By Sharon Omahen
University of Georgia
When it comes to growing prizewinning tomatoes, it’s the size of
the fruit, not the plant, that counts.
As summer gardening season heats up, University of Georgia
Cooperative Extension specialists are answering the most common
tomato-growing question: How can my tomato plants be 8 feet tall
and not produce any tomatoes?
“That’s the question I answer the most,” said Bob Westerfield, a
UGA Extension consumer horticulturist with the UGA College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “It’s like I have a
crystal ball. I know right away that the gardener is using liquid
fertilizer.”
Liquid’s hard to calibrate
Westerfield says it’s very easy to give your tomatoes and other
garden vegetables too much of a good thing when you use liquid
fertilizers, like the ever-popular Miracle-Gro. Liquid
fertilizers are hard to calibrate, and they’re absorbed into the
plant very quickly, he said.
“Too much nitrogen will cause the plant to put out incredible
growth but hold back on reproducing,” Westerfield said. “You want
the plant to reproduce, because that’s where the fruit comes
from. Too much fertilizer will also cause the blooms to abort.
And no blooms means no tomatoes.”
The key to growing tomatoes, he said, is to fertilize at planting
and not again until the plant produces dime- to quarter-sized
fruit.
Diseases cause problems, too
The other common tomato problem Westerfield gets questions on is
blossom end rot. “In this case, people call in a panic because
their tomatoes are turning black on the ends,” he said.
Blossom end rot is a sure sign of a moisture or water problem in
your home garden. “Usually it occurs when there’s a lack of water
when the fruit is forming,” he said.
Blossom end rot can also be a sign of low calcium in the plant.
Westerfield recommends treating the plants with dolomitic
limestone and watering plants evenly.
When it comes to diseases and viruses, prevention is the best
cure. The best preventive measures, he said, include planting
disease- and pest-resistant varieties and using sound cultural
practices.
If, despite your best efforts, your tomato plants become
infected, Westerfield’s advice is simple and direct. Pull them up
and get rid of them.
Hands-on research
To make sure he’s ready for each season’s vegetable diseases and
conditions, Westerfield plants a home garden and a work garden.
The home garden provides fresh vegetables for his family. The
work garden is for research and provides fresh vegetables for the
local food pantry.
“My work garden is a kind of trial garden,” he said. “As a UGA
consumer horticulturist, I want to be ready for home gardeners’
questions. I test new varieties, too, in case something pops up
I’m perplexed by.”
Besides tomatoes, he plants the most commonly Georgia-grown
vegetables including green beans, okra, cucumbers, squash,
peppers, corn, pumpkins and potatoes. He also grows winter crops
like broccoli, cabbage, collards and cauliflower and spring crops
like lettuce and carrots.
“A side benefit to my research garden is the produce we donate to
the Five Loaves and Two Fish Pantry near the UGA Griffin campus,”
he said. “Most of the people who get these vegetables are really
needy and don’t have the resources, or the knowledge, to plant a
home garden. Fresh vegetables are welcome treats from the canned
foods they typically get through the pantry.”
UGA Master Gardeners statewide donate a portion of their harvests
to the needy through the Plant-a-Row for the Hungry program.
“Plant-a-row generates thousands of pounds of vegetables that are
donated to pantries across the state,” Westerfield said. “My
garden is just a small piece of this program.”
