 Hello, everyone. My name is Julie Garden Robinson, and I'm your host for today's eighth field to fork webinar. So we have three more left for the season. This series is brought to you by North Dakota State University Extension. And if you missed any of the previous webinars, they are archived on the field to fork website. And if you forget what that is, just Google NDSU extension field to fork. So we have done this for eight years, and we're really glad you're all here today. And I see many people are already posting where you're from, and it's great to see that you're from lots of different states. It's a very snowy day in North Dakota, but nice and warm where we are. The next slide shows the upcoming webinars, and we hope you join us for these as well. And the following slide shows the webinar controls. Because we have a lot of you today participating, we invite you to post your questions and comments in the chat, exactly where many of you are posting where you're from. So please ignore the Q&A box. We're not going to use that. And I would like you to put any questions that you have for Esther in the chat box, and then I will pose those questions at the end of her talk. The next slide provides an acknowledgement. I have a special request, and I want to thank all of you who have filled out the survey in the past. But this program is sponsored in part with grant funding from USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, and I will ask all of you to complete a short online survey that will come to your inbox right after today's webinar. And as a thank you, we have been sending out prizes to lots of lucky winners every week. So if you haven't won a prize, you can still win a prize. And if you've already won a prize, you're still in the drawing. We have lots of different prizes. So be sure to add your complete address on the follow-up form, including your city, state, and zip code. We won't use that information for any other purpose, but if we don't have that information, there's no way we can send you the prize. Next, we have our NDSU policy for non-discrimination. And again, welcome to today's webinar. I'm very pleased to introduce you to today's speaker. Esther McGinnis is an Extension Horticulturist, Director of the NDSU Extension Master Gardener Program and Associate Professor within the Department of Plant Sciences. She and her graduate students, research, pollinator attraction, plants that can take cyclical, saturation, and drought, and also native plants. So thank you, Esther, and it's all yours. Thank you, Julie. Thank you for including me in this series. Well, welcome to this talk on this cold winter day. I was hoping that this would be more of a spring type of talk, but we can dream about spring and we'll be able to talk about tomatoes today. We're focusing on the common tomato problems, and I'm going to do it from two different perspectives. One perspective will be for those that are homeowners and have gardens, but we'll also have some more advanced material for individuals that are growing in protected environments, such as high tunnels and greenhouses and also field producers. A special welcome to the master gardeners that are out there. I see a lot of you in the participant list. Just want you to know that even if you've heard me talk about tomatoes in the past, I've included new material today about emerging diseases. There's clavibacter, Michiganensis, subspecies menensis, and then also we have a new virus that is going to be causing problems. So we'll be talking about those in addition to some of the more common problems we see in the Midwest. So just a reminder, tomatoes are in the nightshade family. The family name is Solanaceae. Also included in this family includes potatoes and eggplants and peppers. Potatoes and eggplants happen to be in the same genus as tomatoes, and some of the same diseases can go back and forth between tomato and potato. But for the purposes of this talk today, we're going to be focusing on tomato. We'll be looking at abiotic problems and also diseases. So what are abiotic problems? Well, abiotic problems are not a biological problem. They tend to be more of a physical problem or an environmental problem. They're not caused by an insect or disease. We may see weather as part of the problem. And then finally, there is no need to be spraying any sort of pesticide. There's no need for an insecticide or a fungicide in this situation because the problem is more of a physical nature. So one of the problems that I'm sure we're going to be seeing this spring is that we'll be seeing some cold damage on tomato because we forget how to grow tomatoes. We forget where the center of origin is. And that center of origin is in South America. You know, so think Peru and Bolivia and Ecuador. So areas that are much warmer than North Dakota and the surrounding region. So we advise people don't don't get out into your gardens too early with your tomatoes. You know, start them six weeks before transplanting around Memorial Day, at least in the northern areas of the country. If you're purchasing transplants, don't be buying them in mid April because you may have to keep them for a long period of time. What you want to do is wait until the night temperatures consistently above 50 degrees. And secondly, you want to check the soil temperature. You want the soil temperature to be 65 degrees or above. If you're growing tomatoes, you want to make sure you acclimate them before you transplant them into the garden, particularly if you've been growing them from a seed indoors. So what I mean by acclimating is that you would put them outside for an hour or two the first day in the shade, kind of out of the wind, and then each day expose them a little bit more to sunshine, maybe to a little bit more wind. And then by the end of a week or maybe two weeks, they're acclimated to the outdoors. So that's the first thing to think of is avoiding cold injury to our tomatoes. We're going to look at some of the abiotic problems that are very common, whether you are a home gardener or a commercial producer. You'll frequently see tomato cracking. Tomato cracking may be caused by cultivar differences, but really it's uneven soil moisture that bears the brunt of the fault