Paint them
Here's what I do:
Assist in the Bedroom
Using a cheap brush from one of those school water color sets, dip the brush in honey (or anything sticky). Go from blossom to blossom on the tomato vines and be a bee. Hand-pollinate. Get some honey on the tip. brush the inside of a blossom. Proceed to the next blossom and repeat.
Take Care of the Body
Do what I'm doing today. Strip off the bottom two levels (or more) of leaf stems. In my garden, these levels tend to be the first to show signs of blight and fungus invasions. The reason is that they they are directly in the splash-back zone when water hits the plant. The water hits the ground and splashes soil back up to the underside of the leaves...transporting any fungal spore/virus from the soil to the leaves. Removing the lower levels of leaf stems makes this more difficult. Definitely take out any leaves that directly contact soil.
Make Your Bed
I suppress weeds and create a consistent cool, moist soil environment around the plants by plastering a layer of newspapers (soy-based inks are used by most papers). Get as close to the main stem as you can when you paper the ground. Wet the paper so it mats down. Then coat the paper with a thick layer of pure straw.
Follow these three tips and your vines can all die off by late August like mine do because I plant my tomatoes in the same damned place every year. :)
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In response to this post by RoswellGAHokie)
Posted: 06/16/2019 at 11:29AM