I have a 5 acre farm in Osun State and i wish to venture into tomato farming. I have learned and asked questions where and when i can, but to be honest i dont only have access to 2 farmers who uses greenhouse.

Everyone is advising planting tomatoes in green houses. Green houses are not affordable to everyone and some farmers do not plant their tomatoes using green houses. These 2 farmers emphasize about the disadvantage of rainfall to tomatoes. I have read about the diseases and challenges on rainfall an tomatoes.

Do we have farmers here planting tomatoes in open fields? How do you handle the tomatoes especially during raining season?

Every crop has got its challenges. Tomato does not like heavy rain like you know. If I read you well that you have learned, you would have learned it cannot stay in any kind of flood for 12 hours, it will have serious shock. And by 48 hours, it is gone. If you know this, you can tackle the problem.

In addition, you will face fungi issues. The craziest diseases without many resistant varieties around are early and late blight. Resistant seeds can still handle CMV and TYLCV. So, get your agro chemical formation ready. During rainy season, use systemic and not contact agro chemical.

My brother, your challenge I think is that you do not undertand the theoritical aspect of farming. People just jump into farm, pick hoe and they start doing guess work there. I laugh hard when I see them go for trainings in the bush and they do not teach them the principles of crops cultivation but jump into learning how to make beds with hoes. Come on! They should learn to be thinkers and not instructions takers. Instructions takers are farm laborers/workers. Learn to be a farm owner. You do not need to learn using hoes at all. Waste of time, waste of energy, and total misplaced priority. You need to learn the theorical part very well before diving into field operations. And you need to start thinking, what is the cause of this? What can I do to check this? You need to know the active ingredients in agro- chemical so that when you go to the shop, you can always make good decisions. Do not learn about brands. Learn about active ingredients.

There are contact fungicides and systemic fungicides. Contact must stick to the leaves to prevent diseases but during rain, it gets washed away easily. So, it is common sense that it will not work. So, why use it? But you see many farmers use it stupidly during rainy season.

To combat flood, you should understand the erosion pattern of your farm so you know how to make your beds. Very high beds must be made. This is common sense too.

The third common sense you should have had is that you cannot get the same challenge in two different locations. During rainy season, humidity is high and air is a disease carrier. What you get in Lagos is different from what you get in Osun. If you realise this, you should know that you can get very little help but you may be lucky. In fact, you are lucky with what I am telling you. So, this leads us to the last common sense.

The last common sense is that you do pilot during rainy season. Test different varieties you can lay hands on. Do not cultivate your 3 acres if you do not know what to expect and how to tackle them. For you, a plot might be your pilot but another person, your 3 acres may be his/her pilot. Perhaps the fellow wants to cultivate 50 acres. People want to invest in veggie but they are scared. Farmers aren't God to give you 100% assurance that your investments are safe. I do not even subscribe to collection of investments to farm; however, a good farmer might do that sparingly to step up. Doing 3 acres as pilot for 50 acres production is a good pilot and one plot pilot for 3 acres is not bad at all.

There are very few or no farmers who cultivate during rainy season. What they do is to transplant at intervals so they can harvest just before heavy rain, during heavy rain, and immediately after heavy rain. The ones before heavy rain are what they are sure of and they try to make it big enough to cover their cost of production and to make little profit. If they are successful with just 30% during heavy rain, that is huge success for them.

You may consider using shelter to cover your plants in order to increase your efficiency to around 80%. You do not need to make this a large farm. Just one plot is enough if this is what you can afford to construct shelter over. On this 1 plot, you can make sales as if it is 15 plots during dry season.

Finally, it is common sense that if you have greenhouse, you do not cultivate the varieties you cultivate on open field. And you do not sell to open market with greenhouse. So, do not compare open field with greenhouse. It is a blunder by new farmers. The products from a greenhouse are expensive and you do not sell them like the products from an open field. Few farmers who are into greenhouse (those who do it rightly and not those who are using the so called dizengoff models), are always smiling to market almost every week. It may be expensive but it is rewarding. And because the entry level is high, only few are enjoying it while many are complaining bitterly. And it will continue for a very long time. The truth is that it is not that expensive but when your currency is N370 to $1 and you must import it, you know it is crazy.

So, you see what I am telling you. To be a unique farmer, you must learn to use your common sense after going through training or after setting up your farm. And only you can help yourself in this situation. But there are smart ways to go about it. What you need more are suggestions which you must use your common sense again to filter out gabbages, and choose best methods for your case. If you wait for someone to give you a template you can "rank xerox", you will definitely injure yourself financially.

Hope this helps.

@fluentinfor, that information was awesome, thanks! Which systemic fungicide active ingredients do you use? Which hybrids do you plant?

Seun:
@fluentinfor, that information was awesome, thanks! Which systemic fungicide active ingredients do you use? Which hybrids do you plant?

Will mention readily available ones.
Systemic Fungicide: Carbendazim, Metalaxyl, and I think Dichlorophen too.

Contact: Mancozeb, Copper based insecticide, Calcium bicarbonate, Potassium bicarbonate etc. There is a popular solution called Bordeaux.