here. What I mean by this is, say for example, you're going to go to your lake cabin for the weekend and you're leaving Friday morning. Well, you'll give your tomato a drink that Friday morning. But then, you know, you've got this, this tomato in a container on your deck for the whole weekend, and it starts to dry out. And when you come home Sunday night, it's looking all willty. So at that point, you know, you give it a drink of water, and then the tomato responds by taking up this water. So there's this big influx of water going into that tomato, and that tomato skin can't tolerate that. And that's where it'll crack. So you'll see cracking like you see here on this photo. So one way to prevent this is to make sure that you're not having these excesses of drought and then saturation. So maintain even soil moisture. You'll have a good watering regimen. Or maybe if you're growing plants and you're going away, you have a neighbor come in and water your plants. Mulch can also be helpful in the garden. So you can mulch it and that helps the soil retain the moisture. But we wait to put down the mulch until after the soil warms up in spring, because otherwise the mulch can prevent the soil from warming up quickly. Here's another photo of tomato cracking, but here it's a little bit different. It's more in concentric circles, but it's still that same cause of having a sudden influx of water and the skin not being able to contract or not being able to grow fast enough. So yellow shoulders. With yellow shoulders, you'll notice that the shoulders of the tomato are green and hard and unripe. And no matter how long you leave it on, it just seems like it doesn't completely redden up. So what's going on? Well, the problem is environmental. You're probably having some really warm weather where the temperatures are in excess of 85 degrees. And when we have those tropical temperatures, the pigment lycopene isn't produced in tomato. So that's what causes the tomato to turn red. Lycopene is also, I believe, useful in preventing prostate cancer. So it's important nutritionally too. But lycopene is what causes the tomatoes to turn red, and that pigment is not produced when it's really hot outside. Now other problems, you know, there could be issues with potassium deficiencies. And sometimes there are definitely cultivar susceptibilities, but for the most part, we're looking at temperatures here. And I kind of like this disorder because it reminds me I'm not in control. And furthermore, I can't be blamed for this because it's mother nature that is causing the problem here. This is cat facing. So how many of you actually see a cat's face in the bottom of these tomatoes? I have to admit that I don't see it, but then I'm not a cat owner. I'm more of a dog lover. And I'm terribly allergic to cats, but this is what they call cat facing. And that's when the bottom of the tomato is deformed. And sometimes there may be some quirky material here. You'll see this more commonly on the larger tomatoes and on heirloom tomatoes. Those heirloom tomatoes are notorious for getting that. But I'm willing to put up with that because I love how heirlooms taste. Now what's causing this? Again, this is another temperature issue cat facing is caused by cool weather when the fruit is forming on the vine. So another another pretty easy explanation for that is that, you know, the cool weather zippering. So let me get my laser pointer here. So there it is. So zippering would be these lines that you see on the tomato and then there's another one over here. So what causes zippering? Well, that one's kind of an unique story behind that one. So you can imagine, you've got your tomato flower, the tomato flower has been pollinated and it's starting starting to swell to produce the fruit. However, inside that tomato flower, there's that answer that released the pollen, but the answer may be sticking to the wall of the ovary. And as as the fruit grows, it ends up having a little bit of a scar down the side of the fruit. So once again, another something something that is outside your control, but also we don't worry about this we know that we're not doing anything wrong and this is entirely edible. Blossom and rot. This is very, very common probably the most common disorder that we see. I'm just wondering, are there any tomato growers out there that have never seen blossom and rot. So go ahead and put it on the chat box if you have grown tomatoes and have never seen blossom and rot in your tomatoes. I would bet there be very few responses this is very common. And what's causing this so we get a lot of questions. Somebody tells you that there's an easy solution to this is lying or doesn't understand the complexity of the situation. There's a lot of things going on here. Yes, it is a calcium deficiency, but it's a localized calcium deficiency. We happen to live in northern states that have an abundance of calcium in the soil. So adding calcium to the soil or adding Toms or rollates that's not going to do it. What you notice is that the first wave of fruits that are produced seem to have blossom and rot. And then it goes away. So there's there's something happening physiologically there. We also notice differences in cultivars, like Roma tomato I stopped growing Roma tomato because I noticed that blossom and rot was more prolific in that particular We're back to uneven soil moisture. That's that's another big piece of the puzzle here. So as I mentioned we've got lots and lots of calcium carbonate in the soil. What we need is we definitely need water in the soil to dissolve the calcium be taken up by the root system and carried through the vascular system in the xylem to the canopy of the tomatoes. If we don't have enough soil moisture, you can't transport you can't dissolve and transport the calcium to this big vigorous tomato plant. So making sure to irrigate your tomatoes on a regular basis does help with this it does help prevent some blossom and rot fertilizer may play a role. We love to fertilizer tomato plants, but if you're giving your tomato too much ammonium fertilizer. The plant is going to put more energy into producing leaves and less into growing the tomatoes, and those leaves may out compete the fruit for the available calcium. And