Advice Needed

[Munir]

Three problems encountered:
1. Chinese Lemon gets split before ripening:

2. Tomatoes. Holes with some black deposits outside. No chemical fertilizer or pesticide ever used;home made soap & cooking oil solution as advised in this Forum applied once recently & will be repeated -results not visible yet.

3. Blackberry fruits eaten up partially or fully.Is it an act of a bird or an insect, though neither seen around?

Kindly name the problems & advise treatment

[M Farooq]

ASA,

The citrus "disease" is called citrus food cracking, resulting from uneven supply to fruit skin. Google search this term with a limiter, site:.edu, after the search term and you will plenty of authentic discussion on this disease.

http://ceventura.ucanr.edu/Gardening/Co ... trusCrack/

Regards,
Farooq

[M Farooq]

Three problems encountered:

2. Tomatoes. Holes with some black deposits outside. No chemical fertilizer or pesticide ever used;home made soap & cooking oil solution as advised in this Forum applied once recently & will be repeated -results not visible yet.

2) "Organic" remedies like soap work temporarily for insects that live on the exterior of the plant. The worm has bored a hole in your tomatoes and is happily munching your fruits. I guess you have to resort to actual pesticides.

3) I haven't grown blackberries before, but by intuition this pattern of fruit damage (large bites of the fruit) is the karistani of birds like parrots or sparrows :-)

[Farhan Ahmed]

For tomatoes.....possibly tomato horn worm/ fruit worm caterpillar.
Discard all affected fruits immediately.
Search for holes in stem as these make their way through them.
Drench plant with any general purpose pesticide.
Sprinkle coopex powder at the base of plants and on the foliage. Spray little water so that it stick.

Inspect closely for these worms at night with a torch. Kill by smothering.


It appears that your berry plant is in pot. If yes relocate to a sheltered site close house to ward off birds.
If in ground try scare crow or cover the plant with fleece/net.
If its caterpillar there must be some pattern on leaves also. However it appears its only on fruit. Most probably birds.

For citrus what is your pattern of watering ?????? another cause could be calcium deficiency.

[Munir]

Thank you Farooq & Farhan .

I avoid using chemical pesticides. Moreover, there are a good number of tomatoes close to ripening which will be wasted if a pesticide is used. I will therefore, adopt the other suggested measures. If the problem still persists, then perforce I will resort to use of a GP pesticide.

As regards Blackberry, it is in a pot & have fixed a Flash Tape to scare critters away. Being first fruiting, the quantity was not much & not many are left.

The third problem of split lemon needs further study. I ll see the link suggested by farooq. Irregular pattern of watering could be a possible reason, though the interval generally followed is 10-15 days.

[Farhan Ahmed]

citrus are very much drought tolerant plants......if you say 10-15 days that is reasonable duration provided your soil is not extremely sandy or free draining.