In article ,
Dan Musicant wrote:

Year after year I've been growing 6 Early Girl tomatoes in a patch
surrounded by concrete, the patch being 11 feet by 25 inches. I usually
get terrific results. I dig out the soil about 2 feet down (in late
March if I try to dig deeper I just reach standing water) and mix about
1/4 compost with 3/4 soil back into the ditch and plant the seedlings.

Are you near the Berkeley hills? We had late rains in May/June and the
water table may still be up, in which case, you may be getting root rot.
I'd take a post hole digger, and dig down 3', or so, to try to find
where the water table is now. At 4 ft. in height, the tomato will have
found it by now. My suggestion would be to stop watering your plants,
and give them a foliar feeding of potassium/phosphate (for general
health, and supporting root growth).

The symptoms don't seem to match any deficiencies that I'm aware of, so
I'm left with the water as the culprit.

This year the proportion of compost was even greater. I make my own
compost from whatever cast off yard waste I have or can find, and had a
LOT this year. However, the plants are not doing very well. I've seen
this sort of thing a time or two in the past, but not so pronounced as
this year. When the plants were about 2-3 feet tall, the growing tips
and leafy stems started twisting considerably and they seemed kind of
stunted and were perhaps a darker green than usual. Now, the plants are
a good 4-5 feet tall and they still seem darker green than usual, the
leaves are mostly kind of smallish, the stems not very long. Usually the
plants are taller by now. Also, the lower leaves are dieing (turning
yellow) somewhat sooner than usual. The fruit bearing seems markedly
diminished. Yes, the spring here in the S.F. Bay Area was more wintery,
wet and cold than usual, but I am very doubtful that this accounts for
how badly the plants are doing now and before summer started.

The only thing I can think to do (I'm watering about the same as usual)
is to test the PH of the soil. I went to Orchard Supply Hardware and
checked out their PH testing systems (all by Luster Leaf, "Rapidtest",
the 3 prong 4-in-1 #1818 (which tests PH, water content, nutritional
aspects of the soil and light), the two prong #1817 (PH and water) and
the #1815 single prong (PH only), but didn't purchase yet. Is poor PH a
likely or possible cause/concern? What do you think?

Dan


Email: dmusicant at pacbell dot net
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