# hoping for lots of tomatoes



## chuckwood (Jun 30, 2014)

Growing tomatoes has always been a problem because my soil is infested with fungus's. I never get them tied up and pruned in time. The leaves contact the soil and then the fungus travels up the plant and kills it. This year is different. I've got a heavy layer of straw mulch on top of a thin base of spread out newspapers. I pruned the plants quite a bit and have them in cages now. Half of them I'll spray with Daconil fungicide, which I hate to do. The other half will get the safer copper fungicides. I'm hoping for an end to the fungus amongus, with plenty of tomatoes to can and give away. 

We've had plenty of rain here in TN, and I'll have a whopper corn and pole bean crop this year. I routinely plant pole beans in the corn, works great and I get many bushels of beans.


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## Rudedog (Jun 30, 2014)

I have never had that problem. Ignorance is bliss. I did that gardening by the square foot that was on a thread a couple of years ago. I use Alaska 5-1-1 Fish Fertilizer with good results. HD carries it. I have also gotten into the habit of pinching all leaves/stems that are lower than 6" to avoid mold and fungus.


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## Ash_403 (Jul 1, 2014)

Looks good. Best of luck on the tomato crop this year using your new method.
Though I typically don't have any fungus problems, I did squish my first tomato hornworm of the year. I'll have to be on the lookout for them from here on now.

You remind me that I need to clip/pinch the lower leaves off of my plants... again. I'll do that after work. And I'll have to check for unwanted suckers too (sprouts).

Best of luck with the garden.


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