Choose tomato varieties that do well in your garden conditions

Best way to avoid problems such as leaf roll is to rule out susceptible plants

Dear Helen: My tomato plants are once again repeating a problem I’ve had with them over the past three years. They grow in fine health until early July, when the leaves on some of the plants begin curling up. If they continue the same pattern of recent years, growth will become stunted and few tomatoes will be produced.

I have only one good growing space for tomatoes. I can’t plant them anywhere else. D.D.

Leaves rolling up and becoming brittle on stunted plants is a disorder called, aptly enough, tomato leaf roll. It’s not a disease, but rather an affliction involving tomato variety choice, weather and growing conditions.

You say that only some of the plants display symptoms. Check the variety or varieties of the affected plants and consider eliminating them from your roster of tomatoes next year.

Over many years in my garden, Big Beef has proven to be the most robust, fruitful and untroubled staking tomato variety. Varieties prone to leaf rolling are most likely to begin deteriorating in hot, dry weather, especially in stressful growing conditions.

The rolling can often be reduced by ensuring soil fertility as well as consistently even and adequate moisture levels. Mulching with a nourishing compost at the onset of hot weather, after a deep watering, is helpful.

Try to renew the soil as much as possible each year by removing some of the old and adding compost, fresh soil, or/and planting mix. Dear Helen: My lot has only a thin layer of soil over bedrock, and I love growing vegetables. I’ve constructed a large boxed frame with 30-cm high sides and filled it with soil and compost, but exposure to full sun for most of the day makes it too hot for most plants, especially greens.

What could I grow at the high, south end to shade the sloping garden? L.A.

Yours is not a simple situation, because you are dealing with full sun together with a limited depth of soil. The lack of a generously deep rooting area limits the possibilities in shading plants.

Otherwise, I’d suggest a simple grape arbour over the southern third or half of the plot. Pole beans, or tall corn or sunflowers, at the south end might not bring adequate shade early enough, especially considering that shade will be most needed when the sun is at its highest.

Another thought: Consider constructing a simple framework over the bed (or over the upper, southernmost part of it) to support shade cloth like the type placed over greenhouses to moderate summer temperatures inside them. Dear Helen: I’ve read both positive and negative comments about using wood ashes in the garden. What is your view on this? I.

I advise caution in using wood ashes. They are calcium-rich and highly alkaline.

I had a friend turn her beautiful blue hydrangea into a producer of muddy pink flowers by emptying an ash bucket around the bush.

Still, where a reduction in soil acidity is appropriate and potassium is needed, ashes can be useful.

Ashes have a nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium (potash) ratio of 0-1-5. These are the three major nutrients (N-P-K) noted on fertilizer labels. Nitrogen promotes green growth, phosphorus blooms and rooting.

Potassium hardens plant cells for general sturdiness and disease resistance. Potassium is a nitrogen balancer. Used to excess, potash can stunt plants.

Using ashes as the potassium element, you could mix them with blood meal or seed meals for nitrogen and bone meal or rock phosphate for phosphorus to make a fertilizer with a balance among the three nutrients.

Let’s say you buy blood meal rated at 12-0-0 and bone meal rated at 2-11-0. With the ashes count at 0-1-5, the three add up to 14-12-5 if mixed in equal parts.

To even the elements out roughly, mix one part (by volume, using a container such as a sour-cream tub) blood meal with one part bone and a little over two parts ashes.

GARDEN EVENTS

Government House plant sales. From 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays this summer to Aug. 31, the Government House Plant Nursery (next to the Tea Room) will be open for public plant sales. Proceeds go to the maintenance and enhancement of the gardens at Government House, 1401 Rockland Ave.

HELEN CHESNUT Some varieties of tomatoes are more susceptible to problems such as leaf roll. Big Beef is one of the most consistently productive, healthy varieties among staking tomatoes.