The San Antonio Sandbur Patch

[MissS]

It sounds like you have had a really rough time. I pray that you are on the mend and back to yourself in no time.

[worth1]

Hey well soon.

[bower]

Yes indeed, be well!
Garden is all set, at least you have nothing too strenuous to do.

[GoDawgs]

Wishing you rapid recovery!

I had problems with peppers for years and I finally gave up. Then I read somewhere (maybe someone at T-ville?) said I needed to try the longer types of peppers as bell peppers many times don't do well in hot climates. That was maybe four years ago? Time flies. Anyway I found success with Gypsy, jalapeno and Red Marconi. Still trying several new varieties each year. This year's new winners were Ozark Sweet Snack and Lipstick. Just a thought.

[Wildcat82]

We've been blessed with absolutely beautiful weather here lately. Feels fantastic just to sit outside in the evenings.

My Bearss limes are growing in the cooler weather and setting blooms. The Feijoas, figs and pomegranates are also putting on some new growth after slumbering all summer. On the other hand, my strawberries aren't looking so great.

Two of my oregano plants dried up and died except for 1 single solitary tiny green branch in each pot. This has happened every year for the past 5-6 years. Eventually they end up growing again. I've learned to grow multiple oregano plants so that when some die off, I have backups that I can keep harvesting. Still, It's a mystery why the die off always occurs.

Next week I’m going to sow more tomato seeds. I want to have 2 foot tall plants in 5 gallon buckets by 1 February. Needs to be 5 gallon buckets since I don’t want to lug 15-20 gallons pots in and out of the shed during freezes this winter. I'll Probably grow a few dwarf projects tomatoes and a other shorter varieties as well as a few early types:

Glacier
Sungold
Dwarf Blazing Beauty
Dwarf Rosella Purple
New Big Dwarf
Wooly Kate
Centiflors - since I read somewhere they are better in cooler climates

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[GoDawgs]

Two of my oregano plants dried up and died except for 1 single solitary tiny green branch in each pot. This has happened every year for the past 5-6 years. Eventually they end up growing again. I've learned to grow multiple oregano plants so that when some die off, I have backups that I can keep harvesting. Still, It's a mystery why the die off always occurs.

This happened to my long-held indoor oregano for the first time in Jan-Feb of this year. It just started dying. That's never happened before. So I set it aside, intending to toss it one day. Then after about four months, one day I noticed some green starting in that utterly dry plant so I resumed watering and it's just fine now.

Reading your experience got me wondering if oregano goes through a dormancy when they get to a certain age. I don't know about the age but after looking it up online, oregano DOES go dormant in winter! See near the bottom of this article:

https://greg.app/oregano-winter-care/

[Wildcat82]

Two of my oregano plants dried up and died except for 1 single solitary tiny green branch in each pot. This has happened every year for the past 5-6 years. Eventually they end up growing again. I've learned to grow multiple oregano plants so that when some die off, I have backups that I can keep harvesting. Still, It's a mystery why the die off always occurs.

This happened to my long-held indoor oregano for the first time in Jan-Feb of this year. It just started dying. That's never happened before. So I set it aside, intending to toss it one day. Then after about four months, one day I noticed some green starting in that utterly dry plant so I resumed watering and it's just fine now.

Reading your experience got me wondering if oregano goes through a dormancy when they get to a certain age. I don't know about the age but after looking it up online, oregano DOES go dormant in winter! See near the bottom of this article:

https://greg.app/oregano-winter-care/

It's interesting you experienced the same thing. The die back and quick recovery seems to occur in spring or Fall for me - perhaps changes in temperature trigger this? It may be that periodic severe die-back is just part of oregano's lifecycle.

[Wildcat82]

Planning for early spring – sowed seeds 1 December and a number have already popped up. Planted the following varieties:
Brandy Boy (3)
Big Beef (1)
Black Cherry (2)
Mt Magic (1)
Azoychka (1)
Chef’s Choice Orange (1)
Jaune Flammee (1)
New Big Dwarf (2)
Dwarf Blazing Beauty (2)
Dwarf Rosella Purple (2)
Glacier (2)

I’ve also got 4 Sun Gold clones growing in cups beneath one of my pomegranates and a few Centiflors/Wooley Kate’s in cups outside. Amazingly, the mites seem to have left them alone. I think it’s because I purposely segregated them in different parts of my yard.

All told, I’m raising probably 2-3 times more seedlings than I need since I’m expecting fungal problems to kill off quite a few.



Since I was out of commission off and on for a month, I couldn’t spray anything in my garden and it looks like broad mites took over. Pretty much all my tomato plants went dormant/stunted. I did get a few tomatoes from an over-summered Punta Banda and the both Ruby Crush’s yielded a little.

