16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
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.
You will be VERY happy with the Brandywine's flavor. They can get big too. Slices so large, that you can't see any part of a normal slice of bread under it, when making a BLT.
You are right about the size dropping after the 1st few really big ones. The flavor sure doesn't drop though.
Looking forward to seeing your pictures and updates.
Lil black bugs...lil pin\head size...can fly...biting lots of lil holes
The tiny holes are flea beetles. No intervention required.
The big damaged areas aren't from them. That looks like it might be gray leaf mold from what I can tell in the pic. That needs fungicides.
Dave
Don't get me started on squirrels! I have a plant given to me by my husbands coworker. It is from her 90 year old neighbor who has been developing this tomato for years. So excited to try it and bagged blossoms in case it fantastic. Squirrels got the green tomatoes I had marked as bagged. So I filled the bird feeders up to keep them busy on the other side of the yard.
Don't know about Green Giant, but Aunt Ruby's German Green is one of my favorite tomatoes. Really excellent flavor and beautiful, large green fruit with pink blush at blossom end. It is always a bit late, and I would be hesitant to grow it if I was only growing a half dozen, for that reason, but if you have room for a few extra plants, you should try growing it.
Ripe when green tomatoes are just that, RIPE, but with green color instead of red. I happen to like the flavor of a lot of them, but if you do a blind taste test with people, as I have many many times, no one can tell they green ones by the flavor. They just say they are good tomatoes. Then are surprised to see that they are green.
Why use it? Regardless of the brand. The effectiveness is marginal at best.
From the Blossom Drop FAQ here:
Hormone sprays, such as "Blossom Set", may prevent some blossom drop due to LOW temperatures. However, the resulting fruit are often misshapen. But studies prove that hormone sprays do not prevent blossom drop due to HIGH temperatures.
Dave
"The branches are slim and long between the nodes. This might indicate that they are SMALL FRUITED PLANTS."
Seysonn do you have any links to reputable sources (websites, books, scientific papers, etc.) to back up that statement?
I ask because I am truly curious. I was under the (possibly mistaken) impression that internode length was related to a tomato plant being either determinate or indeterminate.
Carolyn137's comment in a recent thread on indeterminate behavior : "Specific genesdetermine plant habit of a variety, as in det, indet, Dwarf, etc. by controlling the internode distances, that is, the spaces between on the stem/lateral branches, etc., where blossoms appear." seems to support my impression, but is by no means definitive.
Betsy
Bury three or four tums around the plant, then do a foliar spray with a milk/water solution every 5-7 days. The rest of the tomatoes will be fine.
"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