16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
It's a Green Earth Garden Fungicide with 0.9% sulphur and after reading the instructions say to apply every 7 - 10 days... I guess there is something to instructions after all! ;)
What negative affects have you had with sulphur products Dave? Any recommendations for dealing with and minimizing the blight? If it actually blight...
T....get the appropriate spray.....and spray. Many tomato gardener's preventative spray for EB because it is so common. Hope this helps: Here is a good site for info:http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/r783100311.html
For home use and canning, USDA rules is not enforced.
Here is what I am saying: If your jar is disinfected (in boiling water or 300F oven), and you have boiled the sauce; Then you fill the jar, tighten the lid, then place them upside down, ...how the heck bacteria is going to get into it ?
One more thing: When you want to use the sauce you boil it again !!! If you cannot kill a bacterium by boiling, forget about canning and eating tomato sauce.
For home use and canning, USDA rules is not enforced.
If you mean there are no canning police who will come and arrest you then yes, they are not enforced. However liability, not to mention responsibility, does attach to any home canned foods that are shared with others.
fill the jar, tighten the lid, then place them upside down, ...how the heck bacteria is going to get into it ?
It doesn't have to "get in". It is already in there. So is the air still trapped in the jar that allows the bacteria in the jar to continue to grow, reproduce, and produce toxins.
The only foods where inversion sealing is still commonly practiced anywhere is with highly acidic foods - fruit jams and jellies, canned fruits, and brined pickles. Tomatoes do not quality as highly acidic foods since they are borderline pH at 4.5-4.8.
If you cannot kill a bacterium by boiling, forget about canning and eating tomato sauce.
There are many bacteria, including c.botulinum, that cannot be killed by boiling but that doesn't mean the food cannot be canned. Those bacteria are killed only by irradiation (which isn't possible at home) or by high pressure temps in excess of 240 degrees for a period of time determined by the density of the food in question. Alternatively they are packed in an highly acidic medium which prevents the bacteria from reproducing in the jar. Thus the requirement to add additional acid to tomatoes when canning them.
None of this is new info. It dates from research begun back in the 1950's. And it is all discussed in great detail on the Harvest forum for those interested. But I would suggest some research into all the science behind the canning guidelines before sharing such mis-leading information with others. It does them a dis-service otherwise.
Dave
Wow Ed!
Stupice for the end of June!!! When did you plant them?
I should have grown Stupice again, but was disheartened when they succumbed to some sort of fungal disease last year and decided to give them a miss this year.
I was excited about my new early F1 (Yellow Pear derivative) but the taste just wasn't there. Maybe the next ones will taste better, and they might be improve with some seeds left in! I scraped them all out to ferment and save!
Linda.
Below I've linked toTania's superb website where you'll find a list of those varieties that have been released through 2013 for the Dwarf project . That's the clickable link.
If you click on the ones listed seperately you should find comments from others as well as pictures.
http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/wiki/Category:Dwarf_Tomatoes
The link above also fromTania's website lists all the Dwarf varieties she knows of if you want to see a more complete list.
Hope that helps,
Carolyn, and note that seed sources are given for the Dwarf project ones as well as many on the larger list.
Here is a link that might be useful: Dwarf Project Varieties
Yes. Spray, spray, spray. Glad to see it's not fatal. This is definitely the time of year to be vigilant. Lost most of my tomatoes in about 3 days time about 5 years ago to the late blight that swept through the NE. I don't mess around anymore!
The two plots are about 6'-7' wide each. I dug them last year and plan to move the tomatos to another plot, for rotation.
Actually I did put down a lot of grass clipping and the tall weeds I pulled from the Iris bed in front of the tomatoes. The ground in front of the bed was all grass before.
There are still some small weeds under the plants. I pull some of them, but not all of them since the bird netting blocks the access. It is not a big prob since they are shaded under the big tomato plants.
I plan to dig another vegie plot and fence this vegie section with tall wires. So I can grow other vegies and do not have to worry about deers, rabbits and some birds.
