16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Some consider Kellogg's Breakfast to simply be the best.
In my garden, it is perhaps the one tomato variety with the most variability in flavor. It can be anywhere from good, to very good, to excellent, all from the same plant, with only about half a week between pickings.
Gary
so real question will be if I have lush and green plants but very few tomatoes- I can see evidence of having plenty of nitrogen and except of keep taking the soil for testing, is there evidence that we might have low P and K numbers or nitrogen needs are overriding everything else and we might have plenty of P and K but it is not being used? And since it might be hard to lower N level except by leaching it out by repeated watering, what else can be done to balance?
P and K just don't get depleted/leached as much as N, and P is something you don't want to add if it's not necessary so it's best not to fertilize with anything until/unless a soil test indicates it's necessary.
Now, I did have a situation this year when with all the rain the N got leached to very low levels, but the plants were showing mainly P deficiency symptoms, which I knew wasn't right. The roots just weren't growing well with the constant wet (though sandy soil drains well) and the plants weren't able to take up the P that was there. Once it dried out a bit (and I did do 1 foliar feed with fish emulsion) the roots were able to grow and the plants established themselves, they are looking great now though smaller than I would expect for a month in the ground (they stalled for a couple of weeks).
I have never heard of anyone *trying* to decrease the N present in their soil. Just don't add more. I suppose if you want to "use it up quickly" you could try throwing in some kind of leafy green as a companion to your tomatoes. But I think that just normal watering/rain would work - have patience, don't flood your plants just trying to wash the N out (not like containers that you're trying to leach salts out of).
Well I just got home from 10 days away and the mega bloom has been aborted, along with many others. I have been spared the majority of the rain this year until now, when I got home I was pretty disheartened. My garden has turned into a blight infested hole with many of my plants suffering from too much water. I guess it rained here most every day for the last two weeks. I cleaned out 4 garbage bags of blighted leaves, yanked all of my potatoes and spent the rest of the day weeding and spraying. The poor little guys between the water and the blight I don't think a lot of them will make it. I suspect root rot on quite a few. Anyways ill post up some pics of the fused branches later today. Oh and thanks for the good info wildflower.
Hard to tell without seeing the whole plant, but your plants have several issues. Only 4 plants from 40 seeds survived? When were they planted? What kind of soil are they planted in? Your container looks too small for one plant, not to mention 4. They don't seem to be getting enough light or food. I can only suggest starting over at some point and reading the FAQ about starting seedlings.
This post was edited by edweather on Mon, Jul 8, 13 at 8:25
They were planted during summer (April). The other plants all are doing fine. Its just the tomatoes! A friend planted them in a bigger place and they grew fine. But after the rain they too have gotten really bad. So i'm assuming its the weather.
I wanted to understand what can be done during these gloomy days to keep the plants healthy. Artificial light? More plant food? Less water?
This post was edited by rosie21 on Mon, Jul 8, 13 at 8:42
Yeah cherry tomatoes are just insane by the end of the season(s) here or anywhere with two growing seasons. I am still concerned that this will not be enough but I like the idea of growing down from way up high at the edges of the Y, as long as they would not snap at the wire from weight.
Lots of discussions here about 'topping plants' and why it isn't recommended. Of course it is always the growers personal choice.
But it depends on if the reason for doing it is valid or not. And the reasons range from "too tall for the cage" in which case the cage is the problem not the plant, to "I don't like the looks" which again isn't the plant's fault, to "I never thought it would get this big" which is a result of not doing any homework before hand.
In this case you are assuming that topping the plant will let the fruit grow and ripen and that isn't what happens.
Topping an indeterminate stimulates new top growth - new vines sprout from the nodes just below the cut off branch. So now you have 2 where 1 was. It is the nature of indeterminates. Plus it triggers the plant back into the vegetative growth mode and out of fruit set/development mode. That defeats your purpose.
So if encouraging the ripening of existing fruit is the goal rather than getting more fruit then topping isn't the answer. That is accomplished with selective fruit removal from clusters that already exist, picking fruit as soon as color breaks, and then most importantly stressing the plant with root pruning. Take a sharp shovel and 6-8" out from the base of the plant carefully slice straight down through some of the roots on 2 sides of the plant. Then water it well and wait. Existing fruit will begin to ripen.
This is assuming you can't just cover the plants to extend your growing season to allow for natural ripening.
So experiment and see what happens and which works best for you. Top one plant if you wish and root prune another and compare the results.
Hope this helps.
Dave
Your location would help as well. Tomatoes only ripen between 58 and 85 DEG F. Temperatures outside those turn off the production of the ripening factors. Tomatoes require 1300 to 1400 Growing Degree Days (GDD) to ripen. Depending on the temperatures a given day can be 28 to 60. There is a formula that requires you to know the maximum and minimum temperatures. Any temperature below 50 DEG F does nothing for us.
I plant mine no more than 24" apart, but they never look this bushy....I stake them and also live north so now I have buds..no toms yet...all heirlooms many colours.this year I planted about
30...and gave away the same amount...cheers, martha/zucchini
How often do you water and how much?
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 needs will be 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
"The rest of the tomatoes will be fine."
Correct, but not because of the tums or milk/water solution. They will be OK because the plant will mature and develope better calcium transport capabilities.
Our favorite tomato expert Carolyn137 wrote an excellent response to a question about Blossom End Rot (BER) and I am quoting it here:
With BER there is NO problem with absorption of Ca++ though the roots. The problem is maldistribution within the plant that can be induced by a number of stresses which include uneven delivery of water, too much N, growing in too rich soil, too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry you name it.
