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| This year I planted about a dozen tomato plants in our garden. I dug holes about a foot deep and filled them with well-composted soil. As my wife suggested, I put a paper diaper in the bottom of each hole to retain moisture, and a piece of 2 in. pipe in it so that water could be delivered directly to the roots and the absorbent diaper in the bottom of the hole. Each plant had a ring of plastic from a 5 gal. bucket around it, and the soil level in the ring was above the level of the garden, so each plant was effectively in its own raised bed. I watered them daily when they were young, and every several days when they got large and started bearing. They put on a lot of fruit in the late spring and early summer, and then pretty much gave up, and as the weather got very dry and hot here in central Texas, the plants died, in spite of regular, but not too frequent watering. I have an area that I've cleared for an additional garden, not yet tilled. It seems that before I cleared it for a future garden, birds or squirrels had taken a couple of last year's sweet 100 tomatoes and pooped out the seeds, or buried the fruit, in an uncultivated area, and a couple of tomato plants came up on their own. I believe I watered them only once during the entire hot, dry summer but basically I just left them alone. They got water from the occasional summer rainstorm that we have here in this rather arid region. The larger of the two plants is doing incredibly well and is producing lots of sweet tomatoes. The plant has never been "caged" and sprawls all over the ground. It produced tomatoes even during the hottest, driest part of the summer, and is now the only producing tomato plant I have here. My question is, what's the secret here? Why would a neglected, un-watered tomato plant do so much better than one which was carefully tended? What can I do next year to get _all_ my tomato plants to grow like this? |
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| The neglected plant must have had a decent growing medium. On you planting hole method: I see no benefit in putting a diaper down there. Your reason, to keep moisture that plant can use , probably not quit so. BECAUSE, for the plants to use that moisture it has to grow roots through that diaper. Then the roots would want to go further down but will have a hard time. So in effect that diaper acts like a hurdle. Instead of that you could dig even more and fill the hole with a compost rich roil, leaf mold, mix some peat moss ,..Then the medium down there will stay moist and the plants will be free to grow any way it wants. Another thing is that tomatoes also grow lateral roots , beyond the 5gal bucket ring. So, I think you should water an area twice as big maybe more. When I remove the mulch around a tomato plant and start scratching the soil i find lots of root right there. That is one of the reasons that you need to provide good amount of space between tomato plants. It is both for the top and the roots. |
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| Lateral roots can grow 3 feet and more from the base of a plant. They also grow down 3 feet and more. The root structure of a tomato seed planted in the ground The unwatered plants will probably have a larger root I've attached a link that I got from Carolyn years ago. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato root development
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| In addition to all the factors qaguy mentioned the primary difference is that your plants that you consider "carefully tended" were actually well-handicapped by the diaper (seriously??) and the bucket ring and way over-watered so were shallow rooted and water-dependent. Even with all things being equal a standard tomato plant won't compare with a cherry tomato plant when it comes to production and heat tolerance but you really need to re-evaluate your planting and watering methods for best results. Plant deeper, skip the bucket parts, leave out all the cellulose and plastic in the diaper and learn to water very deeply and much less frequently. Dave |
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| Thanks for the feedback here, all of which sounds reasonable. The questionable techniques (diaper, bucket ring) are ones my lovely wife read about on the Internet and insisted that we use, although at this point our volunteer tomato plants have us both rethinking everything. There is, as we know, all kinds of misinformation on the Internet :( So in addition to the ones mentioned, there are a couple of other differences between the volunteers and the "well tended" plants. The former is growing in soil that was formerly a thicket - briars and other vines, small trees, sumacs, junipers, etc. The soil is virgin as far as its use as a garden is concerned. Our garden tomatoes are growing in replacement topsoil of unknown origin. A 10 in. rainstorm last year sent a small river through that portion of our garden, taking out the topsoil down to the subsoil. The replacement soil grows good cucumbers and radishes, but may not be ideal for tomatoes, even though they were planted in holes filled with well-composted soil. Next year I'll do this: * Plant some tomatoes as seeds rather than store-bought transplants * Do away with the diapers and plastic rings * Water minimally to encourage the development of deep roots * Plant all the tomatoes in the new area where the soil is rich |
This post was edited by fmouse on Sat, Sep 7, 13 at 11:13
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| Gagay, That is a fascinating read, and throws a whole new light on how to start tomatoes from seed! I'm tossing my tiny peat pots that I normally start my seeds in. No wonder they get stalled! Thanks for the link. Linda |
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| Perhaps the volunteer tasted sweeter due to less water. Perhaps more soil and less composted material helped. My one cherry tomato plant in the front yard almost always does well. This year it produced more fruit than the eight cherry toms in the back yard. |
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| so theoretically if I plant one seedling into deeper and larger container right away it will do better than seedling transplanted several times from one size container to another? |
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| Sweet 100s are a hybrid. This means that the seeds of a Sweet 100 plant will recombine from their hybrid parents and "re-assort" in many different and unpredictable ways. Perhaps many many Sweet 100 seeds stared out, but perhaps the only ones that survived were those that had re-assorted to be most adapted to your particular (difficult) growing conditions. So they produced good, healthy plants. This SOMETIMES happens with Volunteer tomatoes. I know people who insist that all volunteers are crap, and they rip them out at the first sign of growth Others insist that the volunteers are sometimes the best and strongest plants in their garden. Due to genetic chance, both things might happen. If you have a plant you like, be sure to save some of the seeds from it, and try to grow them next year. And hope that it is stable enough that it continues to do well, AND to taste good. |
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