From what I have seen, contact seems more advisable if you can really spray it to coat your leaves. They say prevention is better than cure. Systemic cures, it does not prevent. It is why many brands combine both contact and systemic in their products - copper I oxide + Metalaxyl.

During dry season, if you can spray mancozeb, bordeaux mixture, or any copper based fungicide, you will get it right. Contact is protective. Spray before infection. Spray spray spray. And i spray systemic + contact during vegetative period. As soon as I start harvesting, I minimize everything drastically. This is when you expect the immune system of your plant to work for you. You can help with potassium bicarbonate.

During rainy season better choose a fungicide with very high % of systemic. Seriously, I cannot find that around yet. Maybe Carbendazim is the best choice for now.

Here is my style. I rotate spraying copper, bordeaux, copper mixtures, and systemic during vegetative. During flowering I move towards Mancozeb and any other contact type, and use less systemic. It takes time for systemic to get washed away from plants. As soon as it is like 2 weeks to my first harvest, I switch completely to acceptable organic fungicide: Sodium Bicarnonate and Potassium BiCarbonate.

If you follow these steps, you will never get it wrong and if your fruits are tested, they may take them for organic fruits.

Hybrid:
I do not make recommendation because I do not want to promote any of them. What you should do is: Make sure the variety can tolerate Bacteria wilt, TYLCV, and any other wilt. To get ones tolerant to blight is hard.

Since you asked me for recommendations:

East West International:
Padma for rainy season; platinum for dry season. So the company says. I cannot verify them since East West is not sincere and open about information of their seeds. Petsonally, i have not tried any of them but I think padma makes more sense since it fetches more money during rainy season..

Technisem:
Cobra seems to be their best for now. Followed by Panther. I have cultivated cobra and I can tell you that it is ok. Many farmers say cobra is for rainy seadon but I disagree. It is all year round as long as one can fight blight and some other wilt problems. Very strong one. Technisem got it right with this one. For me, i will choose this over any East West. It is even cheaper.

Continental:
Commando and Ranger come to my mind. For greenhouse, Maxim is nice.

Finally, I am not cultivating any of these brands for my next tomato. I am doing something special this time. I hope to create a thread for this soon. Pray for me to get it right and I will share my experience. Right now, we are just recruiting farm hands for land preparation.

may God bless u sir, i got my finger burnt after the so called training which i think u might be familiar with, the most important points are nt xpressed, sir u be baba coz u re practical farmer, most of we vegetable educated farmers are weeping within bcoz there re lot of challenges but no one to complain to however you av profered solution to most of the challenges.thank so much.

fluentinfor:


Will mention readily available ones.
Systemic Fungicide: Carbendazim, Metalaxyl, and I think Dichlorophen is too.

Contact: Mancozeb, Copper based insecticide, Calcium bicarbonate, Potassium bicarbonate etc. There is a popular solution called Bordeaux.

From what I have seen, contact seems more advisable if you can really spray it to coat your leaves. They say prevention is better than cure. Systemic cures, it does not prevent. It is why many brands combine both contact and systemic in their products - copper I oxide + Metalaxyl.

During dry season, if you can spray mancozeb, bordeaux mixture, or any copper based fungicide, you will get it right. Contact is protective. Spray before infection. Spray spray spray. And i spray systemic + contact during vegetative period. As soon as I start harvesting, I minimize everything drastically. This is when you expect the immune system of your plant to work for you. You can help with potassium bicarbonate.

During rainy season better choose a fungicide with very high % of systemic. Seriously, I cannot find that around yet. Maybe Carbendazim is the best choice for now.

Here is my style. I rotate spraying copper, bordeaux, copper mixtures, and systemic during vegetative. During flowering I move towards Mancozeb and any other contact type, and use less systemic. It takes time for systemic to get washed away from plants. As soon as it is like 2 weeks to my first harvest, I switch completely to acceptable organic fungicide: Sodium Bicarnonate and Potassium BiCarbonate.

If you follow these steps, you will never get it wrong and if your fruits are tested, they may take them for organic fruits.

Hybrid:
I do not make recommendation because I do not want to promote any of them. What you should do is: Make sure the variety can tolerate Bacteria wilt, TYLCV, and any other wilt. To get ones tolerant to blight is hard.

Since you asked me for recommendations:

East West International:
Padma for rainy season; platinum for dry season. So the company says. I cannot verify them since East West is not sincere and open about information of their seeds. Petsonally, i have not tried any of them but I think padma makes more sense since it fetches more money during rainy season..

Technisem:
Cobra seems to be their best for now. Followed by Panther. I have cultivated cobra and I can tell you that it is ok. Many farmers say cobra is for rainy seadon but I disagree. It is all year round as long as one can fight blight and some other wilt problems. Very strong one. Technisem got it right with this one. For me, i will choose this over any East West. It is even cheaper.

Continental:
Commando and Ranger come to my mind. For greenhouse, Maxim is nice.

Finally, I am not cultivating any of these brands for my next tomato. I am doing something special this time. I hope to create a thread fof this soon. Pray for me to get it right and I will share my experience. Right now, we are just recruiting farm hands for land preparation.

