2025 thoughts

 2025 has been a weird year.  Including for my gardening.

I sowed about 20 varieties but got a late start, and due to communication errors on my part with my farm rental plot landlords I planted late too.  Did not sow indoors till March 25.  Did not get plants in the farm plot ground till almost May.   I planted about 20 plants at the farm, had 4 in buckets in backyard, and I put a half dozen extra plants in my backyard garden last, and did almost nothing to care for them.

This was way too late - should have been in ground before April 15.  Why does this matter?  For a few reasons .  1. the plants didn't have time to establish well before the warm weather really set in, and a lot of the plants looked fine for the first few weeks, but were hammered by wilt before they got nice and big.  I think having a better root establishment early would have helped.  2.  Consistent rain made for nice plant growth but prob contributed to fungal growth too.  3.  I spread wood chip mulch around the plant becasue it was free there, but I read later that that can spread fungus sometimes.  4.  Fruit set was a couple weeks late.

But mainly the wilt was terrible.  By July, about half the plants at the farm were dying off and were so stunted that they were done for.  They did not make enough leaf growth to shelter the fruit, so the fruit that they tried to make were few, sunscalded, and small.  Then, the heat came in July, and fruit set stopped.  By the third week in July - which is usually the peak of production - it was pathetic.   I'm not sure I picked more tomatoes than the number of plants!  

Some things to fight wilt next year:  1.  Put more anti-fungal in the mix when transplanting to larger pots.  2.  Maybe the cowpots I use are vectors for fungus or bateria that cause wilt.  Hard to know,  I do know that after a few weeks they start to grow colonies of bacteria on the outside - pinkish looking colonies.  Try different pots?  3.  Try adding a beneficial bacteria to the mix.  I did this once before.  4.  Don't use wood chip mulch.  5.  Start everything earlier so plants have time to grow bigger before they get stressed by more heat.