With the traditional planting date of Good Friday behind us, the home tomato gardening season in the Panhandle is in full swing. While tomatoes are the most persnickety veggie we grow, there are several practices you can adopt to help you succeed: selecting an adapted variety; regularly scouting for insects and disease; and watering and fertilizing appropriately. However, the most overlooked practice for success gardeners can adopt is proper pruning.
‘Big Beef’ Tomato with lower leaves removed. This is an excellent disease reduction practice. Photo courtesy of Daniel Leonard.
Correct pruning does a couple of positive things for tomatoes. First, it reduces the incidence of disease by preventing leaf contact with the soil, opening the interior of the plant, and allowing better airflow. This is important as many plant pathogens reside in the soil and only need a splash of water to travel onto plant leaves. Also, densely foliaged plants trap warm, moist air in their canopies, creating a perfect environment for disease to flourish. Letting the plant canopy “breathe” through pruning prevents that negative environment from forming! Second, correct pruning of “suckers” (extra growth points that can develop into shoots) helps tomato plants develop optimum yield and fruit quality. By removing suckers, more water, nutrients, airflow, and light are directed to the main stems, where the majority of tomato fruit production occurs. Failing to remove suckers (especially on indeterminate varieties) can result in reduced yields, increased disease, and generally messy plants!
With the reasons for pruning tomatoes established, the next step is learning exactly what to prune and how to do it in a sanitary matter.
Get rid of any foliage that could encounter the soil, generally all leaves occurring on the lower 12-16″ of the plant. All kinds of nasty tomato destroying diseases, like Early Blight and Bacterial Leaf Spot, reside in the soil and are just waiting to be splashed onto your plants – don’t let that happen.
Determine how many primary shoots you want your plant to have. Leave enough lower suckers to achieve that number (generally just one, two, or three as more than 3 primary stems gets hard to manage), and prune or pinch out all the rest. To prevent stress from pruning, be diligent in removing suckers when they are still small, 2” or less.
Always clean and disinfect your pruners before making a cut on a tomato plant. This is best accomplished by rinsing the blades with warm soapy water, drying, and following with by a quick alcohol spray. A 10% bleach solution will also work, but if not thoroughly rinsed after, bleach can corrode pruner blades and other working parts. If you make cuts on a plant that appears diseased, repeat the sanitizing process before you begin pruning another plant as “dirty” pruners are an easy way to spread pathogens in the garden.
Developing vegetative “sucker” that will need to be removed. Photo courtesy of Daniel Leonard.
While tomatoes are indeed a difficult vegetable to grow, learning to prune them correctly will greatly help to make this a successful season. If you just keep leaves off the ground, suckers pinched, and pruners cleaned, you’ll be well on your way to less disease, prettier plants, and more tomatoes to pick. For more information on growing tomatoes and any other horticultural topic, please contact your local UF/IFAS County Extension office. Happy Gardening!
If you enjoy a walk in some of the Panhandle’s naturally wooded areas you often come across many selections of ferns. One of my favorites to come across is the cinnamon fern, Osmundastrum cinnamomeum.
Green fronds are pinnately compound. Fertile fronds with spores emerge in the center. Photo by Beth Bolles, UF IFAS Extension Escambia County.
This clumping fern grows to about 2-3 feet in height. It can be larger when there is ample moisture. In the spring, it forms fertile fronds in the center that are reddish-brown in color. The sterile leaves emerge from the base of the plant to form large leaves about 2 feet in length. Leaves will be green most of the year, depending on available moisture, and can offer some fall color as they die back.
A shaded portion of my backyard has four well established cinnamon ferns. I was able to purchase these from a nursery about 20 years ago. Even without moist soils on my property, the ferns do well with average rainfall.
My favorite season for the cinnamon fern is the spring with the contrasting colors of the sterile and fertile leaves. The plants make an attractive display, mixed with ground orchids, toad lily, and the leaf mulch from the live oak tree.
Coarse texture of the ground orchids blend well with the fine textured leaves of the cinnamon fern. Photo by Beth Bolles, UF IFAS Extension Escambia County.
Plan your area carefully if you want to add cinnamon fern since there will not be foliage present in the winter months. Blending these plants with some evergreens creates a low maintenance spot in a shady portion of your landscape.
A biologist with Blackwater State Forest checks longleaf pines for signs of red cockaded woodpecker nests. Photo credit: Carrie Stevenson, UF IFAS Extension
Longleaf pine is a granddaddy among the trees of the Southeastern United States, once covering up to 90 million acres throughout the coastal plain. Tall and stately, slow-growing and dense, it was one of the most desirable trees in the forestry and shipbuilding industry for two centuries. Its sap was used to produce turpentine, tar, and pitch, especially to coat and waterproof the bottoms of wooden ships. Its tall, upright form made for a perfect ship’s mast. Between the years 1830 and 1935, approximately 90% of the Southeast’s old growth longleaf trees were harvested, and much of the land was used for farming or development.
