gardening ups and downs
June 29th, 2009 nickThe prize of our garden, a large and leafy and dark green Paul Robeson tomato plant, succumbed to some kind of wilt this past week. We came back last Sunday and it was looking droopy. Thinking it might be a lack of water, we gave it a good soaking. The wilt continued and spread throughout the plant. By Wednesday, we knew it was a goner. We salvaged the five or six good-size fruits that were already set (fried green tomatoes, anyone?) and chopped it down on Saturday, cutting out losses and making way for a few new pepper plants (Portugal hots, chocolate, and Klari cheese) in the big container.
The sadness of losing “Paul” as we’d taken to calling him, was offset slightly by the resurgence of the oxalis plant in the home office. I had given up hope for this little guy, seeing as he’d been in dormancy for over 6 months. But Kip advised me to keep my hopes alive and I kept up the occasional waterings, just in case. Sure enough, on one of those hot summery days last week, out came three shoots (at the same time, but from different rooted lobes?).
We suspect a bacterial wilt although we didn’t observe any of the milky whitish seepage from the cut stems. A few photos (below) show the pith having turned brown — looks like the water just couldn’t make it out to the leaves. Two of our other tomato plants look like they might have Fusarium wilt, but, as recommended by Cheryl at Mill Valley, I sprayed lightly with a rubbing alcohol/water (1:3 ratio) mix. Hopefully that will slow down any more evil-doers out to sabotage our tomato crop.
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| By the end of the week, the entire plant looked like the branch on the left. | A cross-section of the main stem. |
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| The stem was brown all the way through. |
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| The new oxalis shoots. |