tomato problems

We moved to our current home in the middle of summer...probably not too late to plant certain things, but late enough that I decided to wait until 2011 to get the garden going. I did however bring one tomato plant from Oregon. This well-traveled tomato plant made it through the 2300 mile car trip and after initially doing poorly, ended up producing quite a few tomatoes. However, we had quite a few problems with it that I wanted to document so that next year I might avoid them.

First, we bought the seedling from a vendor who had several varieties of heirlooms, someone we had not patroned before. I was told this was a green zebra, but these tomatoes are just typical red tomatoes. They look like they could be heirlooms but I'm not certain. Lesson: be careful who you buy from!

Second, there was a pile of dirt in the corner of our yard that I used to pot the tomato plant for the long journey. My spouse told me it was compost, and I know little about compost so I thought 'great' and potted away. However, it didn't look like healthy soil to me. Since then I have learned that even it if was compost at one time, having sat in our yard for 5 years without new organic materials added...well, it was probably not high quality at the least and it was out in the open, making it likely to carry diseases like...

Third, blight. My tomatoes were so healthy last year that I had no idea what this was when I first saw it, but I found a list of common tomato problems and did a quick google image search for each one. And it was blight. I stuck the plant straight from its pot into the ground, so the soil was not amended with good nutrition. Not sure if this would have made a difference, but healthy plants are less likely to get disease. I'm not sure if this affected the quality of the tomatoes. The few that we ate were not very tasty. The others were eaten by...

Fourth, bugs and worms. Again, had no problems with these last year. Currently the leaves are covered in dead soil gnats. Supposedly the adults are not harmful but I need to figure what I should do to make sure that the larvae do not stick around. Luckily the planned spot for the garden is far away from where the lone tomato was planted, but I do not want to take chances. I did not see many other bugs, just a single stink bug, but something was eating the tomatoes from the inside. There were several worm holes. After the earliest tomato was eaten before fully ripening on the vine, I picked others when they began to show the slightest bit of red and then bring inside to finish ripening on the sunny windowsill, protected from insect invaders. But these seemed to get eaten from the inside out. I should have taken a picture, but I did not. Another weird-looking problem that I'm guessing was a bug or worm is that as they were starting to ripen, the formally smooth skin would be replaced by this weird spider web crack. Anyway, as an organic gardener I'm happy that bugs and worms want to eat my vegetables, but I'm only willing to tolerate so much.

The fifth problem was bees. I'm not totally sure this is a problem - it could have just been that the stress I imposed on the tomato plant delayed its productivity - but I want to watch out for it next year. Most of the blossoms would die and fall off rather than resulting in a tomato fruit. I don't remember this being a problem last year - I remember every single blossom being a fruit. But maybe I didn't watch it as carefully. Anyway, like everyone else I've been hearing that bees are getting scarcer, and living in a residential neighborhood with a few kids around there's always the chance that nervous parents are trying to get rid of them. (My thoughts on that are another blog post for another day.) I know a few others who garden so I will ask them if they've had any problems with pollination, but I plan on planting clover or some other plant that attracts bees close to the garden.