While natural, nicotine is also very toxic. It’s just as toxic for your garden as it is for people. Like you said it can also have the tobacco mosaic virus.

Ants don’t normally eat plants, so perhaps it’s worth looking carefully at the situation and try to figure out if the ants really are a problem? I have ants in my garden, and while annoying they aren’t really a serious problem. I just let them be.

If you decide you really have to do something about the ants, I suggest scalding hot water. This can kill plants too, so you need to be careful where you pour it. You should look for the ants nest if possible, or the areas where most of the ants are. Don’t expect to kill all the ants in one go, just try a kettle full here and there for a few weeks and see how it goes, then use more water if it seems to be working.

You probably won’t kill all the ants with hot water, but rather disrupt the nests enough so they move on someplace else.

I just wanted to say thank you for all the help. Sadly I have another problem.. I have been trying to grow my garden as organic as possible and I have these little sugar ants climbing up my tomato cages and eating my tomatoes! They eating everything, watermelon, cantelope, bell peppers, even my jalepenos! I tried , instant grits, cornmeal, tabasaco, cloves, cinnamon, garlic oil.. So far they always come back. This old man at the extention office here in the tri-cities told me that nicotine is a natural insectacide, but I also heard that the tabacco virus can kill your tomato crop… Please help!

I think the problem you’re having is blossom end rot (BER):

http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/PhotoPages/Tomatoes/Tom_BlossRot/Tom_BlossRot1.htm

If you are growing your tomatoes in a container, it’s probably because the container is too small. Otherwise it’s usually a problem with not getting enough water.

The root of the problem is the tomatoes are not getting enough calcium, and while it’s possible there’s not enough calcium in the ground, this isn’t usually the true cause. Most of the time it’s a problem of the plants not getting enough water and so can’t absorb enough calcium from the ground.

If you think there might be a shortage of calcium in the ground you could add a small amount of lime or some crushed egg shells.

If you have staked your tomatoes, it’s possible you have tied it to the stake too tightly and it’s getting pinched off. This can cause BER. This happened to me one year.

Otherwise, if you don’t think any of these could be causing the problem, you just need to have a look around and see if you can find anything that might be keeping the tomatoes from getting enough calcium.

Good Luck!

On that note, I second the need to trial a new heirloom. I was excited about Pontimarron squash but in my garden it produced later than expected and drew the cucumber beetles like chocolate draws me (I like chocolate). This is not to say that it won’t do wonderfully well in other gardens and it is an heirloom in decline so perhaps could use a grow out.

Oh to do a grow out. Why I need to purchase some land.

Thanks again for another well thought out, well written post.

To answer your question about tomato seed saving, it depends on how pure you want your seeds to be and how much trouble you want to go through to try to isolate them.

Generally speaking it’s not much of an issue with tomatoes, because they are mostly inbreeding plants and don’t tend to cross much. It’s very rare when the rate of accidental crossing is higher than 5% in home saved tomato seeds, even under the worst of circumstances.

For some people the occasional cross is a good thing, it can be interesting to see what you get. Also, if you are looking out for it, you can often notice crossed plants when they are pretty young and just remove them if you don’t want them.

If a 5% rate of crossing is too high for you, you can reduce this by putting some space between the plants. A couple of yards will make a big difference. Since they are usually crossed by insects, you can also cover your plants with fleece row covers to keep the insects off. Since commercial seed companies really have to make sure they sell very pure seeds, they may separate the plants by some tens of yards and/or use fleece covers.

The one thing you should be careful with is currant (sometimes called wild) tomatoes. These will much more easily cross with themselves and regular tomatoes. You should not grow these in the same part of the garden you are saving tomato seeds from, or cover them with fleece.

Mike: Thanks for the info on the TMV! I didn’t know it was much of an outdoor virus. Perhaps more or less the same thing applies as with the wilt diseases, that it’s not so important to lose sleep over it until you know it’s a problem in your garden. I have the sense the TMV is not that common when all is said and done, but maybe I’m wrong…

Yes, I wonder if we can develop a plant where you can both smoke the leaves and eat the fruit. That would be an accomplishment!

Curtis: Thanks for stopping by!

Ah! Another xkcd fan…

Chillis are quite prone to Tobacco Mosaic Virus, so should be kept a reasonable distance from Tomatoes, too. I had a hell of a time some years back when a number of the Jalapenos got TMV, and I lost a significant proportion of the crop. In truth, it may have been some other virus — Capsicums are notoriously susceptible to quite a bewildering array of viruses, many carried by Tobacco — but TMV remains the Prime Suspect. I’d had a labourer working in the garden who smoked… :-O

With all this talk of hybrids and genetics, maybe we should start an Heirloom Tomacco Project

I also have a dumb question. If you want to save the seed of an heirloom, and you do not want to try to create a new hybrid, how can you be sure that it hasn’t cross-pollinated with another variety? I have read that you should grow different varieties apart from one another, but how far? And unless you only grow one kind of tomato, how can you be sure that it hasn’t crossed?

Thanks for the great post as usual.

Melinda: Keep in mind that while disease might not be as important as everyone says it is, because of the problems I did mention here, it can seem like your plants are diseased and you should have tempered expectations the first year you grow any unknown heirloom variety.

Kate: The problem we have here in Holland is blight, usually late blight. There are a lot of commercial potato farms which host the disease, and it’s just everywhere. The solution usually is to grow the plants somewhere where the foliage stays dry like a greenhouse, and while this doesn’t prevent infection it keeps it from spreading too quickly. Invisible mites sound very frustrating.

As for insect attack on tomatoes, we have a new and nasty infestation of mites, invisible to the naked eye, that are devestating tomatoes in Adelaide in the last 2 years. Although my garden rarely has any pest problems because of my work with nature, not against it, approach, these mites ruined all my tomato plants this year.

Great post – I’m glad you addressed disease resistance. There is so much emphasis on that aspect lately, it drives me batty.

This is great information. In small plots, like mine, I think it is impossible to grow many multiples of tomato varieties, but I can do the “grow-out” process on peas and a couple other crops. Thanks for pointing out the need to do this.

Have a great weekend!