16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Daniel, go to local nurseries and garden centers. Ours here had lots of good varieties and some good heirlooms. Even Brandywine, cherokee purple, and many popular heirlooms. and some good hybrids like jet star. But I did see at BBS some big beefs and red Brandywines.

tx sey and jenniedhs.

Hah, good catch. That's what I get for checking the forums on my lunch break ;)

Where are you located, Dillan ? Zone Number ?
How the weather has been, Temps, Rain ? ...
It will take sometime , under normal conditions, for the tomatoes to GRAB THE SOIL and then resume growing. Then iF the plants were subject to shocked due to transplant , cold weather, wit might take even longer to get adjusted.

BTW: I have started planting almost since a month ago, gradually. I should know how slow they grow.

Sey

Hi Hudson, I have used Epsom salts in my containers and it certainly didn't hurt. Not sure if it helped either. I'm planning on trying it again this year with a few plants to see if it makes a difference.

Sometimes an overdose of one thing can block the uptake of some others. I am not sure about Mag.
I am also a container grower. I use dolomitic lime which has some Magnesium in it.
Container growing is a different ball game and it is more challenging than in ground growing. The difficulty arises from frequent watering and by that leaching out a lot of nutrients, especially those that are highly water soluble, like Nitrogen and mag in Epsom salt. Smaller the container, the more challenging it gets. For example a 3ft x 6ft raised bed is just a big bottomless container but it acts more like in ground bed. Also because you put organic matter in it, it holds nutrients better, longerJMO

Sey

Could neem oil be used as a spreader-sticker?

Priscilia,.. I don't know what " spreader-sticker" is but:
Neem Oil spray is both a fungicide and pesticide.
It is Organic equivalent of Daconil as fungus prevention and it also repels some insects.

Sey

No spray or neighbors here :-)

Those plant are just fine. Give them some time to get a grab of the soil.
Yeah, some sunburn, as Hoosier already pointed out (browning, in your words) ... That is ok. Did you pour water on them, sometime during the day ?

I would also say " MULCH IT ! MULCH IT ! MULCH IT !
In my climate grass clippings get caked when dry and mushy when wet. I use small pine bark nuggets/mulch. NO ! NO! to those colored stuff.

Another step I suggest : FUNGICIDE ! FUNGICIDE ! FUNGICIDE !
Keep on trucking ! :-)

Good advice and conclusion.

Also some varieties show leaf rolling for no serious reasons. Today I just noticed one of my Willamette had lower leaves partially rolled, while other varieties in the same bed are fine. They were all grown from seed and planted at the same time. Two years ago I had a Black Kirim. It had rolled leaves most of the season. So , Some people suggested it was stressed because of puning. Some said it was because of too much water. How come it did not happen with the other varieties ?
if I cannot see any bugs (aphids, mites) I would not worry about it. JMO

Sey

It seemed to be predominately Purple Russian, with a few showing it in other varieties. I took a pretty good look at other plants that had leaves rolling, and aside from a very few aphids I didn't see anything to be concerned about. For the most part, the other varieties showing it seems similar physiologically to the Purple Russian, tall and thin leaves, not the bushy varieties.

I used soil less disinfected seed starter and never had any problem. Once got into potting stage , I use potting mix ( no disinfecting needed)
Sprouts are like new born babies that their immune system is not fully developed, me thinks,

Sey

the link to my original post explains all the info about how i started the seeds and potting mix ,,, i just didnt want to go bout typing it all out again and i thought the comments might also be usefull to help you guys help me determine why this is happening to my seedlings ,, season is almost here and i have no time to restart nor seeds to do it

thanks for all your help guys

Hey, thank you for your helpful comments, not to mention moral support; I benefited from each one.

It took some time but I popped every plant out of its cup, enlarged the holes and made slits up the side, and in most cases replaced a fair amount of the medium below and above the roots, followed by a light foliar feed of Neptune fish/seaweed emulsion and a bit of Epsom salts. I saw only one case of actual root rot, but much retained (heavy) moisture. So, while I believe the crystals were a big factor, I don’t think they’re entirely to blame: see Operator Error; in any case, I’m done with them. As Dave never tires of telling us, though in much politer terms: “It’s the overwatering, stupid!”

Carolyn: Nice to hear from you, but so much for my “experience” J There’s always more to learn—even for an old dog like me—especially from folks like those who responded to this post. And, yes,I remember the roses very well. They were Lillian Gibsons, prairie hardy and, as I recall, rooted in 10 days (a record).