Fall Scorecard
Lemon Boy – harvested a 1.5 oz and a 1 oz fruit
Brandysweet Plum (2) – set a handful of fruit but none ripened
Black Cherry (2) – neither plant set any fruit
Sun Golds – 5 overwintered 6 foot tall plants never yielded anything and 1 clone yielded 2-3 tiny fruit
Wooly Kate – set very well with 20+ tomatoes but the plant has just sat there dormant for 60 days with none of the fruit close to ripening.
Hot Spell, Heatmaster (2), Tycoon (2) – I think I got 1 small Tycoon.
Yellow Pear – yielded 4 small fruit

Visited one of the local nurseries a few weeks ago and had a conversation with 2 customers and a store clerk. All three people said they got no tomatoes this year and 2 of them said they had given up trying trying to grow any more in the future. Sometimes I get frustrated with the pests/disease in my garden but things could be much worse. I’m grateful I was able to get 3.5 months of production.

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5 foot tall Yellow Pear has yielded 4 tomatoes. Looks beautiful though.

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[Wildcat82]

Every year for 10+years I’ve tried to grow my own tomatoes plants from seeds. I plan out what varieties I want to have and sow seeds accordingly. And every year I suffer almost complete wipeouts due to fungal problems. I end up without most of the varieties I want and have to scramble around at the garden center to try to find some acceptable replacements.

The smart and thoughtful gardeners here have offered sound advice such as:

Spray with hydrgen peroxide/water solution
only bottom water
only water when the seedling droop from lack of water
don’t get water on the leaves
keep a fan on the seedlings
use a quality potting mix
etc.

I’ve tried all these suggestions but it hasn’t seemed to help much. I think there’s just too many airborne fungal spores here. The only way I’ve managed to get any plants is to use the brute force tactic of sowing 100 seeds and seeing if a handful of outliers can make it somehow.

This winter, I’m resorting to the Nuclear option:

1. Use sterilized (baked) potting mix
2. Innoculate soil with friendly microbes
3. Spray several times each week with Captan/liquid copper/rubbing alcohol
4. Spray with mancozeb once per week
4. Every 10 days or so, spray with Heritage fungicide.

One of the most commonly used fungicides used by commercial growers is Quadris (note that none of the commercial farms fungicides are available for home use). My understanding is that Quadris came off patent and a generic product (Heritage) is now available.

So far, the 3 week old seedlings look great with no sign of fungal problems! Super excited for spring.

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[MissS]

I have had very good luck using mycos in my seed starting mix and hope that you do too. I am going to try using only beneficial mycos and bacteria sprayed on my plants this year to try to control the fungal diseases. I would be very careful to keep those fungicides from contacting your soil because they will kill off your beneficials.

Please keep us updated on how this all works for you. I am highly interested in your results.

Good luck and happy growing!

[Wildcat82]

In Mid-November I sowed some Wooly Kate and a few Centiflors (red, yellow, and orange) in outdoor pots mainly as an experiment. L. Hirsutum (i.e. Solanum habrochaites) varieties apparently have resistance to mites and their native habitat is in the cooler higher elevations in South America, so they should very cold hardy.

“"One fascinating tomato growing prolifically in South Deerfield features an unusual hairy stem. This species (Solanum habrochaites) makes anti-insect chemicals and is chosen for rootstock because it can also survive in harsh, cold conditions.”
https://ag.umass.edu/news-events/highli ... d-tomatoes

Despite the usual plague of russet mites in the backyard this Fall, the Centiflors and Wooly Kate appeared to be unaffected. Lets see if they are able to set fruit in the lower winter/early Spring temperatures.

Had foot surgery a couple weeks ago and have been using a walker to get around. When nobody was looking, I hopped (literally) outside to take a couple garden pictures though.

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[MissS]

They look great. I hope that they do well for you.

My thoughts are with you on that foot surgery. I pray you heal quickly. You don't realize how important ones feet are until you can't walk on them too well.

[GoDawgs]

You are off and running! Well, figuratively speaking. Hope that improves quickly! Plants are looking good! I have tomato envy already thanks to you Texans.

Thanks for posting that article. Really interesting! I think the one issue this guy will face is what aspect he really wants to focus on. Right now it seems that he's in a candy store of ideas with bright and shiny areas of research vying for his attention. Oh well, he's young and he'll figure it out. It sounds like he's got a great advisor and just as important, he's enjoying it all.

