Are your tomatoes spotty? Are the leaves a lovely shade of purple or yellow, or are they twisted or covered in white powder? Or perhaps the ends of the fruits are rotten or the plant itself just died suddenly? Find out what your tomato plants are telling you.
Join Jenny Glass, a Washington State University plant diagnostician, for the Master Gardener Green Thumb presentation “Tips for Diagnosing Tomato Plant Problems (to Set You on Your Way Towards Solving — or Better Yet — Avoiding Solanaceous Crop Problems),” from noon-1 p.m. Thursday, June 9, on Zoom.
Glass will talk about how to spot tomato diseases quickly so you can keep plants happy and healthy. She will also discuss how to prevent diseases by choosing the correct tomato varieties; using appropriate soil and the importance of soil drainage; proper watering and fertilization techniques; and the necessary sanitation methods needed to keep your tomatoes in tip-top shape, no matter if you grow a few tomatoes in your back yard or many tomatoes in a hoop house.
Join by computer at a link at extension.wsu.edu/clallam/master-gardener-calendar. Or, join by phone at 253-215-8782 (meeting ID 920 0799 1742, passcode 709395).
For the past two decades, Glass has been a diagnostician at the WSU Puyallup Plant & Insect Diagnostic Lab and has an interesting history with tomatoes and other solanaceous plants.
As a child in Poulsbo, hairy nightshade was her favorite weed to remove in her vegetable garden because it was fuzzy to touch. Later as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa in the mid-1990s, she distributed tomato seeds in her efforts to support the work of women farmers only to find that the cultivar she had been able to purchase was unfortunately highly susceptible to infection leading to poor crop performance.
In her master’s degree work at Oregon State University, she worked with phytophthora infestans, the pathogen associated with late blight of potato and tomato, and almost lost her first-year research efforts as she forgot that the pathogen, she was using for research was rapidly aggressive so planning a vacation right after field inoculation was a poor idea.
And after a lifetime of having to explain that eating fresh tomatoes wasn’t really her thing, she discovered the culinary joy of roasted tomatoes and has never looked back on trying to plant enough plants (Juliet is one of her favorites for Pacific Northwest gardens) for the salads, soups and stews she failed to partake of in years past.
Sponsored by WSU Clallam County Master Gardeners, the Green Thumbs Garden Tips education series seeks to provide home gardeners with education on research-based sustainable garden practices in Clallam County.
Scheduled presentations are subject to change. Visit the WSU Extension Clallam County website calendar (extension.wsu.edu/clallam) for the latest information on upcoming presentations.
For more information, call 360-565-2679.
