Have you ever looked, I mean really looked, at the leaves on your tomato plants? Even though I've raised lots of different varieties of tomatoes in my gardens over the years, I haven't paid much attention to their leaves. My focus is usually more on picking out the strongest looking plants at the nursery and keeping them healthy so that I could enjoy as many delicious, vine-ripe tomatoes as possible. This year is different though. This year I have lots of seedlings started, so I really have been paying a lot of attention to leaves.
As a participant in the
"EXTREME" Growing Challenge, one of the three crops I committed to grow from seed was tomatoes, so I'm paying lots of attention to my tomato plants - and their leaves. As it turns out, there are two main leaf types for tomatoes - Regular and Potato leaf types, and there are even variations within each of those two main leaf types. One variation, the Rugose, a Potato leaf that is a darker green and has a puckery surface, and another, the Angora, a Regular leaf that is hairy in its pubescent stage.
I am growing several different varieties of tomatoes and can clearly see the difference in their leaves. These
German Pink tomatoes are a Potato leaf tomato. Notice how their leaves have a smooth leaf edge with no interruptions and are deep green in color. Some say that this type of leaf is more tolerant of foliage diseases. That sounds reasonable to me because the heirloom German Pink tomatoes that I'm growing are from seeds my son saved last year from tomatoes he grew from seeds that his neighbor gave him. Those tomatoes, with seeds saved season after season for over a hundred years since being brought to this country from Germany by relatives of his neighbor, would have to be disease tolerant in order to continue to produce such tasty fruit year after year.
The Lunch Mate and Big Boy tomatoes, Regular leaf tomatoes. Both are hybrid tomatoes but I do not believe that has anything to do with their leaf type. The edges of their leaves have a more serrated-like edge and even though still tiny plants with very few sets of leaves, the leaves of the Lunch Mate tomato, pictured in the upper left of this photo, appear dissected and are a bit longer.
It's my observation that the Regular Leaf tomatoes seem to be faster growers - at least in the seedling stage. With close to a month yet before our last average frost date here in the Pacific Northwest, my seedlings have plenty of time yet to grow quite a bit before they are transplanted into my Happy Valley Community Garden spot. Now I wonder from which variety I will eat my first vine-ripe tomato.
If you notice gnats around your plants and want to get rid of them, it's easy enough to make up some traps. All you need is vinegar and water and all you do is pour a tablespoon or two of regular or cider vinegar (wine or fruit juice works well too) into a small container. Then add a few drops of dish detergent.
The gnats are attracted to the smell of the vinegar (or wine or juice) and will fly right into it for a taste. The small amount of detergent makes the vinegar slightly sticky so the gnats cannot fly out. Trapped, they drown. Haha gnats! I made up several gnat traps and placed them around my trays of plants.
Overwatering, the most common cause of fungas gnats, is what I think happened with my plants. I've been known to do that before and I need to be more careful about not leaving standing water in the trays the pots sit in after I've finished watering. Gnats, even though rather annoying, typically do not harm healthy, mature plants, but larvae can cause some extensive damage to seedlings. Their larvae are like little grubs, and by gnawing away on the tender roots of seedlings, they can easily kill them. Now I wait, and watch as the soil in my seedling pots slowly dries out, hoping that no more gnats are spotted, and if any are, that my gnat control will be effective.
The key to this map indicates the average minimum temperature in Zone 8a to be 10 degrees F. This last winter, even though exceptionally mild and lacking in snowfall, did have a few nights early on where the temperature dipped even a little lower than that, so an average minimum temperature of 10 degrees sounds reasonable to me. Even though that doesn't tell me anything about what I can expect during the spring, summer and fall growing season, I do take the fact that I garden in Zone 8a into consideration in the fall when mulching around periennial flowers, herbs and fruits that are established in my garden.
I've raked up some of the straw mulch put down last fall and pruned the raspberries, transplanting those tender new sprouts that poked up where they shouldn't be back into the boundaries of my raspberry patch. 