This is a low maintenence garden. This year I hardly water them. No fertilizer of any kind. I just tried to mix some compost to the soil in the spring.
mine are growing pretty fast. they are about 4 feet tall. They are growing very odd though. i have no idea how they could have supported a softball size tomato. even with my cages its tough. The tomatoes are growing very rapidly though. I have a few that are bigger than golf balls now.
I wonder if you could plant carrots in between your tomatoes. There wouldn't be much above the ground to interfere with air flow and you probably wouldn't need to dig them up until the end of the season. Basil is a good companion plant for tomatoes. Maybe beets, although mine were huge when left in all season.
Linda
If that is your only tomato plant, things could be worse. I started out with 15 plants last year, and barely had enough tomatoes for salads.
This year the rainfall has been abundant, and everyone's tomatoes (plants anyway) look healthy. I plant 15-20 plants a year, a mix of cherry and large, some heirlooms and some hybrids. If I get five fruits on the Brandywine plants, I'm happy.
If your weather got very hot about the time the blossoms set (right word??), that might account for the lack of blossoms.
If you want a fair amount of fruit from only a few tomato plants, get some cherry tom plants.
1) ripen at least as quickly as big fruits
2) taste better in October and first week or two of November (I'm in Zone 6) than bigger fruited plants
3) produce a nice amount of tomatoes.
And you don't get a heart attack when a squirrel takes a bite out of one of your lovely big toms -- then takes a bite out of a different one!
85 days is usually considered to be a later tomato. Kind of on the end of midseason or an early late if that makes sense. Bear in mind, the Days to Maturity (DTM) is just a rough guideline. It can vary significantly from year to year.
What the DTM means is that from the day you transplant into the garden, it will be roughly 85 days until you get ripe fruit from your plant. Six weeks after transplant, I would expect that you should have seen some blossoms by now. If I recall correctly, the cycle on tomatoes is about 4 weeks, so you should have had some blooms. Perhaps they were not ready to bloom at 4 weeks after transplant, so they may bloom in the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, that might mean you will not have time to get ripe fruit from GJ.
How large was the plant when you bought it, and what size container was it in? If it was an older plant, sometimes they take longer to adapt to being transplanted. (Especially if it was root bound.)
However, the most common reason for lush plants with no blossoms, is overloving tomatoes with excess nitrogen. Any chance the ground was fertilized before the tomato was transplanted? Is it near a grassy area that has been fertilized with a high nitrogen fertilizer and it could have gotten some runoff with the rain or watering?
Betsy
I have to concur with Fusion and Dave. If you start breeding or crossing tomatoes you will soon end up with dozens of crosses and hundreds of grow out lines, if you have the room for them, and then you just keep looking for what you are interested in. I don't have a lot of room, my garden is about 28 feet by 60 feet, and I typically grow 125 to 150 plants. By late in the summer it looks like a jungle in there.
People ask me what I do with all my tomatoes. Do I can them? Etc?
I tell them that no, I generally eat what I can, give away all the tomatoes that family and friends want to come pick, and that I then just watch the rest fall on the ground and rot. That is because I love the flavor of tomatoes, but I can only eat so much, even with making salsas and tomato sauces.
MOST of my tomatoes - generally at least 85 to 95 percent of what I grow - are tomatoes that I am breeding out. THAT is what interests me the most, and all I really need from them is to be able to observe them, taste them and then save seeds from them. So most of my tomatoes just rot away. But I do see some very interesting tomatoes and I have been working on a lot of different tomatoes that I like.
Oh, I had no idea that there was so much work! And as for Fcivsh my garden is nowhere near that size (mine's 20 plants) and I couldn't stand seeing them rot! I haven't gotten any ripe as of yet this year but I plan on eating what we can and giving the rest away! (I myself haven't bred any...yet!)
What a great harvest. Luckily, cherry tomatoes are easy to freeze. Rinse them off, throw them in a baggie in the freezer, and use them in soup over the winter. :)
(And I'm looking forward to hearing the reports on the Selbo's Ribbed Red Cherry. I've been following that thread and can't wait until I can get some seeds for myself. :))
some problems are rough to take.....