16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

>> To be precise, mature tomato plants probably can't get too much sun, but they can get too much heat and humidity that causes them to languish, stop producing, and sometimes die.

I'm in an extreme area with no humidity and high heat, and the tomatoes here in full all-day-long sun have smaller fruit, more splits, don't get as red, and don't get as sweet. Mine tend to have huge root systems so that might be the reason for no drooping.

And just an observation; I didn't learn from last year...

If they weren't properly hardened off first then yes they can get too much sun. Exposure to full sun for plants grown indoors (regardless of the window) has to be gradual over several days. Move them to the shade and over 5-6 days slowly increase their sun exposure.

Dave

Where are you located? I see a little browing on the edges of the leaves, but otherwise it looks ok. How big is the container? And I agree, the cage looks a little weak. Trimming/pruning is up to you. I don't, but some do. BTW it looks a bit leggy, is it getting enough sun?

This post was edited by edweather on Tue, Jun 10, 14 at 13:04

Hey everyone thanks for your input. I am in Massachusetts and the container is a 1foot by 1 foot container. I know we have had a few days of 80 degrees dropping to 50 at night but it does get sun most of the day. Should I maybe try a bigger container? Thank you again.

Yeah I agree that raised rows (aka wide-row gardening) dries out faster but not that much faster. As drmbear said if you are using the soil surface as the indicator for watering then you are over-watering.

I use a soaker hose under heavy mulch on my 3' wide raised rows and once every 7-10 days is plenty for them even in my much warmer and drier climate here.

Please give some thought to modifying your watering regimen.

Dave

Nitrogen level at any given time depends on organic mater one used for the soil, i.e. compost, manure etc and its processing. What I am looking in the plant is a color of green, i.e. green and green is different. Ability to branch out and grow well, push those sideshoots plenty and multiple- that is all telling me I have plenty of nitrogen supply. Generally if I apply good compost- manure either in the fall or early spring, there will be plenty of nitrogen in the soil for plants. Ability of plant to use it generally is not a problem, it is other components and minerals that often are not presented in the form plant can use, even if they are present in the soil. Famous Ca comes to mind.
As for liquid ferts, I recently switched to Urban Texas tomato fertilizer and All purpose TF. When you go on tomato- veggie forum and it has a lot of rave reviews from unedited posters, you know you got a winner.

I would use some fabric ( like cheese cloth ) instead things like masking tape.

i recently broke 2 plants
a jackfruit seedling, and a passionflower vine.

both were near the base.
i used duck tape, and both grew back strong as ever, with a bulge where the break was.

i dont see why a tomato would be different
if anything, tomatoes would be more forgiving than a tropical fruit.

it did seem to take th passionfruit a couple of weeks with no growth, but that could have been due to weather as well...

Thank you for that awesome information.

The instructions on the seeds packets and web sites that sell this variety say that this doesn't need staking. I'm not staking mine. Do you think that information is true?

Yes I find they benefit from at least minimal staking as the weight of the fruit as it develops can break branches.

Dave

I think that you have just been lucky. In my experience, cutworms spend daylight hours under the soil surface, and they do their surface cutting at night. Birds don't get a chance to see and eat them.

I use plastic rings cut out of soda or water bottles. The rings are about 1.5" high, and there is a vertical cut through the ring so it can be placed around the stem. I try to push the ring into the soil about 1/4".

Prior to planting out tomatoes, peppers, etc , I plant radishes throughout the area. They are a quick, early crop but many get hit by the cutworms. Where I find a cut radish, I scratch around in to soil until I find the cutworm and squish it. I still get plenty of radishes, and most of the cutworms have been eliminated by the time that I plant the other crops.

Dave, thanks for mentioning the fact that the cutworms have to encircle the stem to be able to start gnawing, b/c I didn't get a chance to do that last night.

Martha,again, good to see you and IMO any kind of collars, yogurt cups and similar are not effective b'c the cutworms can still crawl up under them.

I always used sturdy twigs, most of the time from last years Queen Annes Lace plants that were around and it did help/

For those who say that this or that worked, remember that there are those years when there are NO cutworms around so you can 't say that this or that method worked.

The best prevention of all is to raise plants that have sturdy stems,plants that have been grown slow and cool.The cutworms prefer to go after wimpy stemmed plants first b/c those are the ones they can encircle the easiest. .

Carolyn

The growing medium is a mixture of 2 soils from my local nursery. Here are the descriptions:

Garden Mix Soil
This soil blend is ideal for a new garden. Lots of organic materials and nutrients makes it great for vegetable and flower gardens. This soil has a compost base and is blended with some sand. No green waste is used - less weeds & less problems!

Organic Garden Mix
Premium organic top soil containing fish meal, ultra-kelp, worm castings, alfalfa, composted fine bark, mushroom manure, and sourced low silt sand. Great for edible gardens and rejuvenating poor soils.

I bought half cubic yard of each and mixed the two for my garden this year. The wood is part of the medium as I did not add any mulch myself.

And yes, the tomatoes are in a container - 1 plant in each. I attached a picture of the planter. It is partially full of plastic bottles at the bottom (lined with landscape fabric) as I did not want to fill the entire planter with soil. I read Tiny Tims were good candidates for containers.

I transplanted them outside around the 2nd-3rd week of May.

They are situated on a south facing deck and gets sun for majority of the day.

Here is a link that might be useful:

They look fine to me. I would not worry too much.
Depending on the lighting and the camera, they look a bit on the pale side to me.
Have you been fertilizing them ?
I think they can use a round of a liquid fertilizer.
Some times no matter how good and rich a garden soil might be, it can be lacking certain nutrients.

