Tomato's bottom leaves wilded and dry

[jhinkle]

I'm in Key West. Started 4 tomato plants late December.

Planted as a Dutch Bucket. 5 gal pail -- half filled with drainage stones and top half in perlite.

Water tub holds 12 gallons and is currently at 82.2f for temp.

I use Jack’s Professional 5-12-26 Hydroponic and
Jack’s Professional 15-0-0 Calcium Nitrate mixed 1:1 ratio.

I use a bluelabs EC/pH meter -- calibrated every week.

I use RO water and PH is around 6.8 - EC 0.1

Water flow off of the 4 buckets is about 1/2 to 2/3 gallon per minute.

The bottom leaves look wilted and are dry. They are spotted white and I think that is from rain water --- it's been wet in the keys.

They started to flower 2 weeks ago and 2 have a single fruit growing.

I started 12/27 with 12 gallons, EC of 2.9 and PH of 6.3

1/11 EC was up to 3.1 and PH 7.3 --- I added PH down to bring PH to 5.8 -- added 4 gal water

1/28 EC 3.2, PH 7.7 -- added PH down to bring tank to PH5.6

2/1 EC 3.44, PH 8.2 --- and leaves are as explained above. --- I added 4 gal of straight RO water -- will measure EC and PH after is flows through the system a while

Plants do not seem to be consuming much water. -- 4 gal in 3 weeks --- seems low

I googled PH going up and found that the most likly reason is that the plants are consuming nitrogen - which is good.

The PH is creeping up but I found papers stating that an EC of 4 will slow growth down as it puts the plant is a slight water starved mode but increases the quality and taste of the fruit.

Issues as I see right now:

1. Wilted-dry bottom leaves.

2. PH going up every day.

3. Low water consumption.

Any help or comments would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

Joe

[GpsFrontier]

Hello jhinkle,
I have a few questions:

1. How often do you change your nutrient solution?
2. How much nutrient does JRPeters recommend using for a full strength nutrient? I believe they go by weight (something like 11.4 oz) per 100 gallons. They do for the herb formula anyway.
3. How much are you using?
4. What is the humidity?
5. Do the white spots feel powdery?
6. Can you smear the white spots?
7. Do you notice any insects around the plants? Especially like tiny white fly's, spider mites, or aphids etc..

P.S.
I would pluck off the leaves with the white spots. Also I would put them in an air tight bag or burn them to get rid of them.

[jhinkle]

Originally Posted by GpsFrontier

Hello jhinkle,
I have a few questions:

1. How often do you change your nutrient solution?
2. How much nutrient does JRPeters recommend using for a full strength nutrient? I believe they go by weight (something like 11.4 oz) per 100 gallons. They do for the herb formula anyway.
3. How much are you using?
4. What is the humidity?
5. Do the white spots feel powdery?
6. Can you smear the white spots?
7. Do you notice any insects around the plants? Especially like tiny white fly's, spider mites, or aphids etc..

P.S.
I would pluck off the leaves with the white spots. Also I would put them in an air tight bag or burn them to get rid of them.

Funny you ask question #1 -- about changing out the nutrient solution. I read a paper from cornell univ:
http://www.greenhouse.cornell.edu/cr...ic-recipes.pdf

I spoke at length to Dr. Cari Peters on that subject. Cari stated that changing nutrient solutions was necessary when the fertilizer being used was not properly designed for hydroponics and overtime the nutrient ratios would change as some nutrients were consumed faster than others.

I grow lettuce and tomatoes and asked specifically about those two. Cari stated that Jack's 5-12-26 + 15-0-0 calcium nitrate did not require changing except at the end of the growing cycle. Cari stated that the nutrients in the hydroponic mix was all soluble and mixed in the proper ratios to make intermediate changing not required. This is my first try at tomatoes so I will see how well things work out.

Question #2&3 -- The Cornell paper -- 360 grams of each are for 100 gallons. Jack's blog states 368 grams.

I use 3.68 g per gallon --- I uses a scale with .01g resolution.

Question #4 -- I'm right on the ocean - 85 to 90% is what weatherbug states.

Questions 5&6 -- I just went out and cut every stem that had white marks on them. I brought one inside and looked at it under a microscope. It looks like patches of small spider webs. You can smear the white spots - as is you are collapsing the web and smearing the strands together.

Question #7. I have looked and found no insects.

Do you have an idea/guess as to what the white spots are? If insect -- how to get rid of them?

I grew tomatoes for several years in earthboxes down here and had no insect problems. Two years ago - and for a two year period -- I had an invasion of what I call tomato worms. I have not seen any sign of them as of today.

