix accordingly, and I’m thinking maybe this is not working properly — but I don’t have the 1st clue how to fix it, or if it has some sort of design flaw. Again, the mower has never been previously used, so far as I can tell.
*I told my wife I suspect the yellow Cub Cadet color may be indicative of this being a “lemonade mower”: You mow a little while, then go inside to sip on a big glass of lemonade B4 resuming. (If you prefer beer as your drink of choice, then it’s a “beer mower”.)
Did you replace the carburator diaphragm?
Buy a new walk-behind.
Husky with a Honda engine walk behind is the toughest mower I’ve seen.
I think it could mow a tree...
God bless you with both of his hands, Tubebender.
Love your bride, your home and make your exit plans.
I hope you can find an answer. I am the LEAST ‘mechanical’ person out there.
The only thing the Army trained me for was how to ‘effectively use’ a Number 2 Yellow Ticonderoga Pencil in case I was captured by The Enemy. ;)
I have my car/mower mechanic on Speed Dial!
95% of the time, the mower runs great. It is even quite efficient on gas usage in normal cutting but powers through tall grass well.
Again, the mower had almost no use until I got it out. (It appears it was likely started once, then put into storage.) I did have to clean the carb (run carb cleaner and fuel treatment through it) to get the mower to start at all, due to old gas deposits I imagine, but I did not attempt to disassemble the carb itself -- I don't have that level of experience to be comfortable doing so.
After multiple rounds of spray cleaner applied from outside the carb, and a couple rounds of fuel treatment specified to clean carbs, the mower starts fine, cold, runs great for 20-30 minutes, then weakens, sputters and eventually dies. Then it is hard to start (unless left a while to cool).
Alternately if run for 20+ minutes and stopped while still running ok, then it likely will not start again easily until it has cooled off. (But sometimes removing the gas cap & putting it back on seems to help.)
The design is interesting to me: It's the 1st push mower engine I've seen without either a manual choke or a primer button. That said, I am NOT any expert on small engines. On older mowers I can diddle with carb settings successfully, maybe replace a primer bulb, shoot in carb cleaner, tweak a linkage, and so on, but that's about as far as my "knowledge" goes.
We have a Troy-Built push mower with a Honda engine: Best / most reliable mower I’ve ever used.
Unfortunately, buying a high quality new mower to use at my Mom’s is almost out of the question. Finances are very tight.
If you were captured you’d need a “James Bond” pencil, eh? But that might get you into even more trouble. (Sorta like me with mowers?)
Thanks, though! I am just hoping someone has seen this same problem.
How about crushed egg shells for Blossom-End Rot?
Chances are that is the problem. The ethanol gas warps the diaphram and makes the motor go Vroom- spurt every two seconds. Never heard of no choke or primer, but that would do what you describe. Take it to a lawnmower shop and have them check it. I got a cheap mower that ran stupidly and was about to chuck it and told a buddy about it. He came to my garage and took off the carb, showed me what was wrong (the diaphram) It was horribly shrunk,warped and he replaced it, put the two bolts back in and five years later I’m still running. Total cost? $5.00. Try it.
Could be / worth checking. However, the mower does NOT run “Vroom- spurt every two seconds” at any time. At least 95% of the time it runs very smoothly, evenly, and strong. Only after 25 minutes or so does it slow & weaken, but even that is a smooth decline, gradually becoming more “sputtery” (variations are a fraction of a second) until it just stops.
The entire carb is available from US sellers for under $20 on eBay. Probably cheaper than a shop visit. However, if something is going on with that control linkage that goes back to the muffler area (which definitely appears it could could lean out the fuel mix until the mower stops) then even replacing the entire carb will do nothing.
Ethanol converts moisture in the air to water in the fuel. Many small carburetors no longer have removable jets so it can be very difficult to clean
My mom’s old mower wouldn’t start.
Hers has a little bolt or screw on the bottom of the carb bowl-I think that’s the main jet?
Anyway, I watched YT video where the guy drained the gas tank or you could just pinch off the line.
Then he took the screw off the bowl and ran a real fine wire through all the little holes on it. I used a dressmaking pin on my mom’s mower and after I cleaned that one thing like I saw in the YT video the mower always started on one pull.
But the new ones don’t really have an easy fix like that. I think a lot of the carburetors are sealed. Sometimes adjusting screws are hidden or you have to mickey mouse some kind of tool to turn them if you can even find them.
If you look on YouTube long enough , you can usually find some clever soul that found a way to work around whatever newfangled setup they’ve put on these new mowers.
Just an update because even though this is the garden thread...U have been occasionally telling you about the riots and protests I have been working as a loan enforcement officer.
I am safe and relatively uninjured.
2 nights ago was the last night I worked (until 6 a.m.) the protests and riots.
We had been defending one of our precincts that resides in an area of the city that is overrepresented by leftists, communists, and anarchists as compared to even the liberals who populate the rest of the city.
They have had as their goal to burn down the precinct.
My agency with no doubt support from the Mayor, decoded yesterday that we could no longer safely hold the precinct.
The night before there was a man walking In the crowd with a handgun out, IEDs where used against us that night and the previous night, which although did not contain shrapnel, were more than powerful enough to kill or maim ajd did send officers to the hospital.
That combined with multiple city council members manning the front lines of the protesters created a situation that was not winnable without deaths occurring.
It is never fun to look into the crazy eyes of a city council member 8 feet from you as she points directly at you and refers to you as “racist killer cops” almost immediately afterwards the attacks with glass bottle rocks and other projectiles begins.
One of the Protest leaders directly in front of me as I was on the front line head to sheets of paper with their schedule of events and when they would escalate things.
The precinct is completely boarded up and has now been taken over outside by the antifa anarchist and Communists who have erected their own barricades around the neighborhood and will not allow police officers to enter.
They were calling it the autonomous zone and and appears to be the Communist Trotskite version of red dawn.
Yesterday I was given a administrative rest and recuperation day after 17 consecutive days of working the protests and riots.
I manage to move one of the half yards of soil from my driveway into 1 of my new raised garden beds it is now 3/4 full of soil but I just did not have the energy to haul anymore buckets of dirt up the Hill in my backyard.
I am hoping by this weekend I will get another day off so I can move some plant starts into my garden bed.
Blueberries are looking very good as are most of my tomato plants.
Crushed egg shells in the planting hole. In my experience they don’t get down to the roots as effectively when sprinkled on top of the soil. Could be ground to a powder in a blender, I suppose?
Good grief that was you?
More prayers up for your safety!
They can’t just let this go.
We will lose our beloved country if they do.
:(
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