I don't know exactly *what* is wrong with my tomato plants (Better Boy &
German Johnson, which was not my choice!) -- but the fruit is rotting on
the vine. Some of the rotten ones show no obvius signs of insect damage,
nor did they split from sudden rainfall.

On a side note, I was about to pick off & discard one of the rotters that's
been gnawed on, but I decided to leave it to the swallowtail butterfly who
was working on it.

Cukes have been prolific; unfortunately, it's Straight 8 (I think), so it
has a ton of seeds, no matter how soon I pick it.

Bell peppers are finally coming along, and I'm knee-deep in banana peppers,
which are hot!!! They look just like the ones we grew in the past that were
supposed to be hot, but weren't -- 'tis a puzzlement.

Yellow squash seem to have stopped producing, but I don't think it's borers,
as there are no fruit forming.

Anne Lurie
NE Raleigh




"Siouxzi" wrote in message
...
Sigh... last year we had a wilt problem, but this year it's horrible.
We got a fair crop of nice tomatoes, but there are still a lot of
fruit on the vines, and most of the plants have gone completely brown
and wilted... or nearly so.

I've planted a lot of different heritage varieties and a few
commercial ones. The Lemon Boys are most prolific, but they've
succumbed also. Hardly got any brandywines. :^(

1) What shall we do next year? Will the wilt virus be even more
plentiful in our garden soil, and attack all our plants even more
effectively?
Would it help to cover both raised beds with black plastic?--can you
kill the pathogen with heat?

I'm ready to try anything--I can't bear the thought of no or few
tomatoes next year. We've finally got a scaffolding system that works
fairly well, and an idea of how many plants we can handle... I'd like
next season to be the best yet!

2) Also, most of the tomatoes have holes pecked or bored in
them--usually one hole per tomato. What's up with that? I don't recall
this being a big problem last year... is it birds? It has ruined so
many fruits--they get damaged before they're ripe, and usually rot
sets in so that it's mush by the time it's ripe enough to pick...

Our cucumbers suck big time. I don't remember the variety, I think
that they were advertised as "burpless" (like I care!). But the grow
fat and round with thick skins and prickles, they taste bitter when
they're small and green, but then they rapidly turn bloated and
yellow, and with huge unpalatable seeds.

3) Can't we grow those nice long, crunchy British seedless cukes? If
so, how?

Thanks, and hope your garden is looking better than ours. We are
hardly getting any peppers either. Something's going on... but we are
getting tons of those little tiny sweet tomatillos--I love them. And
our fig tree has really taken off this year--looking forward to ripe
fruit in a few weeks!

Sue