Tomato fixer app
More than 40 million home gardens will be planted this spring, and nearly all will have a tomato plant of some variety — heirloom or hybrid.
Tomatoes are by far the most popular edible plant home gardeners grow. There are thousands of varieties out there, and more appear every season. Park Seed has just released a new tomato seed series called Heirloom Marriages that crosses favorites such as Brandywine with other openpollinated varieties such as Big Dwarf. The elusive goal is to get the heirloom flavor and texture in a plant that is a heavy producer, ripens quickly and is disease resistant.
For many tomato growers, keeping plants healthy until harvest is the most frustrating of tasks. Tomatoes can be attacked from the roots to the top of the stem: wilting, rotting, stunting, damping off. The fruit can turn black, yellow, mottled, mushy — or never appear at all.
The list of symptoms is long and the possible causes are complex: insects, parasites, fungi, viruses, bacteria, nutrition, weather, too much or too little water, nematodes.
Fortunately there is a new tool that could become as essential in the garden as a trowel: Tomato MD, an inexpensive interactive phone app (Android/Apple-iOS) that allows fast identification of a plant’s problem in the root, leaf, stem or fruit. The app is set up to take you through the most difficult part of dealing with a sick plant: what’s wrong and what is causing it. There is an index of diseases, insects, mites; a photo gallery of the most common diseases; a list of diseases. Control solutions and other possible remedies for the problem may be suggested. And for those who want a definitive diagnosis, there is a list of labs where you can send your sick plant along with instructions on how to ship it.
The $3 app comes from the publishing arm of the American Phytopathological Society, a nonprofit that focuses on plant health management. Most of the society’s publications have been designed for professional farmers and growers, but this app has the home gardener in mind.