16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Lucille, I haven't seen African violet rings in person so I'm not sure. You would just need to be able to secure the rings to something sturdy. I think I started to use the rings with the peppers when they reached about 18" tall.

Robinava, thanks, yes, definitely there are cheaper methods. Although I'll be reusing the rings, so I have to see how long they last to judge how cost effective they are. I would recommend them to someone who wants to grow indeterminate tomatoes in a small amount of space, where other methods won't work. This year I plan to grow some determinates, so I'm also interested in seeing if they'll work with those, without pruning.

This post was edited by dsb22 on Wed, Jan 22, 14 at 6:36

I love Golden Jubilees. They produce like crazy. They are a yellow cherry tomato.

Concrete remesh is the way to go for indeterminate tomato cages. 25 years and they have never let me down.

Not to say I wouldn't like vinyl-coated concrete remesh...

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. Will probably follow Dave's suggestion by starting the panels 6-8" above the ground and using the 6' T posts, however I am still considering raising the panels to possibly 10" and using either stakes or twine. Either way I now have options. Thanks again.
Robin

Do not use charcoal ash or any burned wood with synthetic materials in your yard.

I use wood pellets over the winter. I know they have a binders added to them but they are generally cornstarch or plant gum. Any ideas if adding wood ash from wood pellets would be deleterious to the garden soil and if not, how many cups or pounds should be added per yard of garden soil?

smithmal

2 layers of 2x6" boards is a good height. But the material matters too. If you use pressure-treated boards, the chemicals can leach into your food.

Cedar and some other woods that are naturally rot-resistent are safer. I'm considering the new composite wood/plastic boards. There are some that are 5/4" and pretty sturdy. I think I am going to go with those.

yardman,

I am not going to go with any boards or other materials to actually make a raised bed but just a continuous hill more or less. Kind of a halfway measure, but I'll see how it goes.

Just put some water in the shade underneath the tomato plants. I did that last year and no more birds pecking on my tomatoes after that.
Of course, another idea is just to have a nice bird bath. You will have a lot of birds visiting you garden. The may also eat some slugs , caterpillars, etc.

I won't eat it...

You're not crazy. I've actually done this -a few years back I had one 2ft deep row of aggressively pruned and staked tomatoes (not my idea) and wound up with melon and squash vines running beneath the tomatoes (the vines' idea) over the mulch. It worked well - they were rooted elsewhere so there was no nutrient/water competition, and the vines got plenty of sun underneath the poor nekkid tomato plants, which got some shading of their roots.

If the melons have their own root space and you keep an eye out for pests or diseases crossing between the two (powdery mildew? Squash bugs?) I think it's worth a shot.

~emmers

Personally, I think melons are a great groundcover around upright plants like tomatoes in cages. But you would have to fertilize them both carefully. Tomatoes want something close to 2-6-6 because too much nitrogen causes all foliage and no fruits while melons want something more like 4-2-2 (or anything to that scale).

You might consider burying a large plastic bin with the bottom cut out for the melons with their fertilizer requirements, in the middle of tomatoes around them with theirs.

Sure a name is just a name. But it would be better if there was a relevance and meaning to it, if at all possible: Like pineapple, cherry, ... , Mr stripy. JMO

Every good Brandywine type tastes better than all other tomatoes. Except I sure like a Cherokee Purple just as much in a different way too.

We love to can homemade "V8" (tomatoes, onions, green peppers, carrots go in the mix) juice...One note on this (canning tom-based juice). I have found that it is rather advantageous to simmer the brew until the "froth" more or less goes away. Tom juice treated like that has a much reduced tendency to escape from jars in canning process. Also, the juice will almost remain homogeneous... that is, not separate into layers. Requires more time, but I do not can tom juice without first simmering.

Reggie

When I used to grow more tomatoes and was making sauce, I would lightly smash the matoes in a big pot(with potato smasher, eg) then strain the juice out for drinking. This way, my sauce would thicken faster and at the same time I would have tomato juice.

i m interested in this variety because of its late blight resistance. i grow for market in the blue ridge mountains of southwest va, late blight will keep me from growing tomatoes outside unless i find another way. this variety was recommended in the webinar i watched yesterday on late blight.

I don't have late blight, but TSWV is a plague in this area, so I tried Mountain Merit for its TSWV resistance. Similar to the other Mountain series in size and taste and does have resistance to TSWV. Tastewise just below Amelia and bella Rosa among the TSWV varieties that I have tried.

One of the ways to deal effectively with too much rain and wet weather is to construct raised bed, in addition to amending the soil. I garden here at PNW, where we get a lot of rain. Sometimes it rains for days in the spring time. That is why I made raised beds. Raised bed, being higher than its surrounding will have a good drainage, if slightly amended. If your soil in Rock hill anything like GA red clay and you are gardening in a flat plot, then that might be the problem.

JMO

Thank you all for your suggestions. By the way, the information from Clemson was absolutely comprehensive!

deleted duplicate

This post was edited by digdirt on Sun, Jan 12, 14 at 15:39

As roper said , and I agree with him, some of the special purpose forums do not get much traffic. So posting there is like blowing in the wind. Believe me I have tried some.
As far as I am concerned, this is "THE" TOMATO forum and we should be able to talk about any TOMATO related subject right here.
JMO

As mentioned, CLONING in this case is just propagation by rooting any cutting. I do that mostly with store bough basil, shiso, mint and few other things, instead of growing from seed.

I clip a 3-4 inch tip growth, remove any new bloom truss if there is one, allow to hydrate in a glass of water for an hour or the day, then set cutting in a small pot of potting/seed starting mix, and within a week it has rooted.

I kept one indoors through our 8 month winter, just to try as an experiment. The cuttings I took from it in the spring grew just as well as the mother plant did the summer before. I did this because I'd developed a mistrust with packet seeds in that what I'd grown from the packet description was not what I had growing in the ground! My space is limited and tight, so I want to be sure if I am growing a specific variety, that is what I get.

I could not do it this past winter, some kind of blight attacked the plant mid summer and I did not think it wise to try to keep a less than perfectly healthy specimen over the long winter.