16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Got 14 Might Mato "Mortgage Lifter" and "Brandywine" plants. Plants are now over 8 ft tall, but, BUT not even 2 fruit set!!
Stay away from these. Plants have thrived, but blossoms just DO NOT set. Also, what fruit I have got to taste so far are pathetic - almost flavorless.
I have heard the Mighty Mato company does not have good reviews, but can't say if the plants produce since I've never tried them. If the plants are 8' tall you should at least have flowering if not lots of tomatoes forming. We bought our grafting seeds and clips from Johnny's. The price for 50 seeds was around $23! Very pricey. We started half and around 20 germinated. We then started seeds for plants we wanted to graft onto the rootstock, mostly Heirlooms. We went to a workshop and got valuable info there and there is all kinds of info on the web. The grafting is simple, just "marry" the top of the heirloom plant onto the bottom of the rootstock and secure the clip. However, you need specific conditions for the graft to work, moist, humid & warm. We set up a small table top greenhouse and put the plants in them. The only problem we had was grafting when both plants were not big enough. We had a lot of failures but enough to grow. Next time we will wait for the plants to be larger and about the same size each. As posted earlier the plants are very robust, so much so that we have to constantly prune out suckers. They are way ahead of our regular tomato plants and have more tomatoes on them. We won't be able to make a final determination until all plants start producing and just how disease resistant they are compared to our standard ones, especially at the end of the season. So far . . . so good and the plants are definately way ahead of the standard ones.
As far as grafting for disease resistance, that is a big part of it, especially for market growers who use high tunnels but also for in the field. Another big plus is more and longer production than standard tomato plants, especially Heirlooms which most market growers want.
Again we will have to wait for the end of the season to decide if the cost of the seeds are worth the extra effort but we are encouraged!
I don't know anything about "fish head" or fish filet for that matter. BUT I know one thing for sure about EGG SHELL. It takes months if not years before it decomposes into a form (Ca++) to be available to plants. Not all calcium in different compositions is digestible by plants. It has to be in an IONIC form (like in CaCO3 = Ca++ ...). same goes with N,P,K, Mg, Fe, etc.
Then adding to "HOLE" is another subject. It assumes that tomato will grow roots just in downward direction; which is not true. Just scratch the soil around the stem of any tomato plant. You will encounter roots.
As for some references if one looking to learn about soil and how stuff works, Dr Elaine Ingham Soil Foodweb.com is good reference.
Also am reading book by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis " Teaming with microbes", highly recommend.
Some nice reading here as well
Here is a link that might be useful: soil food web
My tomatoes just seem like they really want to produce fruit off the suckers instead of the main stems.
Yep, that is their nature. :)
Or would it be ok to let the sucker grow and trim off the leafy branch underneath it on which no flowers or fruit form? I wouldn't take all of those, but just thin the foliage a bit
That is the best way to go if you have to do some pruning. Just don't over-do it. The plant needs those leaves to produce energy and to shield the fruit from sunburn. Where you live (need to include that info) will determine how much sun scorch protection your fruit needs.
The two varieties you planted are two of the biggest plants out there by far so keep that in mind for next year when it comes to choosing varieties or method of support.
Dave
Seysonn, the many home gardeners making crosses are not doing it for the money. they are doing it to get the F2 seeds to sow the next year and make selections and continue making selections at each generation until the one selection they think best is stable.
Keith is not a full time breeder but all those he bred, and is still doing so if you look at his website, are also available at several websites and he gets no money back.
His variety Purple Haze F1 is not that available other than plants and any money received from those sales go for autism research since his son is autistic.
And often they , the amateurs,come up with something great as did Sam with his initial cross between German Red Strawberry and D.r Wyche which is now called Sweet Ozark Orange, which took him about 5 years to stabilize.
And I could give you other examples aswell.
I send seeds to several places for trial, so do others, and such new varieties often end up being sold here and there, and the persons who did the original crosses receive no money at all, just the pleasureof doing what they do and finding something successful.
it's quite different for commercial breeders such as Fred Hempel withhis Bumble Bees and Mark MC Caslin and Bill Jeffers and more,b/c sometimes, at least for the first two I just mentioned,there is always a contract involved.
if you look at Johnny's, TGS, Jung's and many more you'll see Fred's varieties being sold, for instance.
Hope that helps,
Carolyn
Carolyn, ..I was talking about the commercial breeders, not the home hobbyists. After all, I suppose, the process must be the same. An it sounds very involved and time consuming even when a person is trained and experienced. .. One has to do one flower, one crossing at a time.
And what amazes me is that the so-called "hybrid" seeds are sold at about the same price as the open pollinated ones.
