How to grow tomatoes – 4

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Beyond lettuce, bread and mayonnaise, there are many other things that tomatoes go well with. Thus we come to the concept of companion planting.

Known positive companions:

Companion planting is a somewhat murky area of horticulture. Sometimes a plant will be carried as a positive companion on one list, and shown as a negative companion on another. Then, too, varying levels of expertise come into play. It’s a mess … but ‘something’ is going on out there in the garden. Tomatoes planted alongside young dill do better than tomatoes planted further away from the dill. But, as the dill matures, the advantage transfers over to the tomatoes planted AWAY from the dill.

This is a short list of plants generally considered to benefit the tomatoes in one fashion or another. Books can be, have been, and will yet be written on this topic.

Positives: Onion, Chives, Garlic, Cabbage, Carrots, Celery, Mint, Asparagus, Basil, Bush Beans, Cucumber, Head Lettuce, Marigold, Nasturtium, Parsley, Hot Peppers, Pot Marigold, Sow Thistle, Bee Balm, Borage, Young Dill, Horehound, Pea, Petunia, Sage

Known negative companions:

Corn (shares a pest), Fennel (shares a pest?), Potato (shares blight diseases), Kohlrabi (pest?). Cabbage and cauliflower are sometimes mentioned as being both good and bad. Mature dill weed (solution: cut the dill while still young and full of natural dill oils).

Disease resistance: Tomatoes have often been bred for disease resistance to various pathogens. Such resistance may be noted on a seed packet, a plant tag or in a catalog description using the following codes:

• A – Alternaria leaf spot
• F – Fusarium wilt
• FF – Race 1 & Race 2 Fusarium
• L – Septoria leaf spot
• N – Nematodes
• St – Stemphylium Gray Leaf Spot
• T – Tobacco mosaic virus
• V – Verticulum wilt

Disease vulnerabilities:

Molds & fungi during times of cool, damp weather love tomatoes. Treat with spray of compost tea as a preventative or commercially available copper-based fungicide. Avoid Bordeaux mixture due to the general toxicity and potential for accidental ingestion. Even with varieties rated as resistant to Tobacco Mosaic virus, always wash your hands after smoking and before entering the garden. Do NOT smoke in the garden as nearly all tobacco is contaminated with the virus.

Corn meal, worked into the soil at the rate of 10-20# per 1,000 sq. ft. is a good anti-fungal and, after looking at perhaps 100 web sites (including a couple from universities) it now appears that it is effective against many varieties of Pythium, Sclerotinia, Sclerotium, Rhizoctonia, Fusarium,  and Phytophthora. While not a panacea (other fungi can also cause problems with tomatoes), it is both a good general antifungal and a good (10% N) slow-release fertilizer that is well-liked by earthworms.

Blossom End Rot (BER)

BER is often seen as a disease. It is not: it is a mineral deficiency, just as rickets in humans is a vitamin deficiency and not a disease. This hard black area on the blossom end (and ONLY on the blossom end) of the tomato renders it unfit for market.

BER is caused by the inability of the tomato to move calcium from the soil to the fruit. This is caused by a) insufficient moisture in the soil to make the calcium available to the plant, b) insufficient calcium (rarley the case) or c) insufficient magnesium in the soil. The ‘fixes’ for these conditions are to a) keep the soil uniformly moist b) add calcium as either ground egg shell, ground oyster shell or food supplement tablets and c) add a light sprinkling of Epsom salts to the soil by working it in to the top couple of inches of soil. Fruits already showing BER should be removed from the plant. They can be used by cutting around the black part, but there is no cure that will make them ripen properly.

Any mineral that a plant needs can contribute to a deficiency but BER is a frequent offender with an easy solution … just keep the soil moist enough and the fairly complicated chemistry that needs to occur will, in fact, occur. Moreover, since uninterrupted growth yields the healthiest, most productive plants, you should be taking care of this any way. BER is a slap on the wrist telling you that you are letting the soil get too dry between waterings.