that's just a fancy way for saying those individuals that are cultivating too close to their tomatoes. If you're disrupting that root system, it may not be able to take up enough calcium. We also see that this is more of a problem in container plantings and that's probably because these containers can dry up faster than tomatoes in the ground. So you can see it's a complex situation. The bottom line here is we need calcium going to the tomato fruit, and we need to make sure that the leaves aren't out competing it that calcium is so very important because it's useful in forming cell walls. So if you don't have enough calcium you can't build cell walls and you'll notice that rotting appearance that's on the bottom. And then also that's also an opening for rot fungi to get in there. Our next abiotic disorder is sun scald. So yes, our tomatoes can get sunburn just like us. What you'll notice is you might see a little blistering on the side of the tomato that's facing the sun that part may dry out and get a little papery or leathery. And this is really common when the tomatoes are exposed to the hot sun and we'll see it more when the plant doesn't have enough leaves. So say, for example, you've been very vigorous at pruning the leaves on your indeterminate tomato or your tomato may have lost leaves due to leaf spot diseases, then you're more likely to see this physiological leaf roll. So that's just a fancy name for saying that those leaves roll up. We'll see this in different conditions that actually may seem to be contradictory. You can see it during cold wet springs and then conversely you can see this in hot dry weather. We see this a lot in high tunnel production because as you can imagine the high tunnels heat up quite a bit in the summer months. So those leaves roll up and then once they roll up they're not going to unroll. Fortunately, this usually doesn't reduce the yields by very much. So it's one of those things where we chalk it up to the weather and we don't worry about it. The only time we worry about it is if we think there's a possibility that there's a virus because some of the viruses can cause the leaves to roll up. But then you may be seeing other symptoms that may suggest that there's a virus which would encourage you to test for it. But just normal leaf rolling without any other symptoms we don't get to work up about. Herbicide damage to tomatoes. Oh my goodness, this is really, really common in mid July and it seems to coincide with when people are putting on their lawn herbicides. So we see this a lot in communities across the state. And tomatoes very, very susceptible to herbicide damage. And I'll show you different types of herbicide damage. This one happens to be round up or the active ingredient is glyphosate. And it's causing this bleaching effect. So you'll see the bleaching here where it's starting to turn yellow. Eventually that yellow material will then turn brown and die. And that's just very common with glyphosate damage. And it's very similar in potato too. We'll see a lot of symptoms from lawn herbicides that are drifting through the neighborhood. But keep in mind the lawn herbicides out there usually have three herbicides in them, maybe four different modes of action. So you might see different symptoms. Sometimes you'll see more of the cupping and the leaf is cupping upward and that tends to be more affiliated with dicamba injury. We can see the leaves getting deformed, elongated, really kind of feathery looking here. And that might be more from the 2-4-D that's in our lawn herbicides. And then we may also see epinasty. So epinasty means that the stem isn't growing straight and tall. Instead it's growing in a crooked pattern or growing curved. Anytime that your tomatoes look a little like fiddly fern, then you got to think that there could potentially be herbicide damage. So how are your tomatoes exposed to herbicide? Well, drift is certainly a possibility if people are spraying their lawns on days when it's really windy. But we could also be bringing soil and other media into our gardens that's contaminated. So say, for example, you dig up some field soil from an agronomic plot. There may be some residual herbicides there. Or you may bring in some city compost. Well, I don't necessarily trust city compost without testing it because we have individuals that spray herbicide on their lawns. They then mow their lawns, collect the clippings, and then take them off to be composted. Unfortunately, the herbicides are able to survive the composting process. Menur. Now this is really interesting. So you could have a producer that is spraying invasive or noxious weeds in a pasture setting, and then the cows go out and graze in the pasture, consume this. They then take in the herbicide. Well, it doesn't seem to hurt the cow, but what happens is the plant material goes through the digestive system and the herbicide to and goes out through the manure. So if you are incorporating manure into your garden, make sure you know where your nerves coming from and that you're getting it from a reputable producer. You know, but there's certainly other other amendments like grass clippings and straw that could also bring in herbicide into your garden. If you want to test an amendment before you incorporate into your garden, I would strongly encourage that you can do what we call a bioassay. And with a bioassay is you plant a vegetable that is very susceptible to herbicide like a bean seed or a sunflower seed, something quick germinating, and then you grow it in the compost. If you see that the seed is growing straight and tall and normal, then most likely you don't have an issue with herbicide. However, if you see that your bean seed is starting to grow in a curved pattern, like in that epinasty photo, then you know you probably shouldn't incorporate the compost into your garden. I mean, you could also try manure, but of course you would have to dilute the manure because it would be too hot to to germinate a seed and you'd have to dilute it with some other materials and and then try your bioassay test. So that's it for abiotic problems. We're going to talk about diseases for the rest of our time here. And these are what we call biotic or biological problems of