I see only two leaves and each one has just one lesion. I can't see the internal structure of the one on the right, but the one on the left looks like the beginning, possibly, of Septoria Leaf Spot to me, a very common fungal foliage disease,
Because of the way it's spread, via wind and embedded in rain drops, no doubt it would have affected ALL your tomato plants unless you bought just the one being shown and it was infected where you bought it or where whomever raised the seedlings that sold them to a nursery, farmer's market, etc.
Carolyn
Seysonn, if you go back and read the FAQ here you'll find that bagging with tulle is one of the main methods suggsted for absolute purity of saved seed.
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Yeah. But I was talking about that article, not FAQ or other sources!!. I am done.
The article from Jeff only discussed geographic isolation, no other methods of helping to prevent cross pollination, which is why I suggested reading the FAQ here at GW that Dave linked to for other methods such as bagging blossoms with tulle.
Carolyn
seysonn, since you chose to call out people's posts....you are actually mistaken and somewhat rude....that was the title of his post.
what he did say in his text was ....." my concern is that they seem small for their type- the largest is bigger than a golf ball, and the smallest I have are maybe slightly larger than a ping pong ball. Am I doing something wrong?"
That is why my quote you posted.. was answered the way it was...his concern for under-sized fruit. Digdirt did the same.
isn't that Miracle Gro too high in nitrogen
It can be but the thing with containers is the nutrients wash out everytime you water the plant. So they need to be replaced regularly. Many report good success with MG diluted to 1/2 strength weekly or even diluted to 1/4 strength every time you water.
If using a self-watering container or if using drip irrigation and fertigation with containers it can be quite effective as it is always used in a diluted form.
Dave
labradors/Linda, I don't think we can move the upside down container. The iron stake is pretty deep into the ground as it is, and slightly bent due to storm damage, so I am weary of moving it, and have it secured to the staircase with jute. I wish I could hang it off a tree or something stronger! haha. Also, I live in a co-op, and the tree is on "our" side. It also gets significantly more sun here.
How much, and what kind of a difference will it make if I transplant into a bigger container? I have read 5 gallons is the general rule, but seen so many people post online - and in person - with containers smaller than I am using.
Either way, I think by the stairs will become the permanent spot. The container is hidden from street level by a bush in front, and there is already an upside down plant, there, so it won't look random if it's up against the steps.
Agressive? Dang! I got cherries instead of bigger tomatoes for two reasons: I thought they'd be faster to grow, and I thought the plants would be smaller. ha!
Thanks, you guys!
Wild Cherry is a huge, sprawling plant. Here's a pic from an older GW thread (wild cherry is the one spilling out onto the ground:
Edit: Sorry, the original pic must be gone, but you can see the cached version in the link below.
Smaller plants would be Tumbling Tom, Cherry Falls, Tommy Toes, and a few others.
Here is a link that might be useful: original thread
This post was edited by conchitaFL on Fri, Jul 4, 14 at 12:00
They do that when conditions are right.some gardeners will pinch them off, sometimes they fall off on their own. Since romas are determinate, you could pinch off the flowers. However, the plant will continue to grow as fruit developes, you are an easy 30 days away from fruit readiness and by that time your plants will be big and strong enough to hold fruit.
To me that plant is not too young or too small to flower. It will take about 50 days for the flower to become a ripe fruit. And in the meantime the plant will also grow in size too. Tomato plant can allocate its resources to wherever and whatever needed. If it could not support the fruit, plant will abort it itself.
The leaves will come into contact with many more disease microorganisms on the ground. Good air circulation around the plant helps reduce disease, and there will be less air circulation if the plant is lying on the ground, so more diseases.
When I've had volunteer tomatoes in my compost area, the loss of fruit to bugs was many times what I would normally see with staked plants. And in those conditions, I could pick less fruit because the vines/leaves/fruit were lying all over the ground and many fruit were unreachable (unless I wanted to step on the vines/leaves/fruit to get to them).
Now that said, I'm in WNC, where it can rain at any time (at least, it can during the Wet Years), while you are in zone 10 -- and if that's a dry Zone 10, you may not have so many problems with critters on the ground as I do here?
Your plants look ok. The color is good. Sometimes the leaves curl due to stress of some sort, but it's not a serious problem, and doesn't affect production. Is it hot on that deck? How much soil is in the container? Container size? What kind of mix is it?
It looks like you have a few inches between the top of the pot and the top of the mix. You haven't told us what variety/ies you're growing, so we can't recommend how large a pot they'd like (and I am not an expert in that sort of thing anyway), but I'd just like to point out that if the experts say you need a larger pot, you do have room to add more mix at the top (tomatoes will happily grow additional roots higher up on the stem).
Closeup maybe better pic
Healthy neighbor 2 ft away, same variety