Again, thank you all. I'll report back in a week or so with an update.

Gary

Gary, I start my tomatoes in Pro Mix and move them to MG without the water crystals as it has fertilizer so don't have to fertilize them by hand and they don't dry out as quickly as the Pro Mix ones. One year I used the MG with water crystals in my deck container pots and had to re-pot them because they stayed too moist. Other people may have success with it, me, not so much. I expect I was over-watering by not compensating for the extra water holding soil.

Regarding the cup issue: For years I used 4" square pots to re-pot. I've used cups for three years and don't notice any difference in growth. Think I will go back to pots next year as they are more stable. Hate it when a cup tips over and either a stem breaks or the whole plant pops out.

I don't have a green house so they stay under lights in my basement until hardening off.

Hope your plants green up and do well.

I planted five tomatoes in Wall of Waters yesterday just as the storm came in. Got soaked.

With the warm spring, will you plant out early or wait until May 15 or May 31st? I usually wait until the end of the month to plant unprotected tomatoes. Am watching the long term forecast.

All tomatoes are acidic which is called a "tart" taste (or tangy as digdirt has written), so try to compare it to something else, too. Some tomatoes are sweeter, but if one is not sweet, the tartness is more noticeable because the sweet isn't there to mask it.

Tomato enthusiasts I see posting generally don't call that bitter, even though that description might be used for some alcoholic beverages, especially those like Campari (Italian drink, not the tomato variety) mixed with soda water containing the alkalizing agent sodium bicarbonate which gives a bitter taste.

Campari the tomato variety, interestingly, is one of the sweetest and lowest acid tomatoes you can get commercially, while the Italian drink is yuk-bitter. Funny!

OK, so tell us the name of the variety and if you purchased it or grew it and then somebody with experience with it probably could solve what's happening.

PC

I have heard the first tomatos of the season can be not the best tasting ones?

Thanks for the detailed analysis Pupilla! You were right about it not being OMRI yet. Their original version is which uses peat instead of coco coir. A lot of people around here seem to love them and I have had good results but I'm by no means an evangelist. If you have some organic OMRI soil recommendations or general soil for container recommendations I'm all ears!

I went out and purchased a standing home fan and have that in the door now pushing a slight breeze in the room. I totally neglected that so good catch there.

As for light I I also didn't think about that and likely was giving them too much. I would suspect I was running somewhere around 18 hours of light so have dialed that back.

I went back and checked tap water PH and it appears like it was a problem with my PH Pen calibration. So from now on I'm calibrating right before every feeding. It showed 7.3 today after calibration. Do you think I need to adjust each tap watering down to 6.5 or is a straight 7.0 to 7.5 watering without fertilizer okay?

Could I get your advice on what fertilizer program you would use if your goal is to stay as organic as possible? I was under the impression people start a lot of vegetables with a more nitrogen based program then ramp up more Phosphorus and Potassium more towards flowering? Would you recommend a more balanced program from day 1?

I think the plants are already looking better so thanks a lot for the help! Here are some recent pics but I forgot the LED light on so colour is not so great.

Dan, I've used a few different mixes in containers and I like the sound of your sea soil. The problem with containers is that the system is really too small to set up a true organic soil system in them. People do all sorts of things and may technically get away with it, but I my abilities can't do a completely organic soil and get reliable production, since any "help" and you kid yourself that it is "almost organic". That said, I had some luck with a mixture of 1/3 compost (Black Kow Composted Organic), 1/3 peat & 1/3 perlite in summer but you must watch it doesn't get waterlogged. I know it sounds strange, but raw perlite is "organic". You could put some of those fancy rock dusts in there and dolomitic lime and give it a whirl. Problem is at some point your plants will need the nutrient boost of something like Miracle Gro, which is not organic, but not as bad as some make it out to be, either! There are some Fox Farms hydroponic/organic and Dutch Master hydro organic ones, but these things are really cost intensive and there is no way I could afford to even evaluate them. Tomato-Tone is organic and you can use some of it (the affordable option I would use) but a lot of experimentation is necessary to get it right in a bucket. Those are the tools I would use. There are others that are more expert than I am in this forum on organic methods in a container, but the problem is that ingredients and climates can vary enough that a lot of experimentation is necessary anyway and it is a bit much to ask of a container considering the nutrient demands of a big tomato plant. And a bigger contaner ( say, 25 gallons) can be costly to fill with organic nutrients only. There are other much more economic ways to go if you drop the requirement of deriving all nutrition from "organic" sources, for example pine mulch, etc, is cheap but offers no nutrition so it doesn't get you anywhere nutrient wise, though it might help you save on perlite.