[Wildcat82]

Since my foot surgery left me chair-bound for a few weeks, I tried to keep myself gainfully occupied. So I’ve been researching why some species of wild tomato resist mites. Keep in mind I’m an engineer, not a botanist, so my understanding is probably far from perfect.

Reader’s Digest Summary
- The little hairs on tomato stems and leaves are called trichomes. There are 7 different classifications of trichomes.
- Type-IV trichomes, which are important for defense against herbivores, have long been considered absent in the leaves of cultivated tomato. Instead, their presence is ubiquitous in wild relatives such as S. pennellii, S. habrochaites and S. galapagense, and some accessions of S. pimpinellifolium.
- Lycopersicon hirsutum, a wild relative of the tomato, is highly resistant to arthropod herbivores (i.e. mites).
- There are 2 types of tomatos in the Galapagos Islands: S. galapagense and S. cheesmaniae. S. galapagense had trichomes of both type I and IV. None of the accessions of S. cheesmaniae had trichomes type I or IV. S. galapagense is resistent to insects while S. cheesmaniae is not
- IV trichomes exude zingiberene which deters mites. These trichomes exude sticky and/or toxic exudates that entrap, irritate and potentially kill the pest.
- Trichome type IV and/or zingiberene content has been successfully transferred from the wild relative into interspecific tomato hybrids, and the hybrids show significant adverse impact on spider mite behavior. Type IV trichome density is the most crucial factor in mite deterrence while zingiberene seemed to be a second key factor.
- Leaf extracts of the wild tomato L. hirsutum f. typicum has been suggested as a source of zingiberene for miticide formulations.
- Zingiberene can contribute up to 30% of the essential oils in ginger rhizomes.
- ginger oil (with the addition of vanillin) achieved a repellancy of 87% against spider mites in a 2022 trial.
- In a 2024 study, spraying with salicylic acid (aspirin) boosted tomato plant production of zingiberene

Bottom Line: For mite resistance, the hairiest/woolliest varieties with strong wild tomato parentage seem to be your best option.

Spraying ginger oil is likely a strong deterrent for mites and whiteflies. Aspirin probably helps with white flies and mites as well.

In my next post I’ll give a listing of the most promising woolly tomato varieties I’ve been able to find.

Sources:
https://jesi.areeo.ac.ir/article_105477.html

https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 24-00917-4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zingiberene

https://tgc.ifas.ufl.edu/TBRT%202018/Pe ... Synder.pdf

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_look ... ages=73-80&

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Am ... ds-114.pdf

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... -120021668

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 9022003557

https://www.scielo.br/j/hb/a/DbmHjmdBdh8Rf6DqdRBMxxc/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 24-01154-6

https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley ... 0271.x#b19

https://bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/a ... 148-13-175

[Wildcat82]

Looks like the Farmer’s Almanac was incorrect with their forecast of a warmer winter for south Texas. For most of January the weather has hovered in the 50-30 degree range with at least 20 days with lows in the lower 30’s. Tomatoes can’t cope being inside without sunshine for 3 weeks so all but one of my winter tomatoes died with one Woolly Kate still looking surprisingly good. But that’s OK since I just planted out my early spring container tomatoes. Let’s see if the rest of winter will be warmer than normal.

I also got the rest of spring seed sown:

12 Angelonia
12 Zinnias
6 Japamese Mustard
12 Aunt Molly’s ground cherries
6 cape gooseberries
6 lemongrass
3 Emerald Towers basil/3 Everleaf lemon basil
12 assorted tomatoes (just in case)

In my search for the woolly tomato varieties, I started with a video some lady named Jen Joy posted on youtube that had a compiled list of 74 hairy/woolly tomato varieties.

Looking through the list, many varieties are only sold in Europe (and I’m not sure how one goes about ordering from europe). Some sellers have no pictures of the plant nor any description that indicates the whole plant is woolly. This is important since many varieties apparently have fuzzy fruit but the plants themselves are not woolly. Many others others don’t seem to be available for sale anywhere.

The following varieties are sold with explicit descriptions or photos of the plants which indicates the woolly type for which I’m searching.

Angora Supersweet (aka Velvet Red) (1 oz)
Chinese Velvet (4 ft tall, 2-6 oz)
Elberta Peach (det, 4 ft tall, 2-3 oz)
Extravagante Rouffiange (3 ft tall, 2-3 oz)
Furry Bumblebee Dwarf (3-4 ft tall, 2-3 oz)
Scheherazade (4 ft tall, 6-8 oz)
Woolly Kate (4 ft tall, 2-3 oz)
Woolly Blue Wine (4 ft tall, 2 oz)
Wooly Blue Jay (4 ft tall, 1 oz)
Woolly Bully Blue Wine (4 ft tall, 2 oz)
Woolly Mammoth (4-7 ft tall, 1 oz)
Woolly Current (4 Ft tall, 0.5 oz)
Churra Plum (1 oz)

There’s probably lots of others I’m missing but this is a good starting point. I’ve ordered all these seeds (except Churra Plum) and sowed them yesterday. Since most of these varieties are small, I figure I can devote 2 of my raised beds for a grow out of these.