tomatoes. Sceptoria leaf spot is a fungal disease called caused by Sceptoria lycopersicae. And this, this is just very, very common in the Northern Plains and in the Midwest. You'll notice that you'll see small leaf spots, usually on the bottom leaves of your tomato, and they have a certain pattern to them. Usually they start off with the center of the spot being tan, and then you'll see that the margin is a darker color. And then over time, that spot will fill in with spores. And then it won't necessarily have that two tone appearance, but in the beginning you'll see the tan center with the darker margin around it, and it will progress from the bottom of the plant up. And this makes sense, because our fungal disease inoculum is in the soil. So you can imagine we had maybe some infected tomatoes last year, or potatoes, and we've got some of that leaf debris still in our garden. Of course, that will be a source for the, for the spores, and that would first infect the lower leaves and then progress through the plant. Fortunately, Sceptoria doesn't cause any damage to the tomato fruits, but you may see reduced yields if you lose a lot of leaves. So a close up of some of the spots. Now this is almost a little too perfect. You won't necessarily see spots, quite this perfect, but you can see the two tone appearance. So how do you manage this? We use integrated pest management, where we use a lot of different strategies, some preventative, before we actually reach for a fungicide. So the first thing is, you know, make sure that you don't have plant debris in your garden that was, that could cause a new disease. So we get rid of the plant debris. We rotate crops out of the area. And this would be easier for a bigger producer that's got farm fields and can rotate their crops. So that's helpful. But if you're in a small raised garden bed, that's, that's not necessarily the best advice, because you don't have room to rotate. Manage your watering. We don't like to see overhead sprinkling. This is a fungus. At any time you have a fungus, you'll find that it's a conducive environment for the fungus to grow. So instead, maybe consider using a drip irrigation system, or if you don't have access to that, you know, just water beneath the foliage and just be careful not to have a lot of splashing. There are other ways to reduce leaf wetness. You can prune and stake your tomatoes. You'll get more ventilation going through the plant and fewer fungal diseases. You can consider mulching beneath your tomato plants to prevent the water splashing. The fungal spores up. If you do see fungal infections, you know, pinch off those infected leaves, you can just use your fingers and pinch that off. And then remember to clean up your garden really well in the fall. If this has been problematic for a number of years, you may want to consider a fungicide. Some of the common fungicides we see contain the active ingredient chlorothalanil. So Dacanil is one of one of the brand names. There's also Mancozeb. If you're an organic producer, you can use copper. So I'm really not going to get into fungicides, but I wanted you to take a look, particularly if you're a producer, there's this 2023 Midwest vegetable production guide. And it has a list of all the fungicides that would, that would be applicable in different fungal situations. Now for, for those of you that are home gardeners, you know, you're welcome to take a look at it, but beware of anything that is labeled restricted use. If it says restricted use, you would have to have a pesticide applicator's license to apply. The second fungal disease is late blight. I haven't seen late blight in the decade that I've been here at NDSU, but I believe like 12, 13 years ago, we did have late blight, either in North Dakota or in Minnesota. And this happens to be one of those diseases that can go between tomato and potato. So some very interesting looking symptoms here. We'll see, we'll see kind of this, this browning on the tomato. So that's one symptom of it. And you'll also see symptoms on the foliage. No, this happens to be potato, but it would be very similar in effect. You would see water soaking of the leaves. And then you may see this white substance. There's white substance here too. There you're actually seeing the sign of the fungus. You're seeing the mycelium. So the actual fungus is growing right there. So that's telling you that you've got a fungal issue. Late blight spreads during cool rainy weather. And despite the name, you can see it early in the season or late in the season. And it's very harmful. It kills within days. If you notice this, you know, make sure to give your extension agent a call because we'd like to know particularly if you're somewhere in North Dakota or Minnesota or Wisconsin where you grow potatoes, we would hate to have late blight spreading from a garden to commercial potato production. It would be very harmful and of course would be very costly with all the fungicide and vice versa. Stay in touch with your extension service because if there is late blight in the commercial fields, you can find out about it and apply fungicide to your tomatoes or potatoes preventatively. So we're going from late blight to early blight. Fortunately, early blight is not going to kill your crop. It's not going to cause a big epidemic, but it'll be similar to septoria as far as its severity. Early blight, you'll notice has kind of a bullseye appearance. If you look closely at the spots, you've got kind of these concentric circles going on. That's the hallmark of early blight. Maybe you can see that a little bit better in this photo here. We've got the spot there. Early blight, we'll see both in tomato and potato. And there are a couple different species of this that causes foliar spots. It can also cause cankers on the stem. And if you look closely at the stem cankers, you'll notice again kind of some concentric circles going on. And then early blight can in fact infect the fruit too. So we're going to go through the disease cycle here. With early blight, if you've had a problem in the past, consider adopting a tomato that has resistance to this disease, mountain magic, defiant and plum regal. Now those aren't necessarily common tomatoes other than mountain magic. But