I started late (I wanted to grow from seed) so I purchased these 4 plants from Home Depot. I usually don't like to buy plants from them as I have found they come with insects and issues. Maybe my white spots were there all the time and I did not notice them with the plants only being 4 inches tall.

I appreciate your comments and would love to hear your comments based on my answers.

Thanks

[GpsFrontier]

Hello jhinkle,

Funny you ask question #1 -- about changing out the nutrient solution. I read a paper from cornell univ:
http://www.greenhouse.cornell.edu/cr...ic-recipes.pdf

I spoke at length to Dr. Cari Peters on that subject. Cari stated that changing nutrient solutions was necessary when the fertilizer being used was not properly designed for hydroponics and overtime the nutrient ratios would change as some were consumed faster than others.

I grow lettuce and tomatoes and asked specifically about those two. Cari stated that Jack's 5-12-26 + 15-0-0 calcium nitrate did not require changing except at the end of the growing cycle. Cari stated that the nutrients in the hydroponic mix was all soluble and mixed in the proper ratios to make intermediate changing not required. This is my first try at tomatoes so I will see how well things work out.

I wasn't there for your conversation. but I'm sure there are a lot of miscommunications for one reason or another. Large commercial growing operations can get away without changing the nutrient solution for two reasons. But neither of them are in your favor. Commercial operations can get around this by either running their system as a non-recirculating system, or lab testing the plants and adding back only the specific elements the plants use faster/more of. Your system is recirculating, and you don't have the ability to test and only add back specific mineral salts. Every time you add nutrients your adding ALL of them, not just the ones the plants used most of. It doesn't mater how properly balanced the nutrients are designed, plants don't use the nutrients evenly no mater what. Eventually your nutrient solution will become unbalanced, leading to toxic buildup of nutrients that the plants don't use as much of.

You can reduce the effects of nutrient imbalance for a specific time frame by using nutrients designed for a specific crop like tomato's. But you cant change it without changing the nutrient solution, running it as a non-recirculating system, or lab testing and only adding back the specific mineral salts the plants have used. For the home grower lab testing is to expensive and not cost effective. So that leaves either changing the nutrient solution regularly, or running it as a non recirculating system.

One sure sign you need to change your nutrient solution is the rapid pH swings. That's why I asked how often you change it, because you were experiencing them. But before I gave any advice I wanted to know if this could be related to expended nutrient solution, or something else. That's one of the reasons I asked about this. The other reason is if your nutrient solution is unbalanced, you could be experiencing any number of nutrient deficiencies and/or toxicities as well. How often you should change the nutrient solution depends on a lot of variables, but mostly depending on the size of the plant compared to the water volume. I wrote an article "What size reservoir do I need" to help explain these things.

The Cornell paper -- 360 grams of each are for 100 gallons. Jack's blog states 368 grams.

Just for future reference, I always recommend asking the nutrient manufacture only because I want the information to come from the horses mouth. So I'm not really interested in what Cornell says, but if JRPeters has a blog that gives this information that's fine. I usually e-mail them the question directly to make sure I understand correctly. I'm not really familiar with grams, but if the grams to ounce converter I used is correct, 368 grams is about 13 oz. That seems a little high to me, I know what your using is a different formula than the herb formula. If it were me, I would e-mail them just to be sure.

I'm right on the ocean - 85 to 90% is what weatherbug states.

I asked about this for two reasons. One is the spots could be fungus, one is more common in dry climates, but humid climates are more susceptible to fungal growth. The best defense against fungal growth in humid climates is good air circulation. The other reason I asked about humidity is to find out if spider mites may be likely in your area. While I'm not sure how many species of spider mites there are, I think they all prefer hot dry climates. But I could be wrong.

Questions 5&6 -- I just went out and cut every stem that had white marks on them. I brought one inside and looked at it under a microscope. It looks like patches of small spider webs. You can smear the white spots - as is you are collapsing the web and smearing the strands together.

This leads me to think your experiencing either a fungal growth, or spider mites. Spider mites are very small and hard to see with the naked eye. Usually you don't even notice until there's an infestation. If left long enough, the webs will become very noticeable that they are webs, and usually when you become aware they are there. Under a microscope a fungus can look like tiny hairs/webs, but unlike actual spider webs, a fungus is more localized like growing spots, and not warped around leaves and stems.

The reason I suggested to pluck the leaves and get rid of them by either putting them in an air tight bag (like a Ziploc) or burning them is the only sure way to keep either fungal spores and from spreading, and/or spider mites from migrating. Even if you place them in the trash unless their contained spores can become airborne, and spider mites will crawl out to find somewhere else to go near by.

The best defense ageist insects is a healthy plant. Insects are drawn to plants with their defenses down first. Their looking for an easy target. But if you notice their a problem with insects, first you need to identify what you have, in order to deal with the. Tomato horn worms are hard to spot at first, but will be unmistakable when you notice your leaves being eaten down to the stem. Tomato horn worms don't leave white spots, they eat the whole leaves.


