‘Not good anywhere’: Experts say tomato plants and yields suffering

Do your tomato plants look like Charlie Brown Christmas trees?

You’re not alone. Garden experts say a wet June has put a hurt on tomato plants across the Midwest, and this year’s yield will suffer.

“I don’t see very many positive things going on with this year’s tomatoes,” said Andrew Holsinger, a University of Illinois Extension horticulture educator. “The environmental conditions are causing so much disease pressure and lack of oxygen to the roots.”

Holsinger said he informally surveyed other Extension educators across Illinois and found similar reports: fruits that are slow to ripe, individual plants that appear deathly and haggard, and blight problems that are “all too common.”

Hybrid-variety plants have generally fared better than heirloom varieties, Holsinger said. But in general, most tomato plants have been hurt by June’s heavy rains as well as July’s cooler-than-normal evenings.

Charles Giedeman, the Belleville News-Democrat’s gardening columnist, said waterlogged soil chokes a tomato plant.

“With the amount of rain that we’ve had, the soil has become waterlogged, and as a result, some of the plants aren’t able to pick up enough nutrition, especially calcium,” Giedeman said.

Plants that have survived could end up being good fruit-bearers, according to Giedeman.

“If the tomato plant has made it to now, and is beginning to harvest, and if we have a regular summer, it could have bumper crops at the end,” he said. “It’s just a matter of if the plant didn’t die from waterlogged roots.”

Giedeman said the weather and soil conditions might result in tomatoes that have “a little bit of a harder skin” and are therefore more susceptible to cracking.

He added there might be one up-side to the weather factors: “There hasn’t been as much trouble in terms of some of the insects that would bother tomato plants — whitefly and the tomato hornworm and that sort of thing. I think that’s one of the things the rain did help control.”

Charles Voigt, a vegetables crop specialist for the Extension Service, said the weather has caused a “perfect storm” to damage tomato plants.

“My personal tomato plants sat in water for like three weeks, then went backward for a while, then just gave up,” Voigt said. “When the dew point gets up to 80, that humidity is just perfect for all kinds of diseases to just take over.”

The tomato outlook is bad across the Midwest, according to Voigt.

“It’s pretty much Wisconsin to Tennessee, and Illinois. It’s not good anywhere that I’m aware of,” he said.

Plants that are in raised beds or sandy, well-drained soil might have a better chance than others.

“If the plant is in a position where the water isn’t such an issue, and it’s getting good air circulation, and we start to see warmer temperatures, it might do OK,” Voigt said. “But I’ve just seen so many of them with problems.”

Other vegetables are suffering, too.

“Normally, Illinois sweet corn is starting to come on the market, but most of the places are still selling corn from Florida and Georgia,” Voigt said. “The produce situation is not ideal this summer in Illinois. It’s just been a continual monsoon the past couple of months.”

However, at Belleville Farmers Market, a fruit and vegetable stand on North Belt West, owner Dan Schwendeman said his grower has been able to provide good numbers of nice tomatoes.

“It’s a pretty good crop. It’s a little too early to tell, because he’s just starting to pick tomatoes, but he’s coming up with enough tomatoes for us right now,” Schwendeman said.

Schwendeman declined to give the identity of his grower.

“This guy grows tomatoes down in the bottoms where the soil’s really sandy,” Schwendeman said. “This guy’s been growing tomatoes for us probably for 20 years. This is what he does for a living — he’s not a backyard guy. So far, what we’re getting from him is good.”

This story was originally published July 17, 2015 at 12:54 PM with the headline "‘Not good anywhere’: Experts say tomato plants and yields suffering."