you can always look for other sources of early blight resistance. I think Cornell University usually keeps a pretty detailed list of plants that are resistant to early blight. You already have it in the garden. You pinch off the infected foliage and then use kind of the same sanitation and cultural measures that we used for septoria. As a last resort, you can use fungicides. So just a word on fungicides. Fungicides don't cure a problem. They prevent a problem. So if you've got tomatoes that are covered in spots, well, I wouldn't even bother with the fungicide. Fungicides work to prevent infection. So say, for example, you notice that one of your leaves is infected, you then you pinch off the leaf that's infected, get rid of it, and then you spray the rest of the plant to prevent it from developing a fungal infection. All right, from fungus we're going on to bacteria, bacterial speck and spot. They're quite similar in their appearance for both the foliage and for the tomatoes. You'll see small spots on the leaves. Sometimes they'll have a little bit of a halo, but I'm not seeing much of that in these photos here. And then you'll see spots on the fruit. Now one of these diseases occurs in cooler weather. The other disease occurs under warmer conditions. So I think we were more likely to see bacterial spot. With bacterial speck and spot, you'll see spots on your tomatoes. So this is a real bummer because you don't want to be eating this. But furthermore, you don't want to be canning with tomatoes that have bacterial speck or spot because it raises the pH of the tomato. So I'll probably just ask Julie to chime in here and why it's not a good thing to use, use tomatoes that have bacterial speck or spot and canning if they're starting off with a higher pH. I'd say because pH is key to whether canning is safe for that produce. So if you see diseased tomatoes such as this, you could probably cut it off and use some of it for fresh use. That won't kill you. But if you were to can with tomatoes that were of a different pH, probably not safe. And while I have the mic here for a second, I will caution all of you that we need to acidify all tomatoes. That means we have a certain amount of bottled lemon juice or citric acid that needs to be added just because in the studies we've done in the past, we've found that our tomato varieties tend to have a different pH. They're not as acidic as they used to be. So for that reason, all tomatoes, no matter where you're from, we have the same recommendation and that is to add the bottled lemon juice or the citric acid in the amount that we state. So in the chat, I'm going to put our website and I'm going to turn it back to you, Esther. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification, Julie. Alright, so controlling bacterial spec and spot. You want to buy disease free seed or if you're buying transplants buy it from a reputable nursery. If you're starting seed and you're a little worried about it, you can soak your seeds at a high temperature so 122 degrees. So come for 25 minutes at that temperature, and that will kill any of the bacteria that might be on the seeds. Of course, using good garden sanitation and watering practices as we have previously discussed. If you want to prevent bacterial spec and spot you can use copper spray. And we would recommend that for both conventional and organic producers. But why do we use copper and not fungicide? That's a trick trick question. I mean, this is a bacterial disease of fungicides not going to work. Alright, bacterial bacterial wilt and canker. This is becoming more and more problematic. This is caused by clavibacter Michigan and subspecies Michigan answers. And it's my understanding that we have seen this in North Dakota and in Minnesota. I'm not not. I haven't seen it in North Dakota. This is the last couple of years, but I know that it has been diagnosed by the plant diagnostic lab. And this is a very new bacterial disease. It's, it's spread because it's carried on the seed, or you could be introduced to an area via transplants. And this is quite devastating. It can kill the plant, you know, worst case scenario best case scenario the plant lives but then you end up with damaged fruit, particularly if you're growing outdoors. So the symptoms of clavibacter, well depends on the stage of development for our younger plants, you may notice that they're kind of struggling they're growing poorly. You may see some temporary wilting but they it seems to recover a bit, and then the lower leaves turn yellow and shrivel a bit for the mature plant. You will see a systemic infection that happens. So what I mean by systemic is that this is a disease that clogs up the vascular system so it clogs up the xylem, and you would actually be able to see it. So if it's clogging up the tubing that's carrying water from the roots to the top of the plant you're going to see the plant wilt and die. So what I mean by systemic is that it's all throughout the plant and then water cannot travel from the roots to the canopy. You'll see the oldest leaves first turn yellow they'll curl up. They will turn brown and die there's stunting and wilting of the plant. As the problem gets more severe, you can actually take a knife and cut the stem open. You're doing a cross section of the stem and when you look inside the interior portion which we call the pith, it may be yellow, or even as dark as reddish brown. So essentially, the vascular system is plugged up. The branches may break and the plant may completely die. So here's that reddish brown pith discoloration and you can see that the stem has been sliced open to show you the vascular system, but you can totally understand why this plant isn't able to get water to the top of its plant. Now this isn't as problematic, but you'll notice that, you know, maybe there's there's some splashing within the plant, you may end up with spots on the leaves you may end up with the edges of the leaves may start to turn brown and die, particularly outdoors in the field producer we may notice fruit spotting. But once again that's where the bacteria splashes on the exterior of the fruit and produces these spots. With these spots, you'll notice that they're raised. So they're not even with the tomato