My cukes don't get mosaic, but my tomatoes tend to. My tomatoes just don't fruit, actually, because it quickly reaches 90+, so the pollen just dies in the bud.
My cukes did OK this year, but lack of rain and pests did them in. I was treating this years garden as sort of a 'off' year, where I just put a few things out and barely paid attention to them unless needed.
I've not heard of high temperatures causing tomato pollen to die in the bud. Tomatoes love the heat from what I understand. What causes fruiting for tomatoes (other than nutrients) is having warm nights. The redness of tomatoes comes later from the heat of the sun. Which is why if you take an under ripe tomato and keep it in the sun for a day or two it will be a deeper red. Not a better flavor but a better color at least. I wonder if your soil conditions are right for them. Are they getting enough nutrients to fruit? I've just never heard of someone not being able to grow them if they live in a zone where it is possible to grow them. Im genuinely confused.
They get proper nutrients, I amend and test my soil, my water is good from the well.
I’ve grown for over a decade. East Texas. It’s super humid and hot during the summer… with proper shading and water intake, they will fruit. But they absolutely will refuse to fruit with 95+ temps. I’ve seen it happen time and again. Without shading they biologically refuse to pollinate at high temps.
Heat resistant varieties can do better, for sure, but I don’t like any of those varieties :P
Ohhhh okay. This makes a lot more sense, I don't think I realized after a certain temp they would need cover. I imagine the humidity also plays a huge role for you too being from TX.
Are the heat resistant varieties less flavorful like how store tomatoes have been bred in such a disease hardy way the flavor is basically gone? Is that why you don't like them?
Yeah, it's mostly a flavor/texture deal for me. I hate store-bought tomatoes here. Grew up thinking I just hated tomatoes in their raw form, until I visited Italy and discovered holy hell, tomatoes can taste amazing?! So I started growing them more at home. They are a huge pain in the ass here, but they absolutely can grow. They are just needy and picky, and the climate here isn't something they really like without adjustments!
My friends live further out in the country and they grow multiple long rows of slicing and paste tomatoes like roma, and they get great results. We figure they place their tomatoes in an ideal location regarding sun, because my yard garden spot gets like 14+ hours of sun a day, which is normally awesome, but when the heat index is like 115 F, nature just starts to revolt honestly, haha.
That's strange, summer reaches insane levels of heat and humidity where I'm from and tomatoes grow just fine without the need for shading. Today it was 41c (105f) and 50% humidity during the day, and that's not even that bad by our standards.
Perhaps it depends on the strain? Or other factors could possibly be in play.
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u/dick-nipples 26d ago
It looks like a mosaic virus