Thank you all for the replies. I had a full weekend of painting the house so I wasn't able to get a picture of the leaves yet, but they are definitely spotting / browning / yellowing. Of the issues listed with the Tomato Problem Solver linked above, the Sour Rot from some sort of fungus seems to most resemble the splitting in my tomatoes.

In terms of followup questions, I have a few:

1. Will using a fungicide at this point do anything for me? I've read that all fungicides are preventative and will not rid a plant of fungus after it's established. Will a fungicide allow any of the fruit to come to maturity or is this years crop kind of a lost cause?

2. DigDirt mentioned that the soaker hose was contributing to the problem. I'd originally started by hand watering the plants and set up the soaker hose so that a relative could easily water them while I was away on vacation. I continued using it afterward just for the convenience. Can anyone help me further my understanding with some info on how the soaker host contributes to the problem and what method of watering is preferred? For next year I'm considering setting up a drip irrigation system. Is that a bad idea as well? I know it's very different than a soaker hose but I don't want to spend the time and money if it's asking for problems.

3. I did find a fruitworm on the plant but, being inexperienced, I thought it was just a small caterpillar of some sort. Should I consider spraying my plants with pesticide as well?

With regard to fungicide / pesticide, what are the mildest options I have available? I'm not much into organic food specifically, but I'd like to use as little as possible (mostly to give my wife warm fuzzies).

Side note, the guy we pay to cut our lawn thought he'd be "helpful" and move all of our potted vegetable plants to mow. The result was not good so some of my tomatoes may have more serious health issues than before. Guess I'll consider it a "learning season" and prepare for next year. :-)

I got a somewhat similar problem last year . I researched it and to the best of my findings it was called : GREY MOLD disease.

Look at this picture. It is similar to BER but it is not BER.

May depend on how close is 'near'. Seysonn has a good point about requirements but side dressing can help that issue.
I don't consider myself a 'companion' gardener, but will often place palm on forehead when i run out of room and need a spot for something. I'm a sucker for something new and healthy and unusual at my local, same altitude, family run nursery just 2 miles away...

Most likely information is ingrained from the early 90's and organic gardening magazines.
So i will plant things that make sense-ish. I've always, once the tomatoes are in, open up a 6inch x 10ft path between, pushing aside the straw, and plant carrots very thick. Start harvesting in mid August and consider it thinning, then have about 20-30lbs at thanksgiving, well after the toms are over. It works where i am and lots of room down the middle of my toms. My tomatoes always get priority attention, : )

Broccoli bolts in my area, but cauliflower and brussels do really well in their own bed. A bit of broccoli rabe does ok if i get it in early. Last late spring was very cold, then very hot overnight. From down vest to t-shirt/nude. Cool crops bolted without some shade.
May seem off-topic but some crops that provide shade in the heat of middle/late July, like tall vine growers... toms and beans, just might be a good 'companion' in your garden.

Yeah - for practical reasons, I liked the accidental "companioning" of broccoli and tomato that happened last year, which is why I did it on purpose this year. The broccoli occupied a vacant, lower-to-the-ground space that was available near the tomatoes, without growing into the more leaf-crowded area, and they were pretty tough growers that handled the competition well. The tomatoes gave some shade that kept the soil around the broccoli from drying out and kept the plants from bolting when it got hot, and, in fact, the tomato plant that was nearest the broccoli was less affected by whatever disease my other tomatoes were suffering from (can't remember the name now). I later read a study that showed that broccoli residue was suppressive of certain tomato diseases (once again, can't remember which - posting too late at night!), so that was another reason to try it again this year. But then I read the article that caused me to start this post and I thought, whoops!, maybe not so good.

Carolyn - I'm sorry to say I didn't save the article, so I can't provide a link. If I find it again, I'll post it. But at the moment I'm satisfied that it's probably a non-issue.

drip system is only on for 3 minutes every 2 hours with 1/2 gph drip

That is a very unusual pattern. Can I ask why you have it set up that way? 3 mins. with 1/2 gph emmiters is no more than a tablespoon or so of water at a time. Is this every 2 hours around the clock? If so then they are only getting something less than 1 cup of water every 24 hours. That results in shallow rooted, water-dependent plants.

Running the system for 2 hours at a time once a week or similar (maybe 2x a week in very hot and dry weather) if far more normal as it delivers the needed 1 gallon deep watering on a much less frequent basis for the deep rooting the plants thrive on.

Dave

Well I had this setup for my containers as well and the water drains all way through the container with this frequency. I have checked the soil below the surface and it is wet but not sopping.

I mainly did this frequency because it worked very well last year and I had a good crop.

3 minutes every 2 hours would be 36 minutes in a day, and a little more than 1/4 gallon per day. Unless my math is wrong...it happens :)

But I see your point in the deep rooting and will change the frequency and amount to see if it helps.

Digdirt: since I have slit the straw on the side, won't it expand with the stem without constricting it?

Digdirt: since I have slit the straw on the side, won't it expand with the stem without constricting it?

That would be true only if plastics had the same expansion potential as living tissue which is not the case. As the stem expands the straw may expand slightly along the slit but it will reach its expansion limit long before the stem will so will constrict the stem and compress the healthy epidermis of the stem. Think about a rubber band around your finger and left in place.

Plus moisture is trapped beneath the plastic and that part of the stem that is covered doesn't dry out as there is restricted air exposure. Bacteria and fungi can grow there.

I agree the idea sounds good in theory and would work early on as long as the stem is narrower than the straw. But that won't last for long.

Dave