I can't answer whether your tap is appropriate for your plant, even knowing the pH is 7.5. That's because it will be the interaction among the tap, soil ingredients and amendments that determine the pH of the container. For example, if your soil starts on the acid side which it likely will it needs to be neutralized with some lime, but you can do what I do ... put less in and water with alkaline water for a while. Clearly that is not an optimal situation but to be honest my plants do fine despite all the issues with pH, and my tap is pH 7.7. But this is a fragil relationship and the only way to now for sure is to pH test your soil while you grow toget the hang of what's happening, if you are really enthusiastic. Just because it works for me, btw, doesn't mean it will work for everyone. We get lots of rain here and that frequently washes trhough soil mixesand I purposely open the tops wide to encourage that. No residue builds up from the tap or any of my not-organic supplements due to the rain.

The common wisdom of hydroponics of a vegetative and a reproductive period fertilization schemes doesn't seem very pronounced to me when growing the tomato for the long haul. To be perfectly honest, I think all these mantras about vegetative stages and drastic changes during flowering stages are geared towards high value crops LOL. Really with tomato plants you want to keep the nitrogen at a baseline, low in all of my scenarios. You are not growing vines, they get quickly unmanageable for indeterminates and make few tomatoes, and most everyone here seems to agree that being pretty stingy with nitrogen is the way to go. That's the opposite of what you've done. When I grow my tomatoes, my seedlings have only 1/2 to 2/3 the nitrogen the producing plants do, so my nitrogen rate actually increases for me. At the end I back off though because the plants get less productive and unmanageable so there's a lot of give and take.

Hope that helps a little, because nothing is as easy as it seems, so most people find something that works and get pretty stuck to it.

Cheers

PC

I'm having trouble keeping my lines tight. I am using jute twine and I don't think it's stretching - I'm just not getting it tight enough to begin with. I don't really have anyone who can help me, so any tricks to getting it right the first time? Going up, can I pre-do tight lines and work my plants in to them as they grow? Any suggestions welcome as I have 52 plants and I'm questioning my ability to support them right now. Thanks!

You could rig something up with pegs (turn or fixed for making loops) like this if you are on your own and want a cool, simple system:

Violin tuning

If it works you might have the world's first musical row of tomatoes to add to the sounds of wind chimes ;) I haven't read the old thread you found but it looked like it has nice and logical ideas, like putting in second end posts or anchor posts too. You could use turnbuckles in your anchor posts, too.

Turnbuckles

Pre-stringing would lose some adaptability but you could do it, though it might not be all you hope I bet it works if the flowers don't get a chance to be wacked against them in winds, but it would stress the plant stems more if they got too long and had to be back-woven in, if my metal trellis is any indication. I suppose if that happened you could tie the stems like we might with a trellis. Stringing along with the plants allows you more liberty to tighten and adjust as needed as things change.

PC

Brandywine

Brandywine Pink

Giant Belgium

Porterhouse

Giant Delicious

Box Car Willie

Red Rose

Cherokee Purple

Brandy Boy

Orange Wellington

Kellogg's Breakfast

Sun Gold (cherry tomatoes)

Black Cherry (cherry tomatoes)

Can't wait to see the results in the garden, sometimes sowing seeds indoors and growing seedlings can be challenging, but also very rewarding!

A vantage thread... Interesting how some old popular ones are still around this season after SEVEN (7) years. They must have have passed the test of time and the test of TASTES. .

But , as it is always the case the gardeners get a lot of enthusiasm about planning and planting BUT don't like to come back and evaluate how their choices did in the real garden and real life.

Seysonn

Here is the link

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2966925/brandy-boy-contest-2015-2?n=96

Hi Hoosier - yes - there is a part 2 now for this thread. To answer your question - please post what ever information you would like to share on this thread (and additional parts) about your experiences - good or bad - growing Brandy Boy. The more photos the better. There are no other requirements. The purpose of the thread is the competition (please read the very first post) and to share our experiences/results with a relatively popular variety that has been of apparent current interest on this and other forums. Beyond that - we just want to have fun comparing results of one tomato variety across the country in all growing conditions - hope you will participate and enjoy the thread!