I can shoot you some pdf files of these brands. I won't want to post them so I do not violate any of their regulations. With this solid info, you can make professional decision and choose wisely.

may God bless u sir, i got my finger
burnt after the so called training
which i think u might be familiar
with, the most important points are
nt xpressed, sir u be baba coz u re
practical farmer, most of we vegetable educated farmers are
weeping within bcoz there re lot of
challenges but no one to complain to
however you av profered solution to
most of the challenges.thank so
much.

@fluentinfor:
Thanks for the length but brief breakdown. This has been most helpful.

Nice thread

Seek out Jethro post on Tomato on nairaland agric section also read the experience of Tomatojos at http://www.tomatojos.net/the-team/. Also talk to Mira Mehta an American who left Gods own country to come and plant Tomatoes in Nigeria

Nice advice @fluentinfo


Know the diseases associated with the crop you are planting
Understand the causes of the disease
Select the best seed suitable for your environment
Select your herbicide and draw application plan

Every crop has got its challenges. Tomato does not like heavy rain like you know. If I read you well that you have learned, you would have learned it cannot stay in any kind of flood for 12 hours, it will have serious shock. And by 48 hours, it is gone. If you know this, you can tackle the problem.

In addition, you will face fungi issues. The craziest diseases without many resistant varieties around are early and late blight. Resistant seeds can still handle CMV and TYLCV. So, get your agro chemical formation ready. During rainy season, use systemic and not contact agro chemical.

My brother, your challenge I think is that you do not undertand the theoritical aspect of farming. People just jump into farm, pick hoe and they start doing guess work there. I laugh hard when I see them go for trainings in the bush and they do not teach them the principles of crops cultivation but jump into learning how to make beds with hoes. Come on! They should learn to be thinkers and not instructions takers. Instructions takers are farm laborers/workers. Learn to be a farm owner. You do not need to learn using hoes at all. Waste of time, waste of energy, and total misplaced priority. You need to learn the theorical part very well before diving into field operations. And you need to start thinking, what is the cause of this? What can I do to check this? You need to know the active ingredients in agro- chemical so that when you go to the shop, you can always make good decisions. Do not learn about brands. Learn about active ingredients.

There are contact fungicides and systemic fungicides. Contact must stick to the leaves to prevent diseases but during rain, it gets washed away easily. So, it is common sense that it will not work. So, why use it? But you see many farmers use it stupidly during rainy season.

To combat flood, you should understand the erosion pattern of your farm so you know how to make your beds. Very high beds must be made. This is common sense too.

The third common sense you should have had is that you cannot get the same challenge in two different locations. During rainy season, humidity is high and air is a disease carrier. What you get in Lagos is different from what you get in Osun. If you realise this, you should know that you can get very little help but you may be lucky. In fact, you are lucky with what I am telling you. So, this leads us to the last common sense.

The last common sense is that you do pilot during rainy season. Test different varieties you can lay hands on. Do not cultivate your 3 acres if you do not know what to expect and how to tackle them. For you, a plot might be your pilot but another person, your 3 acres may be his/her pilot. Perhaps the fellow wants to cultivate 50 acres. People want to invest in veggie but they are scared. Farmers aren't God to give you 100% assurance that your investments are safe. I do not even subscribe to collection of investments to farm; however, a good farmer might do that sparingly to step up. Doing 3 acres as pilot for 50 acres production is a good pilot and one plot pilot for 3 acres is not bad at all.

There are very few or no farmers who cultivate during rainy season. What they do is to transplant at intervals so they can harvest just before heavy rain, during heavy rain, and immediately after heavy rain. The ones before heavy rain are what they are sure of and they try to make it big enough to cover their cost of production and to make little profit. If they are successful with just 30% during heavy rain, that is huge success for them.

You may consider using shelter to cover your plants in order to increase your efficiency to around 80%. You do not need to make this a large farm. Just one plot is enough if this is what you can afford to construct shelter over. On this 1 plot, you can make sales as if it is 15 plots during dry season.

Finally, it is common sense that if you have greenhouse, you do not cultivate the varieties you cultivate on open field. And you do not sell to open market with greenhouse. So, do not compare open field with greenhouse. It is a blunder by new farmers. The products from a greenhouse are expensive and you do not sell them like the products from an open field. Few farmers who are into greenhouse (those who do it rightly and not those who are using the so called dizengoff models), are always smiling to market almost every week. It may be expensive but it is rewarding. And because the entry level is high, only few are enjoying it while many are complaining bitterly. And it will continue for a very long time. The truth is that it is not that expensive but when your currency is N370 to $1 and you must import it, you know it is crazy.

So, you see what I am telling you. To be a unique farmer, you must learn to use your common sense after going through training or after setting up your farm. And only you can help yourself in this situation. But there are smart ways to go about it. What you need more are suggestions which you must use your common sense again to filter out gabbages, and choose best methods for your case. If you wait for someone to give you a template you can "rank xerox", you will definitely injure yourself financially.

Hope this helps.

Pls give me your WhatsApp no. Mine is 08032781837. I need advice on how to plant tomatoes. Thank you.