Tomato Bug
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Nature's Babe
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- Location: East Sussex
Plum pudding, I think you sare wise, a couple of years ago, i purchased some gogi berrieswhich unknown to me carried blight, I lost all my tomatoes that year, now I try to grow my oewn and save my own seed.
Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconcieved notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
By Thomas Huxley
http://www.wildrye.info/reserve/
By Thomas Huxley
http://www.wildrye.info/reserve/
Hi Plumpudding,
Having reread what I wrote earlier seems quite rudely put and I can assure you that it was not my intention to be rude.
What I was trying, very badly it seems, to suggest you look into why tomato plants are grafted in the first place. The root stocks have been bred to hold resistance to many diseases of the tomato.
Those produced for sale to the general public would be professionally grown and with protection in mind.
Moths are moths and fly at will but the likely hood of an amateur grower getting an attack is probably certainly a little better than a commercial grower but not impossible.
It would appear that attacks are in the south of the country but without some form of eradication programme I am sure they will be with you in a couple of years or sooner. If they get into your area it will not matter where or when or how the plants are raised.
Incidentally my greenhouse and tunnels are protected with anti white fly netting and so far I have only had blight once on tomatoes on an outside crop in over 60 years and that was last year 2008 and nothing in the greenhouse or tunnels. I don't know is the netting actually prevents the blight spores entering. The blighted crop was only 6' from my greenhouse
Pheromone Traps only trap males and those captured are only meant as an indication to give you an indication as the concentration of moths.
In themselves they are by no means any sort of control. Certainly in a greenhouse the yellow sticky cards would be a better solution because you would catch the females as well but even those are very haphazard. Not much good if they catch an exhausted female after she has deposited 300 eggs on you crop 'cos the damage is already done.
JB.
Having reread what I wrote earlier seems quite rudely put and I can assure you that it was not my intention to be rude.
What I was trying, very badly it seems, to suggest you look into why tomato plants are grafted in the first place. The root stocks have been bred to hold resistance to many diseases of the tomato.
Those produced for sale to the general public would be professionally grown and with protection in mind.
Moths are moths and fly at will but the likely hood of an amateur grower getting an attack is probably certainly a little better than a commercial grower but not impossible.
It would appear that attacks are in the south of the country but without some form of eradication programme I am sure they will be with you in a couple of years or sooner. If they get into your area it will not matter where or when or how the plants are raised.
Incidentally my greenhouse and tunnels are protected with anti white fly netting and so far I have only had blight once on tomatoes on an outside crop in over 60 years and that was last year 2008 and nothing in the greenhouse or tunnels. I don't know is the netting actually prevents the blight spores entering. The blighted crop was only 6' from my greenhouse
Pheromone Traps only trap males and those captured are only meant as an indication to give you an indication as the concentration of moths.
In themselves they are by no means any sort of control. Certainly in a greenhouse the yellow sticky cards would be a better solution because you would catch the females as well but even those are very haphazard. Not much good if they catch an exhausted female after she has deposited 300 eggs on you crop 'cos the damage is already done.
JB.
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PLUMPUDDING
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Hi Johnboy, No offence taken, I just wondered what particular point I had missed when reading your reply. Perhaps the divergence in opinion is due to female logic being different from male logic, or then again perhaps we are thinking on the same lines but saying it differently.
Being in the North and not anywhere near the main commercial greenhouse producers should make this area lower risk anyway. As in my other topic about the caterpillars of the Underwing moth making an awful mess of my small plants by hiding in the soil in the day and coming out to eat everything at night, I am going to make sure any cleared areas are thoroughly stripped out, and checking with a torch for three consecutive nights cleared the problem up. So it pays to be vigilant.
Being in the North and not anywhere near the main commercial greenhouse producers should make this area lower risk anyway. As in my other topic about the caterpillars of the Underwing moth making an awful mess of my small plants by hiding in the soil in the day and coming out to eat everything at night, I am going to make sure any cleared areas are thoroughly stripped out, and checking with a torch for three consecutive nights cleared the problem up. So it pays to be vigilant.