Author: chogan@directresearch.com

Post G22-043: Rephrasing “tomatoes don’t ripen in the heat”.

 

This post is my best explanation of “tomatoes don’t ripen if it’s too hot out”.

Why does that need an explanation?  Because I’m still getting a few ripening tomatoes, despite the heat.

After some close observation, I think the correct statement is “tomatoes won’t start the ripening process if it’s too hot out”.   Once they’ve started the ripening process — passed beyond the “mature green” stage to “breakers” (see chart below) –I think they continue to ripen, heat or no heat.

The upshot is that you don’t get a nice, sharp cutoff of tomato production, contemporaneous with a string of hot days and nights.  You get a dip in tomato production some days later, as the ones that have already started ripening continue.  But the ones that haven’t made it to the “breakers” stage get stuck at “mature green”.

At least, that’s my best guess for what I’ve been observing in my garden this year.

(Completely separately, tomatoes won’t set fruit under excessive daytime heat.  See Post G24-021, on tomato blossom drop and heat.  Both of these effects — blossom drop and non-ripening — depend somewhat on the variety of tomato being grown, with some tomatoes (e.g., Floradade) having been bred to perform somewhat better in high heat.)

Continue reading Post G22-043: Rephrasing “tomatoes don’t ripen in the heat”.

Post G22-041: Tomato non-ripening, will it be deja vu all over again?

 

In the middle of July 2020, we (Northern Virginia, Zone 7) had a prolonged period during which tomatoes would not ripen.  That attracted a lot of attention, locally, because most of us had never experienced that.  Questions were posed on our local plant-swap group, and the answer came back that it had been too hot for green tomatoes to ripen. Continue reading Post G22-041: Tomato non-ripening, will it be deja vu all over again?

G22-039: Powdery mildew products, Amazon search, and a change of plan.

 

To cut to the chase:  Copper versus citric acid.  That’s what I’m going to test this year, for control of powdery mildew on cucurbits.

This post shows how I got to this end point, from my original plan of a formal test of several “home remedy” approaches to controlling powdery mildew.

Using citric acid to control powdery mildew was news to me.  There are, however, at least two commercially-available mildew-control products that are little more than a dilute solution of citric acid.  Roughly one-twentieth the strength of typical commercial lemonade.  So that’s surely worth testing. Continue reading G22-039: Powdery mildew products, Amazon search, and a change of plan.