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Tomatoes are a vegetable that almost everyone loves. Red, crimson, pink, yellow and white, black, brown and even green – but ripe! These berries are just begging to be tasted. In order for tomatoes to grow tasty and ripen on a bush, they need a lot of sun and heat. In the south, everything is very simple – sowed in the ground, and then just look after. But in the middle lane, and even more so – to the north, this will not work.
The number of varieties that can be grown in a seedless way is small, and they do not have time to fully give up the entire possible harvest in our short and not very generous summer. So you have to grow seedlings, care for them and cherish them, water them, feed them, swoop down. Usually, top dressing is practiced with a complete soluble complex mineral fertilizer. But it does not contain one of the elements necessary for tomatoes – iodine.
In this case, only one drop of iodine is used per two liters of water. Each plant is watered with a small amount of this solution. After such top dressing, the plants become stronger, and the flower brushes that form in the future are more branched.
It seemed that quite recently the seedlings were tiny, but stable spring warmth had already come and it was time for the seedlings to move to the dacha. The conditions for all gardeners are different – someone has a solid greenhouse under polycarbonate, and someone has a small greenhouse under the film. Many plant seedlings directly into the ground, hoping that hardy varieties will adapt to any conditions. But wherever tomatoes grow, they equally require care and proper care. Each gardener can do a lot for his beloved tomatoes: water, feed, remove stepsons in time, but it is not in his power to provide his wards with optimal weather. Our unpredictable summer is much more surprising: either endless rain, or a sharp cold snap. Such a heat-loving culture as tomatoes in extreme conditions is not easy. Plants are immune. So, not far off the disease.
When signs of disease appear on plants, it will be much more difficult to cope with them.
Ways to combat tomato diseases
Prevention of diseases should go in two ways.
- Strengthening plant immunity.
- The fight against possible pathogens in order to prevent not only their spread, but even their appearance.
Strengthening plant immunity
Plant immunity can be strengthened with the help of immunostimulants. There are a number of drugs that not only increase the resistance of plants, but also significantly increase the yield and improve its quality. One of these substances is immunocytophyte.
This is a domestic product. Before allowing the use of immunocytophyte, its harmlessness and effect on plants was tested for several years on tomatoes. Tests were carried out by the Department of Phytopathology, SSAU named after. Vavilov. Their result was a conclusion about complete safety not only for humans, but also for animals and even insects. And this is understandable – the preparation contains the optimal combination of substances useful for plants and harmless to humans: arachidonic acid, which is not only found in some vegetable oils, but is also added to breast milk substitute mixtures, antioxidants – substances that do not need recommendations, a number of esters based on ethyl alcohol and some high molecular weight fatty acids. The main component of the immunocytophyte is ordinary urea, a well-known nitrogen fertilizer. But the effective action of the drug is due not only to these components. Immunocytophyte contains a substance that is the result of the vital activity of a number of pathogenic microorganisms for plants. In small doses, it acts on them in the same way as a vaccine against a disease on a person, developing the ability to resist these diseases in the future.
This drug is especially effective in creating immunity to late blight – the most dangerous disease.
Signs and causes of late blight
Late blight is caused by phytopathogenic fungal microorganisms. Plants from the nightshade family and even strawberries are susceptible to it, in total about forty plant species. But if in potatoes, when signs of disease appear on the leaves, the tubers may not have time to be amazed before harvesting, then on tomatoes late blight often takes on a hurricane character and can destroy the entire crop in just a few days. A characteristic sign of the disease is the appearance of brown spots, first on the stems, then on the leaves, and then on the fruits of the plants. The emergence and rapid spread of the disease is facilitated by close planting of potatoes to tomatoes, increased humidity of both soil and air, non-compliance with crop rotation, crowding of plants, improper watering, and the abuse of nitrogen fertilizers.
In order to prevent the appearance of the causative agent of the disease on plants, various methods of processing tomatoes can be used. One of the fairly simple, but, nevertheless, quite effective is spraying tomatoes with iodine. One of the big advantages of this treatment is harmlessness to humans. There is no need to wait three weeks after processing to taste ripe tomatoes.
The benefits of iodine for tomatoes
Iodine in small doses is necessary for all plants. Most of them lack the amount of this element that is present in the soil. But for tomatoes it is not enough. Outwardly, iodine deficiency on the plant has almost no effect, and the gardener may not even guess that the plants lack it. But the lack of this element can lead to a slowdown in metabolic processes, in particular, the degree of nitrogen absorption worsens, the growth of the plant itself and the ripening of fruits are inhibited. Iodine belongs to microfertilizers, so its norms for top dressing are small.
Root top dressing with solutions containing iodine
Top dressing with this element can be combined with the introduction of other nutrients in liquid form, adding three to ten drops of 5% iodine tincture to the nutrient solution for every ten liters. The number of drops increases as the tomatoes themselves grow. This is a root feed. It is carried out no more than once every fifteen days. Up to four such dressings can be carried out during the garden season. For every square meter, five liters of solution are consumed. Water the plants under the root, wetting the soil around them. With this treatment of tomato with iodine, pathogenic fungi that are on the surface of the soil are destroyed.
Combination of foliar top dressing with iodine with treatment from phytophthora
Foliar top dressing with iodine has a good effect on the development of tomatoes. It is better to spend them on the growing moon, when the aerial part of the plant absorbs nutrients as much as possible. Spraying tomatoes with iodine not only provides additional nutrition to plants, it is an excellent prevention of late blight. The best effect is obtained by adding milk or whey to the iodine solution, which is also a good remedy for this disease.
Proportions of the working solution:
- whey or milk, preferably not pasteurized, one liter;
- iodine – fifteen drops;
- water – four liters.
It is possible to spray only with serum without the addition of iodine. It is bred in a ratio of one to one.
It is desirable that a few days after treatment were without rain. Iodine foliar prophylaxis of phytophthora can be carried out no more than once every fifteen days. But the treatment with a solution of milk or whey is carried out as needed, at least every day. It does not harm plants, while providing them with additional nutrition and even improving their growth. The milk film is unstable, as it is washed off by rain.
Processing tomatoes with iodine in the greenhouse and on the street
Foliar treatments should be carried out starting a couple of weeks after planting and ending at the end of August. By this time, determinant tomatoes grown in open ground are already finishing their growing season. Spraying tomatoes with iodine in the greenhouse and in the open field is carried out in different ways. There is no natural precipitation in the greenhouse, all moisture is brought there only by gardeners. As a result, the solution after treatment is kept on the plant. In a greenhouse, tomatoes always receive slightly less moisture than in the open air, so nutrients are washed out into the lower layers of the soil less intensively.
But foliar top dressing in the greenhouse should be carried out in September. Indeterminate tomatoes in the greenhouse grow and bear fruit until frost, and the weather in September is already cool, which increases the risk of phytophthora.
But it’s better not to limit yourself to this and additionally carry out top dressing and processing according to all the rules. Based on iodine and whey, there is another recipe that allows you to effectively deal with late blight on tomatoes while feeding the plants. This is covered in detail in this video.
Phytophthora is a dangerous disease, but it is quite possible to fight it successfully, or even better, just not allow it to your site. A good help in this will be preventive spraying of tomatoes with iodine.