Let me know if you think the spots appear to a a fungus instead of spider mites. I have some articles saved on dealing with fungus that I could post for you.

[jhinkle]

I very much appreciate your comments.

Re-looking at my documentation and emails from JR Peters -- they were mostly on lettuce which is growing nicely for me.

Since Dr. Cari Peters co-authored the Cornell paper, I went with the JR Peters recipe for tomatoes stated there -- it gave me an initial EC of 2.9. Howard Resh states that an EC range of 1.5 to 3.0 was good for tomatoes. I've read other articles that state the 1.5 to 3.0 EC produces a good volume of tomatoes but not flavorful ones -- tastes like the one in the store - bland. For flavor -- the EC should be 4.0 to 4.5 --- so I was not concerned about my EC climbing to 3.4.

Here is the excerpt from Jack's blog:

The 5-12-26 + Calcium Nitrate is a great vegetative fertilizer if you need to modify your nitrogen needs or to fit in with your specific water types. This combo can be used to grow a wide range of crops from lettuces, herbs, and fruiting crops. In its simplest formula you can mix ½ tsp. of each product in a gallon of water. I generally do not recommend this rate, but if you only need a small amount, it works. To make 10 gallons of solution follow this formula:
In 10 gallons of water, dissolve 1.3 ounces of 5-12-26, when that is totally dissolved add 1 tablespoon of Epsom salts for extra Magnesium and Sulfur. Finally add in .86 ounces of Calcium Nitrate. This will give you 150ppm of Nitrogen, which is the perfect rate for growing hydroponically.


Point taken of nutrient unbalance and changing out the solution. Earlier today I added 4 gallons of straight RO water - no nutrients. Tomorrow I will flush the system and start anew. Being a retire engineer, I'll start collecting data daily - add a variable for plant size -- and see if I can start predicting when to change out the solution as opposed to waiting until I get massive PH swings.

I looked at the white spots under a stereo microscope and they look like small patches of tiny hairs -- not spider web as I previously stated. That would lead me to conclude that my issue is a fungus as you stated in your post. Please share your fungus article.

Thanks again for your comments.

[GpsFrontier]

Hello jhinkle,

I have 5 articles for you:

The Grey Ghost
by Dr. Lynette Morgan 2002-01-01
http://staging.maximumyield.com/arti...=116&submit=Go


Powdery Mildew
by Dr. Lynette Morgan 2001-03-01
http://staging.maximumyield.com/arti...D=78&submit=Go


Maddening Mildew: Prevention and Control
by Dr. Lynette Morgan 2010-10-01
http://staging.maximumyield.com/arti...=622&submit=Go


Furry Frustrations
Written by Dr. Lynette Morgan March 2013
http://www.maximumyield.com/inside-m...y-frustrations


The Fungus Among Us!
by Cindy Rea, 2005-11-01
http://www.maximumyield.com/article_...=273&submit=Go

Unfortunately the links don't work anymore. Maximum yield has updated their website and either taken the pages out of their database, or changed the links. Either way the links don't work anymore. When I find good articles from creditable sources and authors, I save them in a text document, and file them on my computer to save them. So even though the links don't work, I still have them in their entirety on my computer.

If you send me a private message with an e-mail address, I can send you the text documents with the articles. I don't save the e-mail address or put it on a mailing list, and I recommend only giving me your e-mail through a private message because that way I will be the only one that ever sees it. If you don't trust giving me your e-mail, create a new free e-mail account. It only takes 5 minutes to create a e-mail account. But I would really like to get you these articles, and the only way I can is to e-mail you the text documents I have saved.

I've read other articles that state the 1.5 to 3.0 EC produces a good volume of tomatoes but not flavorful ones -- tastes like the one in the store - bland. For flavor -- the EC should be 4.0 to 4.5 --- so I was not concerned about my EC climbing to 3.4.

You may not know this but most store bought tomatoes are hydroponically grown. Their not bland because of low nutrient concentrations, their bland because they were picked before they were fully ripe. Even the so called vine ripened tomatoes are the same. They just leave the stems attached when they ship them so they can technically call them "vine ripened." You've grown tomatoes before so you know how how they should taste and when their ripe enough. You wouldn't pick them when their pink, and set them on the counter waiting for them to turn red. But that's exactly what happens with store bought tomatoes, and why their bland. They pick them pink and let them turn red during shipping and sitting on the shelf in the store. They would get soft way to soon if they waited tell their ripe to pick them. They can't sell them if their soft. Nobody buys soft fruit. I'll bet even you like to feel the tomatoes and would only buy them if they are nice and firm with no blemishes. That's what sells, not ripe. If you want actual ripe tomatoes, you have to grow them yourself.

