I am growing beefsteak tomatoes and got whiteflies on the leaves.?
Question:In a previous question, I asked how to get rid of them. I got good answers telling me to wash the leaves with soapy water and rinse. I did that and cut some of the leaves off. The tomatoes still look big, green and healthy. But in the process of doing this, one of the "branches" with a couple good looking tomatoes broke. Not fully, but it is now halfway connected and is being supported by the cage. Is there anyway to save them from failure?
Answers:
I just spray with soapy water and the soap will kill all types of bugs including fleas and bees. And then I rinse with a light spray. You may have to repeat a few times but big tomatoes break big branches so handling is not good. You can dust with Sevin powder and that is the weakest of poisens but it's still poisen. There is Seven 5, which is flea powder and I use it when I have to dust and Sevin 10. You have to be careful and not dust within so may days of picking the fruit-check the label. I used to be able to go to K-Mart and a couple of others and they had an Ortho big book and you could look up your bugs or disease and then get the right treatment for the problem. I don't know if Ortho has it online or not but I finally found some cheapie software that had the info on it. If your tomatoes or the branch break off, just wrap them in newspaper or store them in a brown paper bag until they ripen. You can do that with all of your year end tomatoes and will have excellent tomatoes well into winter.
You might be able it you can tape the stem back together. The plant may/may not recover.
You can also harvest those tomatoes leaving them on the vine, put in a brown paper bag and let them ripen on their time
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