Having a vegetable garden also means that you will need to be on top of the situation – when it comes to checking and ensuring that your vegetables are disease free. It is an ongoing process to keep the fruits of your labor free from potential threats. Here are a few tips you can use.

With any type of gardening, it all begins with good soil preparation and choosing the right seeds. Also try to select the healthiest looking plants when transplanting. Immediate removal of diseased plants will protect your other vegetables as well.

Proper watering practices will help as well. You should give the plants moisture early to allow them time to dry before the sun sets. Careful watering can benefit your plants in a number of ways. If a plant is diseased, and water splashes from it to another plant, it could spread that disease. Think about how a cold is spread from a sneezing person to someone else. Spacing your plants properly should help reduce this possibility.

Viruses can be spread from plant to plant in many ways. Some are spread by insects, so controlling them will aid you in disease control. Other animals, as well as humans can spread harmful diseases among your plants as well. An example of this is tobacco mosaic virus, which can be spread by a gardener’s gloves or possibly on the legs of animals that walk through your garden.

Maintaining a tight check on weeds will help to lower the chances of diseases. This improves the health, as well as the beauty of your garden. Many organisms can move to your vegetables from the weeds they are so fond of. They are also transferable via other medium such as air, water and living organisms like bugs.

Knowing which diseases to look for on certain plants will give you a head start.

Lettuce mold will show up as a rotted wet spot at the base when the edges are touching the ground. The white mold is called Sclerotinia, and the gray is Botrytis. Remove the affected areas, or if it’s too bad, take out the entire plant.

Lettuce is also prone to the spinach mosaic virus. It will start with mottled looking leaves that, later, turn yellow. It begins to look limp and will droop. Some varieties are more resistant to this disease than others, so keep that in mind.

Wilting or rotting of asparagus may be caused by something called Fusarium. The shoots will begin to turn yellow and the spears will be spindly. Discolored and rotted roots may also show up. Remove the affected plants as necessary. The Puccinia fungus will cause another problem with asparagus called rust. Red spots on the shoots and spears will indicate this problem. Excess watering is sometimes the cause of this.

Tomatoes are commonly susceptible to blight and leaf spots, as well as others. Especially in cool summers, these diseases will usually show up by mid August. Certain soil fungi are common to only tomatoes. The roots of walnut trees sometimes carry a toxin that is potentially dangerous to nearby tomatoes. Making sure the leaves are dry before nightfall will help reduce this.

Knowing what to look for and how to avoid it will help you produce large and healthy crops.

Tomato gardening is just about the favorite type of vegetable gardening going. Almost anyone will enjoy fresh tomatoes. But many are without access to a garden, so in order to get those fresh tomatoes they need to try something a little non traditional. The most popular is a hanging tomato planter. Let’s look at the advantages.
If you live in an apartment or townhouse, and still want to enjoy fresh tomatoes, probably the easiest way is to use a hanging tomato planter. Hanging planters can be put on a porch, or a balcony, or even a patio. They make it easy to get to your tomatoes even if you have a vegetable garden. And it’s become increasingly popular over the last several years to grow tomatoes upside down, which has a lot of the same advantages as the traditionally hanging planter. Let’s look a the pros and cons of using growing tomatoes in a hanging planter.
No Staking – The tomatoes are hanging from the planter, you have no need to stake them, or bother with any other types of support other than the planter hanger. For some indeterminate types of tomatoes, you may find you need to trim them to keep them off the ground, but no stakes. This is a real advantage, and it makes getting to the tomatoes that much simpler when they are hanging free in the air and not lying hidden on the ground.
Soil Borne Pests – With the tomato plants hanging in the air, you have almost no problems with slugs and other soil borne pests.
Soil Borne Disease – In a planter the soil is replaced often, often with a soilless mix, so problems with diseases carried over in the soil are eliminated. One other source of problems with disease is that normally it’s common that the water splashes the soil up on the leaves of the plant when you water and the disease gets to the plant this way. With the bulk of the plant hanging down from the planter the possibility of water splashing up is largely removed.
Improved Air Circulation – Since the tomato plants are suspended in the air, you get a lot better air circulation. This results in improved pollination, fewer disease problems and higher yields.
Weeds – Basically, with fresh soil and a small surface, weeds are pretty much eliminated. In addition, for an upside down planter the surface where the weeds would grow is opposite the surface the tomato plant sticks out of.
Location – The beauty of container gardening is that you can do it almost everywhere, like the porch, patio, or apartment balcony. It’s great to have your tomatoes right outside the kitchen door even if you have a vegetable garden out in the back yard.
There are a few potential problems with hanging tomato planters. You want to make sure you are using the right varieties of tomatoes for the planter size you are using. They can be a little heavy, so there are some tips for filling them. In addition, some things like watering need special attention…

Tomato is one of the most popular and widely used vegetables in the world. Tomato plants can grow on every ground that has a good structure and water housekeeping. In terms of mass production, tomato yields is highly seasonal. Farmers and gardeners seldom plant tomatoes during rainy season due to high risks exposure on garden flooding and prevalence of pests and tomato plants diseases.

Tomato plants may suffer blooms that keep falling off without production of fruit could be caused by Blossom End Rot, a Fruit Rot – A mold growing inside tomatoes as they ripen but outside the tomatoes are healthy, or Early Blight – Leaves that curl up, turn a yellowish brown color and almost look like black spot found on rose bushes.Early blight is a fungus. Dark brown to black spots on the leafs with concentric rings, usually starting on the lower leaves. Leaves can turn yellow and drop off the plant.

Various research groups around the glove in the plant industry have conducted a painstaking research, and studied on how to improve tomato production especially during off-season. In the Philippines, researchers at the Bureau of Plant Industry in Los Banos National Crop Research and Development, a research laboratory based in Los Banos Laguna, have discovered a

new technology for tomato off-season production. This new tomato off-season production technology is now being commercialized in the region.

Tomato growers, farmers and gardeners who wants to earn more from tomato harvested during rainy season, may find this technology beneficial. Even the hobbyist gardeners may find this tomato off-season production technology, enjoyable, as they continuously plant tomatoes in pots, boxes, or any available containers, for easy and accessible fresh tomato yields during

mealtime.

Grafting tomato on eggplant rootstock is one way of eliminating bacterial wilt, which is a very destructive disease of tomato. Research showed that grafted tomatoes in the eggplant rootstock yielded a 21% higher than the ordinary tomato seedlings. The grafting process is simple. Sow seeds of eggplant for rootstock 5-7 days ahead of tomatoes. Graft when eggplant is 3-4 weeks old. Cut the stock and scion ( the same size ) with a sterilized blade at 70-80 degree angles above the first two leaves (the cotyledon). Insert rubber tubing, 10mm long and 1-1.5 cm diameter on the stock allowing the cut portion of the scion or splice to get in touch with each other. Set the grafter plants inside the humidity chamber and transfer seedlings in a cool dry place with complete black net cover for 4-7 days. The seedlings are then ready for transplanting.

The eggplant variety used for rootstock is EG-203 which known and identified to be very highly resistant to bacterial wilt and other soil-borne tomato plant disease organisms.

The tomato variety for scion must be an indeterminate type wherein trellis must be provided for favorable vegetable development.

Try this tomato off-season production technology and enjoy a fruitful tomatoes growing on eggplant rootstock.