There are a lot of environmental factors that affect nutrient uptake, as well as water needs by the plant, like plant size, amount of fruit on the plant, temperature, humidity, light (photosynthesis), oxygen levels, co2 levels, etc. etc.. There are times it's better to use lower nutrient concentrations, and times to raise concentrations. But to simply conclude that higher nutrient concentrations will always produces better tomato is wrong. In fact I have another article to send you as well called:

Nutrients - Over and Under Use
by Dr. Lynette Morgan 2001-05-01
http://staging.maximumyield.com/arti...D=81&submit=Go

And I'll post a direct quote from the article:

"Some crops such as lettuce and other greens prefer a much lower EC than fruiting crops such as tomatoes, and each crop has its own ideal EC range for optimum growth. When the EC is being run to high for a particular plant, this will show as visible symptoms within the crop. A high EC, effectively puts the plants under `water stress' since the plant cells begin to lose water, back into the more concentrated nutrient solution surrounding the roots. As a result the first sign of nutrient `overuse' is plant wilting, even when supplied with sufficient nutrient solution. If the high EC conditions re not too severe, the plants will adjust to these conditions and you may see growth which is `hard' in appearance - often a darker green then usually, with shorter plants and smaller leaves."

While higher concentrations can be beneficial to certain plants and under certain circumstances, there is a definite downside of concentrations that are to high as well. So understanding the things that affect nutrient and water uptake, as well as how and why these factors affect the plant is more complicated than just saying higher is better. I rarely ever use nutrient solutions at 100% strength. Typically I'll make it about 75%-80% strength for full grown plants and plants in full growth. Younger plants anywhere from 10% for sprouts and seedlings, then 25%-50% and up to 75%-80% depending on size.

Being a retire engineer, I'll start collecting data daily - add a variable for plant size -- and see if I can start predicting when to change out the solution as opposed to waiting until I get massive PH swings.

I have created some "Daily/weekly Hydroponic system charts" for collecting data. I tried to get as much in one sheet of paper using both sides as I can to eliminate tons of paper needing to be used over time.

But honestly, I don't even use them. I physically look at my plants on a daily basis, and can tell by looking at them if the nutrient concentrations are low, to high, diluted (spent). As a grower, I'm about as lazy as it gets when it comes to writing things down. Most of the time I don't even mark on the calendar when I changed the nutrients. I generally go anywhere between 1-4 weeks between nutrient changes. Also sometimes I will just add back some diluted nutrients to bring up the concentrations if I feel the plants could use it, but don't think I need to do a full nutrient change yet. Again it all depends on the environmental factors that affect the plants water and nutrient uptake, as well as water volume compared to plant size.

When I start seeing changes like the overall growth seems to slow down, the new leaves start coming out a lighter green (yellowing), the nutrients are spent. I don't check pH daily, but if I suspect a problem, or know the nutrients haven't been changed for a while, I'll pay closer attention to daily pH and look for abnormal swings. Also if the plants are drinking a lot of water compared to your total water volume, and your having to add back 20% or more water back daily to keep the water level up, that will deplete your nutrients much quicker. As well as cause pH swings if you don't pH adjust the water before adding it to your nutrient solution.

To make 10 gallons of solution follow this formula:
In 10 gallons of water, dissolve 1.3 ounces of 5-12-26, when that is totally dissolved add 1 tablespoon of Epsom salts for extra Magnesium and Sulfur. Finally add in .86 ounces of Calcium Nitrate. This will give you 150ppm of Nitrogen, which is the perfect rate for growing hydroponically.

This is a good example of why I would contact the manufacture directly to clarify what they recommend for the crops I'm using their nutrients on. I don't know why this person is recommending adding the Epsom Salts. The full description for those exact nutrients on JRPeters website states:

"This formula was designed as a base foundation for hydroponic growing. It can be manipulated in such a manner as to provide virtually any combination of nutrient levels desired, providing the highest availability to plants, due primarily to Jack’s has proven ability to remain in true solution over long periods of time. Should be used in combination with the 15-0-0 Calcium Nitrate in a two-part system."

So first, the manufacture makes no reference to adding Epsom salts in the first place. Second there is no ratio for adding it in the statement you posted. If I'm going to be adding it, I would want to know why, as well as know exactly how much (the ratio). A balanced nutrient solution would already contain Magnesium and Sulfur. And If there were some crops that could benefit from increasing the Magnesium and Sulfur levels, I would want to know which crops those were first before just adding it because someone else did. Then because adding Magnesium and Sulfur will change the balance of nutrients, I would want to know the exact ratio for adding it in the second place.