16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Posted by ncrealestateguy (My Page) on Sat, Jul 27, 13 at 21:55

3-4 hours of sunlight will not grow tomato plants of any vigor... sorry.
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I am growing them with 3 - 4 hours direct sun .
here is picture

This post was edited by seysonn on Sat, Aug 3, 13 at 8:24

The question is: In what did you plant them? It looks like the plants were planted in a crab grass lawn. Was the planting bed improved?

The leaves need sun and the roots need good soil and drainage.

I haven't tasted my Brandywine yet. We are having company for dinner Saturday and will likely use it in a salad.

I saw heirlooms in a local store this morning selling at $5.00 per pound!

I also live in central Indiana and didnt plant out until the first week of May. Typical plant outs for my area are somewhere around May 15 through end of month. We had one frost in my area after my plant out. One of my Brandywines has put out several blooms....all but one of which dropped. I think there may now be another tomato on that plant. My other BW are doing just fine and the taste is great and have produced many tomatoes.

I used 5 gal buckets as frost protection on mine during that cold night.

robertz6: how long do the mothballs last in the rain?

Locally, it's recommended that we sprinkle them on areas of yard that overlap streambanks, to repel copperhead snakes from the yard.

I have a suggestion on the topic:
Either put the squirrel in the cage or cage the tomato, or cage them both lol.

This post was edited by seysonn on Sat, Aug 3, 13 at 1:24

Debby, there are many eggplant varieties and they come in ALL kinds of shapes so that doesn't help much.

Does pasta type to you mean a paste variety used for sauce? A long red one with perhaps a knob at the blossom end?

If red, there are hundreds of long red ones, but I don't know of any with ruffles at the stem end.

I don't really think anyone will be able to ID it for you even if you show a picture since so many look alike.

Lastly, there are more problems with traded seeds in terms of crossed seeds and wrong varieties than one would ever find at commercial places, which is one reason I don't trade seeds. I used to do a wrong varieties thread here at GW, so I know that to be true. And I read at several message sites and in general it is still true , but does depend on which specific site (s) you do your trading,.

Carolyn

What you are asking is impossible to do even with seeing the tomato and the plant first hand. Much less from a photo or just a vague description.

There are literally hundreds of possibilities.

Just eat and enjoy if they are any good but do not try to apply a name to them and please do not trade any of the seeds. The trading pool is already far too contaminated with wrongly labeled seeds.

Dave

You can also disinfect them even further as many of us seed savers do by using a 1:10 chlorine bleach brief soak or spray on the seeds before drying for storage.

Dave

On the subject of saving tomato seeds, a question or two. Do folks prefer large seeds to smaller; and does lighter or darker color matter?

I usually just take seeds from my one or two best heirloom cherry tomato plants of the season.

I have two heirlooms ( Black Krim and Brandywine), both are doing very poorly. Maybe it is my climate to blame. Everything else (all hybrids) are doing ok. The next year I have to be a bit picky about the heirlooms and OPs.

Any good suggestions for cool PNW?

Well, there's this:

Here is a link that might be useful: Rutgers Tomato Tasting

Stringy malformed leaves sounds like herbicide damage. I'd be suspicious of any compost from yard wastes unless I knew the people whose yards it came from. Did the city test it for herbicides (and other chemicals)?

I agree with ajsmama, it sounds like you have some herbicide residue in your compost. The unfortunate thing about yard waste from unknown sources is that there is a very high likely hood that some of them use something like weed and feed or other herbicides to control broadleaf weeds in their lawns. Since tomatoes are "broadleaf" plants and very sensitive to herbicides, they will show typical symptoms such as mishapen and curling leaves.

If you do a Google image search for herbicide damage in tomatoes, I am pretty sure you will see pictures that resemble your tomato plants.

Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do to correct the problem unless you want to go as far as repotting them in some clean commercial growing medium (not "soil" since you are growing in containers) after removing as much of the compost as possible from the roots. The drawback to that is it will probably stress the plants tremendously and set them back a lot.

Regrettably, this experience is probably going to have to go into your live and learn file.

Betsy

Never too late to transplant if you can take a large rootball with it, IMHO.

The neigbor just moved some of his large container tomatoes into the ground. Then the deer ate all these whole plants!

OK, I moved plants around and gave most of them away and they all survived. Yay. Thanks everyone! And @robertz6 - so sorry about those plants!

Well, now I'm looking forward again to next season, armed with amended mix! Almost ready to give up this year, but I'll give it another shot. Thanks Sharon and seysonn.

There is a brand of pine bark mulch available here at Lowe's and HD that seems to be the correct size, and tends to be flat "flakes" rather than "chunks."

-Bruce

That's the stuff. You'll get it for next year. Don't give up! There are lots of people with great knowledge who re willing to help.

Sharon

Has anyone actually tried tomatos in a fruit salad??...Just asking.

This, picking after color break, is the best idea since the invention of the ball point pen. This way you beat the birds, squirrels, rats, and the rest.

My Brandywine is BLOSSOMING. hehe

Thats a bit more than blushing ! They do look great Yum Yum !