skin they're actually raised. So you'll be able to feel it and then notice that they've got a halo around it. Sometimes when we have bacteria will end up with a halo around the spot. The best thing to do is prevent the problems. If you can prevent the disease from coming in. Now this happens to be a bigger problem for commercial greenhouse and high tunnel production. You want to start off with clean seed if you're germinating your own seed. The conditions I've seen say soak the seed at 130 degrees in water for 25 minutes. I wouldn't go too high because you don't want to kill the seed but that 130 degree range is what they found is effective for killing the bacteria on the exterior of the seed. Now this isn't 100% effective. For this disease it's known that the bacteria can be on the inside of the seed coat and therefore this might not work. But this can help reduce the incidence of clavibacter. If you're doing greenhouse production, you may want to consider preventative copper and streptomycin applications before transplanning. This can live on tools so you need to sterilize your tools, sterilize your greenhouse benches. This can live for 10 months on wooden stakes so it's remarkably persistent in that type of setting. In a field setting it's a little bit easier. If you want to get rid of any of the crop debris that's out there at the end of the season or if you know you've got infected plants, get them out there very carefully. But the one thing we know about this is if you're doing field production, you can till the debris into the soil and it will decompose and break down. The bacteria will not live in the soil if the crop debris has decomposed. And then of course rotate out of there for a year or maybe two years to make sure you don't have a problem. Alright, soak. And then you can of course do copper applications in the field if you're anticipating wet weather coming in. Now once there's wet weather you don't want to be moving around the field. Alright so that's a new disease that we're worried about and kind of the whole country is looking at. Other diseases of tomatoes that are fairly common, we see a lot of viruses. And it seems to be more common in those that have produced tomatoes for a long period of time or in a larger setting such as a field or in a high tunnel. So this is tomato mosaic virus. I'm not going to get too in depth with these. But the one thing to notice with the mosaic viruses is you'll see kind of this modeling, kind of this uneven coloration on the leaves, and that's very characteristic of mosaic viruses. Sometimes you'll see deformed growth here. You just, I mean, you can see these tomato leaves do not look normal at all. Cucumber mosaic virus is another disease that we see. And you'll notice we've got deformed leaves again. It looks kind of almost like a shoestring that's happening here. So what do you do when you end up with these types of symptoms with a virus? You carefully dig up the plant, getting as much of it as you can, and then discard it. Don't put it on your compost pile or burn it. Actually, I like the idea of burning it better. That's really quite helpful for getting rid of the virus. And then be aware that you've got virus in that area of the garden and you may not want to plant tomatoes there for a while. Unfortunately, we cannot cure a virus in a plant any more than we can really cure viruses in humans. This one's cool. This is tomato spotted wilt virus. It's not cool in that it's essentially fatal to the plant, but it does have an interesting pattern that we see on the foliage. We'll also see some circles on the ripe tomatoes. On the green tomatoes, you're more likely to see kind of this russeting or this browning that's occurring. I get really concerned anytime I see browning going on on the tomato that it's a potential disease or virus. Now I'm going to end with tomato, brown, or goose fruit virus, and this one has the whole country up in arms because we're really worried about this. And I'll explain why in a minute. This was first detected in 2018 and essentially anybody that has this would be quarantined. Interestingly, this is related to tomato mosaic virus and tobacco mosaic virus. So it's in kind of that same family of viruses, but there's a problem. We have tomatoes out there that are resistant to tomato mosaic virus and tobacco mosaic virus. However, this brown or goose fruit virus actually is not. I mean, you can still develop this disease. This resistance that works for the other mosaic viruses does not work for brown or goose fruit virus. So that's a big problem because we've been breeding tomatoes all across the country to be resistant to the mosaic viruses. And here we have this new virus that's coming in and the resistance does not hold up. So I know that they are, I know, Syngenta and other companies are breeding tomatoes to fight this particular virus, but it's going to take some time before we have quite a bit of resistance. Now with brown or goose fruit virus, it affects pepper too, but it's a lot less severe. So it's not really, we're not too worried about the pepper industry at this time. So interesting symptoms. It is a mosaic virus. So we do see that uneven coloration on the leaves. And then in the potatoes, I know this is a bad photo, but with this being a new disease, there aren't many photos that I can download for this presentation. So you'll notice that there's kind of a wrinkling going on. That's what we mean by rugose or rugosity is that wrinkled effect to it. Like with other viruses, you'll see leaves that are deformed or strapped like. Now when it's affecting the more mature fruit, you'll also see more of the symptoms that you would see like in tomato spotted wilt virus with kind of the yellowing that we see here. Here we've got a little bit more of that browning and rugosity on the green tomato. One final symptom is that you may see browning of the petioles. So we've got the stem here. The stem is actually starting to turn brown, but then the petioles can turn brown and the calyx. The calyx would be kind of the star pattern that we see here. These are the former sepals from the flower. You may see these to start to turn brown and that's another symptom of brown rugose fruit virus. All right, just to