As the plants mature they can better handle the streses that can induce BER so usually it goes away.
The two exceptions are first, if the soil has NO Ca++ as confirmed with a soil test, and that's a rare condition, and second, if the soil is too acidic in which Case Ca++ is bound in the soil.
Again, adding lime, egg shells and on and on can not and will not prevent BER b'c absorption of Ca++ thru the roots is OK.
Paste tomatoes are especially susceptible to BER and I think someone in a post above mentioned that.
If you go to the top of this first page and click on the FAQ link and scroll down you'll also find an article about BER in case some of you have never looked at the FAQ's And there's some darn good articles there as well, but I wouldn't pay any attention to the variety list b'c it's way out of date.
The old information about BER being caused solely by lack of soil Ca++ has been shown to be wrong with research that's been done in the last 20 years or so, but it's going to take another generation before the real story gets into books, websites, magazines, etc. Most of the better websites already have the correct information.
BER affects not only tomatoes, but peppers, squash, cabbage, cauliflower, etc., and it's a huge multimillion dollar problem for the industry, which is WHY all that reasearch was done. For instance, when tissues were taken from a plant that has BER fruits and was assayed for Ca++, the normal level of Ca++ was found, it just wasn't getting to the blossom end of fruits. And there's also a condition called internal BER where the fruits look fine, no evidence of BER externally, but when you cut open the fruit the inside is black
Hope that helps
So, you see, anything you do like adding tums, eggshells, banana peels, or spraying with milk or even using BER (Blossom End Rot) preventative sprays will not make any difference.
I hope that explains the issue for you.
Betsy
Here is a link that might be useful: FAQ page on Blossom End Rot
Yep this is not going well. And unfortunately, I am leaving tonite and won't be back until Wednesday nite so I'm not sure what I'm going to come back to. My husband can keep them watered and I'll spray with copper tonite but it seems to continue to be traveling up and I'm afraid to trim any more off and now it's attacking the green part of the flowers.... Maybe not septoria but some kind of blight? What does one do about that?
Now that I see the top of the plant and the buckets they are planted in, I'm 90% sure they are underwatered. If I had a plant that size in 5 gallon bucket, I'd have to soak the soil almost every day if it was sunny and warm.
This post was edited by edweather on Sun, Jul 7, 13 at 10:50
Garden_Hobbit,
If you want to slow the delivery of water to the plant, you can puncture a plastic jug (1 gallon, 2 liter, etc., what ever will fit between the plant and the rim of the bucket) in the bottom with a tiny hole, then set it on top of the growing medium in the bucket with the hole toward the CENTER of the bucket and fill it with water. The pinhole will "leak" allowing the growing medium to soak it up without so much running down the sides of the "hard pan". Repeat as needed.
Want something faster and easier to fill? Take that 2 liter bottle and drill a tiny hole in the cap (or poke it with a hot needle, I think an ice pick might be too big, but see what works for you.) Cut the bottom off the bottle, or just cut a hole in the bottom or near the bottom large enough for the end of your garden hose. Then secure the bottle upside down in the bucket with the leaky cap attached. (Duct tape 3 or 4 wooden skewers or sections of small diameter dowels to it? I'll leave that up to your imagination and ingenuity.) You could make one for each of your plants and fill them up one after the other. If the plants need a second round, you could top up the first one after you fill the last one and go back down the line.
There are watering spikes you can buy to put on the 2 liter bottles. (I was going to include a link to a google search for "two liter watering spikes" but apparently GW no longer allows that.... So you can search for it yourself.)
Betsy
I've never tried it, but wonder if Artists' gesso wouldn't work - the acrylic based. It's white, but you could color it with acyrlic paint.
Rustoleum has a spray primer (brown) that I often use on metal garden fixtures. Could very well come in a can, too. I still think you'll have to prep them by removing surface rust.
WTS, depending on the metal, the rusted cages could still last a decade. Personally, I kinda like the look.
Why do they have to be rubberized? If it is just an appearance issue just paint them with any color of Rustoleum paint.
Auto paint stores sell a primer paint that kills rust and leaves the treated area black. Old auto restorers use alot of it.
But it all seems an awfully lot of work for cages that will work fine as is.
Dave
My "supposed" Better Boys are growing with the same shape as yours. I live in south Arkansas and we had some really cool weather as my plants were flowering. I have read that cool and wet weather at flowering will make tomatoes grow malformed.
Nice setup, that's high enough to last for the season.
Also be careful not to squeeze all of those branches inside, you want some airflow, and leaves stacked over each other take a much longer time to dry.
You *can* eventually go in there and pinch off a couple of the less productive looking suckers. Or let some of the branches "escape" then tie them to the assembly with some twine for support as they grow.
Nice lush green looking plants, but I'm not seeing any flowers or maters near the bottom/middle, they seem to start near the middle/top. I wonder if that's from excess nitrogen or just plant type and or climate conditions.
It would be fun to see how much they've grown in another week or two :)
This post was edited by sjetski on Mon, Jul 8, 13 at 12:35
Not bamboo, they're plastic coated metal stakes. Very stiff. I think I may also use the same stakes to secure the tops of adjacent cages to each other to provide some stability from gusty winds.
The fruit and flowers are scattered throughout the plants though I guess you're right in that I should be seeing more down low. I fed the plants Tomato Tone right after transplanting and then every three weeks since. They're both cherry tomatoes (the two that I just staked).