16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

"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.

Most tomatoes are of the common species which we normally use and are completely cross fertile. So ability to cross breed is not generally something you need to worry about. However, there are a few other, closely related species of tomatoes and these might not cross breed as easily. Most of those related species tend to be very small cherries, even "Currant" cherries, so you are unlikely to be dealing with them if you have anything like a standard cherry tomato.

When you cross a cherry with a large tomato, you generally get something in between, but it will probably be closer in size to the cherry tomato. This is because the cherry tomato is closer to the ancestral type, and frequently will have more dominant genes. However, you will get a wide range of progeny on grow outs of future generations, ranging from cherry sized right up to close to the size of the original large tomato parent.

Thanks, everyone. That is the information I was seeking. Now I just need to perfect the emasculation/pollination process. I'm having a little difficulty harvesting pollen.

Jim

Yes, I will enjoy it for sure. It helps to know that it looks like a Roma to you, too. That's what I was thinking although I thought they grew in bunches. Thanks for your response.

Perhaps switching tags was someone's idea of a joke! I'm still happy with it.

I would have said same thing Dave pointed out:
It has potato leaves but the fruit resemble to roma. Could be a cross.

Well, speaking for myself, not everyone is willing or able to wrestle with making their own CRW cages. Not everyone has a place to store them. I have both the TTC and Burpee. The Burpee is definitely sturdier than the cheap round ones I can buy locally. But they are not even in the same league as the TTC. I am currently using the Burpee for my grow bags and for peppers and such in the garden and the TTC for the garden tomatoes. Both are convenient because they easily fold flat. I would use the Burpee for determinates, but not for large indeterminates unless I had to. Basically it comes down to how much you want to invest.

I made my own extenders after I realized my burpee cages weren't cutting it on their own. For each cage I used four stakes, zip ties, and jute twine. Not the neatest solution but it works well.

Here is a link that might be useful: DIY cage extenders

Thanks :)

I love the cinderblocks for raised beds. They were easy to put together and have worked great. I used the holes for various herbs, some onions, and flowers.

Kathy, the tomato bed is ~2' by 5'.

Here's another cinderblock bed, this one's being used for eggplants and peppers.

And this one I built in the alley on a little strip we had in front of the hedge. It used to be all weeds there, so I put it to good use for root veggies.

Nice!