show you some of the sanitation measures that they're taking out in California. They're really, really nervous about this. So imagine you're a major greenhouse producer of tomatoes. You want to prevent this from being an issue, but you're also concerned about other viruses too. So here are some of the sanitation measures just to show you how concerned that they are about this virus and other viruses. You try and prevent you from going into multiple greenhouses per day, so they want you to work in one greenhouse and not go into another greenhouse if you can help it. Before you enter the greenhouse, you walk on a disinfection mat to disinfect your shoes or your boots. You then wash your hands before entering the greenhouse. Some greenhouses will actually use milk. Milk is known to disarm certain viruses. I don't know if milk works for this particular virus, but it seems to deactivate the protein in the virus. If you're going between greenhouses, they make you clean your glasses with an alcohol wipe. You can't wear jewelry or watches. If you've got your cell phone, you need to be carrying it around in a plastic bag and then you answer the phone through the plastic bag. If you go into another greenhouse, you've got to put your phone into a different plastic bag. You try not to touch the plants unless you need to, but if you're growing tomatoes, you're having to prune them into one or two vines. You're having to stake them. Now, if they're really concerned, they will change gloves before they touch a new plant. So very, very interesting. Just how infectious this is. These virus particles, they spread on everything. They spread on your clothing. Say, for example, you have this in your field or in your greenhouse and you have to dispose of it. So you dispose of it. You burn it. You autoclave it. But then you've got to wash your clothing. So fortunately, washing your clothing will deactivate the virus. If you're wearing disposable clothing, then you've got to get rid of it. So just a little peek into the world of commercial production. So that's it for the different problems that we see. So I want to remind you that if you suspect that you've got brown or gross fruit virus or if you have clavibacter, you can always contact your extension agent. And particularly in North Dakota, you might be able to get it tested. Now the commercial producers do have to pay to have testing done because we can't afford to give free testing to everybody. Now, one more thing before I turn to the questions for our high tunnel producers, we are going to have a high tunnel field day on campus on July 25. Now we haven't decided the program yet, but we've got the morning of July 25. If you're interested in high tunnel field production. We are collaborating with SDSU on a grant. And we have funding to do a high tunnel short course in Rapid City, South Dakota, October 16 and 17 this year. And then the following year we will have a high tunnel short course in Fargo, but the date has not been set. All right. Well, thank you. And then Julie, I'm ready for questions. I'm hoping we've got some good questions. You have 12 questions and we probably don't have time to answer all of them, but let's get started. Okay. Is mulching too early really a thing? And will it keep the cold in? And further, this person said, I just did some volunteer cleanup and we needed mulch but didn't have any because they said it was too cold. I'm afraid the weed seeds will be able to come up too easily now. Yes. I mean, you do run a little bit more risk with weed seeds and such, but with tomatoes and peppers and some of these warm season crops. You want to make sure that temperature gets up to 65 before you put that on because it could delay your crop a bit. So we definitely want to do that. It's just helpful. It's just helpful. We don't want to slow the crop down by having cooler temperatures and then we're less likely to in fact get a good yield by the end of the year. And I'm just going to make a comment. Someone just asked about whether your handout is available to print and the answer is yes. It is now on the field to fork webinar area of our website. So you can go in there and print it off. Are there certain kinds of tomatoes most prone to blossom and rot? Yes, there are. There are tomatoes that are more prone. I'm thinking like the plum shaped or I would say the Roma tomatoes the Roma tomatoes are those that are the most susceptible. And there are definitely other cultivars out there Cornell University I believe has a list of some of that. But for the most part I'd say Roma's are the ones that we worry about the most. And this person said I was once told to water plants and pots until the water runs out the bottom. Is that a good practice or not? That's a great practice because you do want to saturate that root ball. You don't want to just be watering the top of it. I generally give that advice to anybody that's growing a plant whether it's a house plant or tomatoes on the deck. You want to water the entire pot because number one you may have some salts. If you have excess salts it will push it through the profile. What I mean by salts fertilizer is essentially a salt. If you've got a buildup you can certainly push that through so that's helpful. But number two you want to water deeply you don't want to just water the top of your tomato because then your root system is going to stay towards the top. You want the root system to fill out and go all the way to the bottom. Okay you showed us some pictures of leaf rolls and we've had a couple questions about that. Is it helpful to the plant to remove the leaf rolls? No it's not helpful to the plant because it's still photosynthesizing. It's still producing the carbohydrates that the plant needs. So I would leave the leaf rolls in effect after the weather is more seasonable then you'll notice that the new leaves will be normal in shape. But it really doesn't seem to affect it too badly. And the next questioner says I've experienced some plant damage from my neighbor. Should I amputate the affected leaves on the tomato plant? I'm wondering if that is herbicide damage. Maybe that's what they're referring to. You see I really don't know if you should be harvesting tomatoes from even the unaffected