16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

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.

They are still green but I do have 4 fruits that are as big as a soft ball now! No lie! Hope they turn out

Container cherry tomatoes

Hey they are healthy at least

Sorry. I thought I was starting a new thread with a new title. I didn't mean to hijack this one!

Linda

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!)

"In our zones soil temps under black plastic even if it is landscape plastic with all the vent holes can reach 120-150 degrees once the summer heat comes. And it doesn't drop off much. "

Hey Dave, this is good to know, as some of us cold zoners plan on moving south for retirement, and it's best to learn this stuff beforehand.

Good idea about using hay on top of the black plastic. Up here it's not so important, although it could reduce the risk of frying leaves of baby plants that might come into contact with the black plastic.

I'm with Dave, I use the black plastic under my tomatoes and peppers primarily for weed control and to heat the soil early in the spring. After the plants take off when the soil heats up I use straw over the plastic. Some of my tomatoes are not staked and the straw gives them a dry bed to lay on. Luke

I am no expert at all, but it may help to show a photo of the container used (and is it Pot or Fabric ect...) and what kind of Mix that you used.

I noticed in my containers the fabrics drain really quick and the ones I have in plastic are slower.

Plants are in 15 gallon black plastic nursery pots with 5 parts pine fines, 1 part peat and 1 part perlite. I think for NC I need to up the peat next year to retain moisture. I have all plants on a drip irrigation that daily delivers 2 gallons per pot. Now with the 90 degree heat am adding a second watering in late afternoon. If it is suffering from too little water why are none of the others? Lexiegirl I have studied all the plant diseases on line and I don't know what this is. It most resembles drought injury, but does ARGG need more water than others? I will really feel dumb if this is too little water.

I recommend 2x4 beds (for 2 plants) or 2x6 beds (for 3 plants). In the mean time you could do what I did for my cages...securely zip tie 8' stakes to each corner and then add some trellising twine.

njitgrad... actually I did take note of how you extended your cage to the 8ft stakes when I was searching for ways to support my tomatoes beyond the cage. :)

As for the bed size.. I will definitely be giving my tomatoes "their own home" next year.... so 2 by X size works where x= 2ft/plant.... that is good to know I've got to measure the area I have.

thanks everyone. it helps to know i'm not crazy thinking it was crows (or perhaps even other birds). I remember my dad watching as birds dive bombed his month in the ground pepper plants destroying them, so bird damage is possible. now to figure out how to foil their efforts. when I struggled with the deer my friends told me to put a fence roof on the garden as I had to go higher with the fence surround. is that the next step? I remember reading that birds cannot sense spice so spraying with pepper spray will not work.

here's an interesting story found at the link below. should work for other birds too.

Crow psychology

Being basically a skinflint, I didnâÂÂt want to blow a hundred bucks or so on toy snakes for the whole field. But the toy snakes proved effective for one of our town-dwelling acquaintances, to keep pigeons from roosting on, breaking, and filling up his houseâÂÂs gutters with the pigeonsâ âÂÂyou-know-what.âÂÂ

I reflected, âÂÂIf it works for pigeons, why not crows?âÂÂ

So I rounded up some of that ubiquitous, brittle old garden hose one encounters on every small country place, and cut it into about eight to ten-foot lengths (guesstimated). I laid them out amid the corn rows, about one every 20-25 feet, each way. Mostly, I arranged them in âÂÂSâ curves.

Presto! No crows!

Until a few days later. Then the crows pulled up all my corn.

I had to re-re-plant.

I wondered, âÂÂIf I just stayed in the sweet-corn patch wheel-hoeing or otherwise puttering around, would those crows bother my just-sprouting corn?âÂÂ

So I started cultivating the rows. To do that, I collected about eight rows worth of âÂÂsnakesâ and dragged âÂÂem to the end of the rows, and began cultivating. Then I put the âÂÂsnakesâ back, and went to lunch. When I got back, the crows had been at the other side of the patch, but not a single sprout had been bothered in the cultivated part.

Early next morning, all the corn was pulled up, except in the rows were the âÂÂsnakesâ had been relocated. Those rows hadnâÂÂt been bothered at all.

On a hunch, that evening I turned the âÂÂsnakesâ at right angles to where theyâÂÂd been that day.

