Any experienced gardener will tell you that you need to start working with tomatoes from the very beginning, that is, from seeds. If you prepare them properly, half the work is already done for a good harvest. Then you need to learn what tomato diseases are common in greenhouses, see photos of them, and learn treatments. Then, with a thorough understanding of the enemy, you can fight it effectively.
Take a look: Miracle tomatoes from Russian gardens: reviews.
Seed preparation
In the fight against future diseases, this is the main trump card, because properly prepared seeds are more resistant, and the plants will be easier to grow.
- Sort the seeds, choosing the strongest, smoothest, and neatest ones. (You can soak them in salt water; discard the empty seeds that float to the surface, but keep the heavier, better-quality ones that sink to the bottom.)
- Treat with potassium permanganate. Dilute the potassium permanganate until the solution is dark, like a ripe cherry, and soak the seeds in it for 15 minutes. You can use cheesecloth for this; it's easier to rinse the seeds without having to fish them out. This will disinfect the seeds and increase germination.
- Soak the seeds in an ash solution. This nutritious mixture (wood ash is rich in minerals) will infuse the seeds with nutrients, making them even stronger. Simply add 0.5 liters of ash to half a liter of water, mix, and soak the seeds in it for about ten hours (you can also use cheesecloth).
- Take it out and put it in clean warm water for another day.
- Harden the seeds by rinsing them and placing them on a saucer in the refrigerator for two days. Spray them with water as they dry out. Now the seeds are ready to plant. Now they'll be less susceptible to disease, making them easier to care for.
Leaf mold
In polycarbonate greenhouses, tomatoes are often attacked by leaf mold. Brown spots appear on the undersides of the leaves, which then develop a grayish coating, causing the leaves to dry out, and the plant may die.
How to treatImmediately reduce greenhouse humidity and reduce watering. Preventative measures include treating seedlings with copper oxychloride or Oxychom solution, using Zaslon, and disinfecting the greenhouse with copper sulfate after harvest.
You might be interested in: planting cucumbers in 5-liter bottles.
Phytophthora
Yes, this nasty, widespread disease does not spare greenhouse dwellers either, and can destroy the entire crop.
Signs: Brown spots have started to appear on the stems and leaves. If you look under the leaves, you'll see a whitish coating from fungal spores, and brown spots are appearing on the fruits.
How to treatThe key to fighting late blight is timely prevention. Three weeks after planting, treat the seedlings with "Zaslon," three weeks after that, with "Barrier," and during flowering, with a garlic infusion—and your tomatoes will be immune to this dangerous disease.
Macrosporiosis
This disease is also called dry spot and is characterized by the appearance of round brown spots, leaf death and a black velvety coating.
Treatment: as for late blight.
Gray rot
When damp, cold weather sets in, tomato fruits can be affected by gray mold. Round spots oozing a brown liquid appear on the tomatoes, followed by a grayish mold covering the stems and leaves.
Control measures: infected individuals are removed, the remaining plants are sprayed with Fundazol or Barrier.
Blossom end rot
If you see sunken spots on still-green tomatoes that emit a putrid odor, this is blossom-end rot, which could have arisen due to an excess of nitrogen in the soil and a lack of calcium and moisture.
How to treat: destroy affected fruits, treat bushes with calcium nitrate at the rate of 1 spoon per ten-liter bucket of water.
Brown rot (phoma)
A spot appears at the base of the fruit and the green tomatoes fall off.
How to treat: disinfect the soil, remove affected fruits, reduce humidity in the greenhouse, and avoid fertilizing with manure.
Mosaic
This dangerous disease, caused by viruses, can ruin greenhouse crops. Leaves lose shape, change color, develop green-yellow spots, wrinkle and curl, and the bushes may dry out.
Prevention and control measures: treating seeds in potassium permanganate, watering seedlings with a potassium permanganate solution every 18-20 days three times a day, or with skim milk with urea (10 liters of water/1 liter of milk/1 teaspoon of urea) helps.
Root rot
Since this disease causes the root collar to rot, the bushes begin to wither.
How to fight: the diseased soil layer is replaced with a new one, the soil is disinfected with copper sulfate, and treated with "Zaslon".
Tomato pests
Wireworm They can also plague tomatoes in greenhouses, as well as those grown outdoors. Yellow caterpillars damage the stems and roots of plants.
How to combat: An interesting folk remedy involves threading vegetable scraps onto sticks and burying them in the soil, leaving the ends of the sticks exposed. Wireworms then crawl onto the vegetables. The sticks are then pulled out, along with the wireworm, after a few days and burned. Liming the soil also helps.
Whitefly — a frequent visitor to greenhouses, sucking the juices from leaves. It is resistant to Fosbecid, Citcor, and the drug "Strela." As a preventative measure, remove weeds.
Interesting information: growwise-en.techinfus.com for seniors.
Fertilizing tomatoes with salt
How to fertilize vegetable seedlings with regular iodine
When and how to sow tomato seedlings in March 2024 – simple and accessible for beginners
Catalog of black tomato varieties
Olga
For several years in a row, I couldn't get a good tomato harvest; each year, the crop was struck by late blight. Even picking the tomatoes early (unripe, green ones) didn't help; they still turned black!
This year, before planting, I treated the soil with a potassium permanganate solution. During the growing season, I tried to get rid of excess vegetation, removing side shoots and excess foliage around the fruit.
I tried to water the tomatoes generously, but no more than twice a week.
During the flowering period, I treated all the tomato plants with Fitosporin-M. This product is inexpensive but effective! The harvest was exceptional!
Maria
This year's tomatoes were terrible, almost everything was lost, only the little ones that sprouted on their own, the self-seeded ones from last year, survived. I'll try treating them with potassium permanganate and phytosporin, as you suggested, maybe it will help.
Nadya
When I first built a 6-meter greenhouse at home, I planted it entirely with tomatoes, but now I cut back every year. I only plant a third of the space to tomatoes, and the rest is taken up by cucumbers, peppers, watermelons, and melons—all in one greenhouse, even without partitions, and everything grows beautifully, and the tomatoes don't even get sick. I always have a ton of tomatoes; I make tomato paste and tomato juice from them, and I pickle the very small ones of a special variety. I always plant different varieties in the same spot; even cherry tomatoes grow abundantly, but I only plant a few plants. So a greenhouse is a great thing; you won't run out of fruit.