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[Wildcat82]

So much for the long range forecast of a warmer than normal winter. A week ago I moved all my containers inside since evening lows keep hovering around the freezing point. Hopefully I will get them moved back outside this coming Sunday. One thing I’ve noticed is that transported plants seem to really perk up, probably from the warmer temperatures inside, for 4-6 days them stop growing. After about a week of no sunlight, they begin to weaken dramatically.

I don’t recommend people plant their winter tomatoes in big containers since its a pain moving these heavy things in and out of the house every time freezes threaten. For most people in central Texas I’d recommend the 5 gallon buckets you get at Home Depot or Lowe’s since they’re lightweight and their handles make them easily movable. Ideally, you’d need to plant some smaller dwarf tomatoes or the woolly types in these buckets if you want really early tomatoes.

Meanwhile under the grow light my woolly varieties, zinnias, lemon grass and basil have sprouted nicely. The mustard and ground cherries came up very spotty and the angelonia had to be completely replanted. Overall, I’d say most everything is on target for spring planting.

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[Homegrwoninillinois]

Hi, J&L Gardens is out of New Mexico I believe. Lee has made many crosses with wild tomatoes in various sized plants. They are $5 a pack of seeds but each pack contained around 40 seeds.

If you are looking for some more options their site might be worth a look.

~Sam

[MissS]

I bring in new varieties from across the pond and introduce them here through the MMMM. This site has a great selection of wooly tomatoes. I have ordered from them 3 times without and trouble. I have found some great varieties this way that we otherwise would have missed out on.

https://www.karierte-tomate.de/produkt- ... e-tomaten/

[Wildcat82]

There’s a mixture of good news and bad news in the ol’ backyard.

The Good
My Salavatski pomegranate didn’t freeze to the ground like usual this winter. It’s leafing out nicely and looks ready to grow. Let’s see if I can get a couple pomegranates this Fall.

The Black Beauty mulberry I got in a couple months ago is leafing out. Supposedly, morus nigra type mulberries are really good tasting – I hope they are a lot better than the flavorless wild mulberries around our farm in Nebraska.

The tomatoes I planted in late January all survived the freak weather we had earlier this week and several (Mt Magic, Big Beef, Jaune Flamme, Black Cherry and Brandy Boy) have already set fruit. None of my woollies survived so I re-sowed them a couple days ago – I’m thinking there is still time to give them at least an abbreviated trial this year.

The Panache Tiger, Violette Bordeaux, and Ronde de Bordeaux figs I got in this winter have been planted in 5 gallon buckets and have put out new leaves.

My El Dorado Peach is covered with beautiful pink blooms. The plants are still pretty small, maybe 2 feet tall, so I’m not really counting on getting many peaches yet. But looking good so far.

The Bad
It looks like all 6 in-ground figs died this winter. Not real surprising since they looked pretty bad this past fall. They never grew an inch last year and slowly kept dropping leaves, probably due to mites. Now that I’ve establish mites can attack and kill figs I’ll make a more concerted effort to keep spraying them all year. I’m speculating that if I can keep the mites off them, and get the figs up to 4-5 feet tall, the plants will be big enough to withstand the mites without all that spraying in succeeding years. At least that’s my hope.

My Parianka pomegranage and both feijoa’s I had in pots look like they croaked as well. I think they died this winter because they dried out in their containers – because of my foot surgery I couldn’t water them for over a month. I ordered 2 replacement feijoas (Ramsey and Marion) and will try again. Last year, both plants grew nicely and didn’t seem bothered by mites so I think they have a shot of being successful here.

Both lime trees I had in containers died as well. I’ve given up trying to grow any kind of citrus here. They only way you can have any success here is if you have a sun room.

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[karstopography]

Gardening is often a mix of the good and bad.

BTW, Limes are the least tolerant citrus of cold/freezing weather. I’d try some sort of dwarf satsuma on trifoliate root stock. Satsumas grafted on trifoliate Orange Rootstock are good down to 20° or so, maybe even a bit under. Satsumas are pretty dad gum delicious to boot.

https://www.panzarellacitrus.com/

This guy knows citrus and other fruit that can grow in Texas.