No crows.

Next day, I did the same. Again, no crows.

I continued doing it each morning until the corn was about a foot high, and the crows never bothered a single stalk.

It was a revelation! If at dawn, the âÂÂsnakesâ werenâÂÂt lying in the same position they had the day before, the crows left the place alone. Since that discovery, weâÂÂve never had crows tear up our corn, even when they nest and play in the woods immediately adjacent to it.

Here is a link that might be useful: country side magazine

Just an idea--as I was replacing a shower curtain, i realized the huge shower curtain rings (plastic) would be great for hooking around tomato stems...! Will use some on my fall tomatoes. PS-- you can buy 12 for $1 at the dollar stores!!!

This post was edited by plantloverla on Tue, Jul 16, 13 at 13:10

Nylon Tie Wraps work wonders for me. It comes in different lengths, can be daisy chained to increase length and also be used to secure cages to containers.

I use a lot of velco at the communication site I work at for securing fiber optic and Cat 5 cable. What I have found is the quality differs between the type we use and what you would buy in an garden center. Especially the type sold for clothing which is inferior to the electronic grade.

Hi, one of my three "must haves" is Matt's Wild Cherry. Absolutely delicious. Small and skin cracks but no matter. I couldn't stop eating them and everyone I gave them out to liked them too. Increase my plants by 300% to get more going. Heavy producer, big plant, and long growing season. Try one next time! Peace

Sweet 100 is a favorite cherry of mine (zone 6). The first year or two with tomatoes I grew a red cherry about the size of a golf ball. It was not quite as sweet as Sweet 100, but it had more taste. Can't recall the name, I grew it from mail-order seed.

Dr. C has a very nice yellow cherry. A number of people I've given it to say it is a low acid fruit.

I transferred a couple of volunteers from my Sungold onslaught of last year just this past week. Tthey seem to be thriving. Bloomed some flowers as well since the transplant. You should definitely do it. Sungolds are hybrids so these will be a real mystery tomato.

Enjoy..............elliot

If you have room, go ahead and transplant. I always have dozens of volunteer toms, not from my compost piles, but just in the garden area. I do not compost weeds or tomato plants.

I often use them to fill in area where a spring tom plant got early blight or something similar.

"I am watering thoroughly-20 minutes in each spot and will do the same tomorrow."

That may be the root of your problem (pun intended)!

When you water shallowly, you train your tomatoes to look near the surface for their water. As a consequence, the plants are much more susceptible to fluctuations in water levels and to heat. If you water deeply, they will send their roots 3-4 feet below the surface and as far in all directions. Lower soil levels, once watered adequately, don't dry out as fast as the surface and the roots will be in a zone that is temperature buffered. Both of those factors will help your tomatoes tolerate extreme heat better.

As a general rule, tomatoes need an inch of water every week. An inch of rain is exactly that, water that is one inch deep. One inch of rainfall equals 5.6 US (4.7 Imperial) gallons of water per square yard. Cool weather or soil with lots of clay will need less, hot weather or sandy soil will need more.

Dig down with your finger about 4", is the growing medium wet, dry, or just right? If it is wet, don't water, if dry then water. If it is just right, check again the next day. Water deeply once or twice a week. Watering daily encourages shallow roots which means the plant is affected more by variations in soil moisture. In my garden during the heat of the summer, I water deeply every 4-5 days, early spring I may only water every 8-9 days and when the weather is moderatly warm (70-80 degrees F), about once a week.

Mulching heavily (to a depth of 6 - 8 inches) with compost, straw, hay, rotted leaves, grass clippings, even shredded paper or sheets of paper or cardboard helps maintain a consistent moisture level.

Betsy

LynnMarie,

Air temps are what they are, but direct sun exposure can be reduced with shade cloth.

Another is placement. If your plants are up against, or near a wall made of concrete
they can get too hot from residual heat. Even against vinyl siding exposed all day can heat the area too much at night.

And if you grow your own seedlings, my recommendation for you is to look at Skyfire Seeds of Kanapolis, KS.

Other than that - Aniaj has some great suggestions.
Celebrity and Big Beef are both more forgiving hybrids, but Atkinson heirloom is more tolerant to your heat than the varieties you mentioned.