Besides its commercial uses, the longleaf ecosystem supports a wide diversity of other plants and animals. The endangered red-cockaded woodpecker nests only in the wood of old (100-500 years!) longleaf pines, and the canopy shades a grassy groundcover often dominated by wiregrass. Gopher tortoises, the endangered indigo snake, and quail also thrive in longleaf pine ecosystems.
A longleaf pine in its grass stage. Photo credit: Carrie Stevenson, UF IFAS Extension
The longleaf pine is highly adapted to fire while in its “grass” stage and as an older tree, allowing it to tower over smaller hardwoods that are cleared out in natural and prescribed fires. This clearing allows its own seeds to sprout and thrive, and for low-growing grasses to dominate the understory. Pines can be difficult to differentiate in the southern forest, but longleaf pines have deep (up to 8-12 feet) taproots and long needles—up to 18 inches—in fascicles of two or three. The needles grow in spherical bunches that look like cheerleading pom poms.
As ecologists and foresters have realized the important role these trees play in the landscape, significant efforts have been undertaken to restore much of that habitat on both public and private land. Locally, Blackwater State Forest and neighboring Eglin Air Force Base have replanted and managed thousands of acres of longleaf habitat. Foresters and nonprofits also work with private landowners to reestablish these stately pines.
There is a tall stately tree that can be found throughout the southeastern states, native in nature with a lustrous green leaf the southern magnolia is like no other tree. This amazing tree can be found from the edge of deep woodlands to the back of the tall sand dunes in the panhandle of Florida, all the way down the Florida Peninsula. The leaves provide a consistent evergreen providing a year-round presence in the landscape. Spring brings up small plate sized creamy white blooms with a wonderful fragrance with multiple blooms opening over 3 to 5 weeks. The magnolia can serve as a specimen tree or a back drop to allow other plants to be enjoyed.
Magnolia Tree in the Landscape. Photo courtesy Stephen Greer
Often the magnolia is envisioned to be this 80-foot tall by 40-foot-wide tree with an upright pyramidal shape with the branches reaching to the ground and up to 8-inch-long shiny green leaves. There are other shapes and sizes in the landscape industry that have been found in many different ways from seedling research that has taken place at several of our land grant universities including the University of Florida. Other magnolia with different growth and bloom habits have been found growing in nature. Below are a few of these exceptional species that were selected by the keen eye of a nurseryman or a plant specialist. Next come decades of field grown observation to determine if the plant characteristics are consistent with cuttings taken and rooted to grow more trees. This is one way to see if the same look and growth continues in multiple plants.
Magnolia Bloom. Photo courtesy Stephen Greer
If you grow trees from collected seeds, the new seedlings will show variable growth patterns and likely not present a consistent growth or leaf form from tree to tree. This is the reason for taking cuttings from a magnolia with the desired growth habit, leaf size and color, bloom color and fragrance.
Several cultivars have risen to the top in popularity in the landscape industry over the last 30 to 40 years. One of the most popular large magnolias is ‘Bracken’s Brown Beauty’. It was selected in a seedling field when one of the universities had completed research and invited a local nurseryman to come take any he wanted before the field was turned under for other plant research. Many were dug and field planted at the nursery with one showing many desired characteristics. With its dark rusty brown lower leaf and deep green top. It was observed for a number of years with cuttings taken. One major observation was its tolerance to cold weather. They had a winner and began to introduce it into the plant industry. ‘Little Gem’ is another magnolia that is quite popular for its dwarf (slower) upright growth habit. It first was considered a hedge plant with a dense leaf canopy from bottom to top. The challenge is the plant density opens up as it matures with it ultimately reaching approximately 30-foot tall by 20-foot wide. The surprising part of this smaller magnolia is its bloom is similar in number, yet 3 to 5 inches in size in large numbers as the other southern magnolias. Next there is a few weeks rest period and then sporadically blooms all summer and early fall. There are so many magnolias that could be mentioned I just don’t have enough article space, so it will stop with ‘Claudia Wannamaker’. This magnolia is an old stand by that has been found to be moderately salt tolerant and can be found growing near coastal settings. The leaf wax layer is slightly thicker allowing for a little more protection from the salt. It has a more open multi-truck growth allowing for wind to pass through more easily. The challenge is finding one in the landscape industry.
Contact your UF IFAS Extension office in your county with questions. Enjoy this wonderfully unique tree.