parts of that plant. If you're seeing parts of it look poor I really don't know that I can say that it's entirely safe to do. And I don't think Julie you would say it was safe either. No. I would not. Good question here. How long will herbicides last in manure or grass clippings? How long will it last? Well it depends on the herbicide. I think dicamba can break down in about a year or so or a year or 18 months. But sometimes we end up with persistent agronomic herbicides. So think your clopyrilids. Oh I'm trying to think you know like Stinger I think is one of them. No I'm not. Let's see Tordont. Some of those milestone is horrible. So I know that there are different persistent herbicides. You know number one you shouldn't be using them without following the label and without having a pesticide applicator's license. But those types of herbicides can last for years. So there are studies out there showing the half lives and it takes a long time. I've seen people that have used milestone on their yard and it's illegal to use milestone and the other clopyrilids on a homeowner's yard. And they've had damage for like five years. So this is why we're really really careful with our persistent herbicides. We follow the label. We do what's legal. And if you incorporate something that has a persistent herbicide like say manure because the cow has been been grazed on clopyrilids sprayed weeds. It could last a long time. There are ways to try and remedy it a little bit. You know, you could potentially grow something like grass for some reason grass grows quite well in that area and might take up some of that. So you could do some of that. But it's not easy. It's not easy to remediate. And you, you can probably see someone made a comment. My sister's garden was damaged for five years after using neighbors grass clippings on our gardens. So where? Oh, here's another person who has waist high raised beds and I have those as well. Any suggestions for soil amendments. And then he or she continues it originally has raised bed soil and bag compost mixed in with natural soil. Last year I used peat moss to try to hold moisture in but it dries out pretty fast. Well, it's actually the peat moss that's drying out a lot of our media that's labeled as raised garden bed media isn't real soil. What I like to see is a combination and I've talked with one of our soil scientists and he likes to use one third mineral soil likes to use a third sand and one third peat moss. And so we like to see there be a mineral soil component because it will in fact hold the water better than just buying the bag, the bag products and then adding peat moss. Unfortunately, peat moss dries out really quickly. And then once it's dry, it resists wedding. It's what we call hydrophobic. So that's why that's why I think it's better if we start off with a mineral soil and then we can amend. And just do clay soil in sand that would never work because the sand, the sand and the clay would would kind of fuse together and you get something like adobe bricks but if you do, if you do your soil, you do some sand and then you do peat moss then it works, or you could just do your natural soil with peat moss without the sand, and that that works well too. I have a couple questions about spot and spec. Will a copper ring around tomatoes prevent these and which paste tomatoes are resistant to spot and spec. I don't know the resistance. I don't have an answer to the resistance question on the paste tomatoes. The actual copper circle that we use the copper circle that we use as more to prevent slugs from crossing it. People will put copper around their plants and the slugs don't like to cross that. That's not going to affect and prevent bacterial spec in spot. However, if you spray a copper, a copper product on the plant, that can in fact prevent it. The next question is about rotating crops. Is there an order of crops that should be rotated and what is the order. I don't have a set order because there's so many different rotations that you could do. What I like to say is you need to rotate out of the family so we've got four closely related plants that we grow we grow peppers, potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant in the garden. If you rotate rotate entirely out of the family. So you would grow that in year one in years two and three you grow something else maybe you grow cabbages maybe you grow onions. And then in the fourth year, you can come back to something in that family. So that's kind of the general, the general recommendation that I give people is, you know, have have those two intervening years and then come back in the fourth year. Very good. Two questions left. Are there concerns of bacteria and viruses in hydroponic situations. Oh, great question. It seems like, yes, yes, anytime you've got lots of tomatoes growing in close proximity to one another you can. And I mean I visited hydroponic tomato producers, and I mean they're growing these things, essentially in buckets of per light, you know, using the hydroponic solution and then they're growing them like 12 feet tall. In order to maintain them they're pruning them so you can imagine, you know you have to, you're working with them you're touching them you're using tools. So there's definitely the potential for for it to spread in a hydroponic situation. So your last question that we have time for because we're at three o'clock. What is mineral soil. Oh, I'm sorry, just regular soil that you have from the ground so I'm not talking bag soil I'm just talking what you have. Now, unfortunately living in town, sometimes they do strip the top soil off of yards and such but if you can buy soil from, you know, a landscape company, you know ask for top soil. Thank you so much Esther for spending this hour with us I think we all learned a lot. And I hope that all of you who are really interested in food preservation will choose to join us next week I have my colleague from Kansas State presenting for us. And please go to our field of fork website and check out Esther's presentation if you want to take some more notes or download it. But we really appreciate all of you for attending and especially Esther for such a great talk. So thank you. And thank you. Everybody stay warm.