16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Try to hit all of the plant when spraying your Daconil. One year I sprayed only the bottom half of my tomato plants and not the new growth. You can figure out the rest. Get the bottom of the leaves too. Spray enough that it begins to run off the leaves. When it dries it seems almost impervious to rain (key word "almost") It's great stuff and really does work well. Use it on any of your plants that are susceptible to fungus.
I have both limited space and a short growing season. For me, Gold Nugget, Taxi, and Green Zebra produce a lot of tomatoes for their smaller plant size. Pink Brandywine is a huge plant for me and always produces a ton of tomatoes, but most never fully mature before the cold weather hits. :p
Certainly you will get differing opinions about varieties from different people. However, I feel the value of forums like this is: when you consistently see people here talking about a variety that they like or dislike...pay attention. That does not mean everyone will agree. Many commercial growers will only hype their products...and they make everything sound great. I have learned so much here in the last 3 years. There are mostly honest and helpful people on these sites.
I am loving it so far. Though it has cooled down a bit to more seasonable temps. here.
The bed with my store bough transplants. Bottom left is Pablano pepper. Middle is Bush Goliath. (Already setting fruit.) To the right of it is a Thia Hot ornamental. Top left is Black Prince. (It is blooming like mad now.) Behind them is a Jalapeno I over wintered. It has looked stunted for a while, and is now starting to show signs of coming back.
Carrie said it well.
I am just getting some plants in the garden. AND this is by all sort of tricks and risks and pushing my season by about 40 days ahead. Normal/conventional plant out time here is around mid May.
I aim to have ripe fruits by The Fourth of July celebration.
Seysonn
Last count I have 28 varieties and probably should have close to 50 plants (10 In pots and 40 in raised beds) . This will be a record number for me. So far I have planted 10 and 40 more to go.
In addition to tomatoes I have close to 20 peppers, all to be planted in containers.
I'll be busy.
Seysonn
So sorry to hear that, Wertach. But you did your best for him and gave him love and a home. No stray cat could ask for more.
We took in two feral kittens last summer. Took all of 20 minutes to get them to stop hissing at us. Now one cuddles up on the couch with me every night. Got them fixed last december, but they're both still hunters. So far, just 3 voles, and I know this sounds heartless but I hope they develop a taste for the rabbits that are the bane of my garden.
When the time is right, Wertach, I hope you find another gardening buddy.
To insure 100% genetic purity, yes you would have to bag blooms. There is a FAQ here all about how to do it. If you are content with 85-90% purity then it isn't necessary as the actual amount of crossing in low.
Dave
I get a kick out of threads like this, with a lot of history, controversy . Even my own old posts sound interesting to me. It shows how much I have learned over time.
DET or INDET?
I read a lot of post talking about the plant size as indication of det/indet. But to my understanding det/indet is not all about the plant size, BUT a different growth form. For example you can have a dwarf indeterminant tomato plant. Hmmm
INDET:
The plants grows like a vine with fruit clusters at the nodes just above the leaf branch, while the branch keeps growing and producing more nodes.
DET:
The plant has a more bushy shape (if not pruned) BUT that does not mean the real indication of being determinate.
The REAL indication of a DET is that fruit clusters appear at the tip/end of branches, NOT on the lower nodes. So the fruit cluster terminates the end of that particular branch. So to get more fruits there will be more lateral branches coming to play to produce fruits, IFF your season is long enough you might continue harvesting fruits all season long. That has been the case/my experience with Siletz and Legend (both det)
Semi Det/Indet ? : hahaha . what is that ? I need acollege degree for that one.
4th of July ? OR Independence Day ?
Well historically they are the same but according to Burpee IT IS NOT DETERMINED. hehe.
BTW. This year of 2015 I am growing 4th of July.
I could not locate my seeds packet. So what should I expect ?
Time will tell.
Seysonn
I keep learning .hehe
I doubt it will help. I suspect if anything it will hurt. Why do you assume it is mold, is there something about it that confirms this? Is it gray mold or tomato leaf mold like I just posted to use peroxide in a thread just before you posted? Then, sure.
Tomato Tone contains active bacteria which can form white colonies. They are a healthy part of an organic ecosystem which release nutrients from the fertilizer. If they appear to be soil borne only, I would let them do their job, since you are using organic products. If you use organic products you must be careful about how you water and not rely on chemical solutions to things that may not be clear if they are good or bad.
If the plants experience something growing on the leaves or stems then 50:1 peroxide is a possibility, but plants are damaged by significantly higher peroxide, and at that point, and at this stage any damping off or fungi attack is likely to result in a plant that is no good. If they are not experiencing anything and it is just the soil, your best defense may be to leave it as is so the hopefully brnrficial or beneign microbe excludes the bad ones that are just waiting for you to clear a path for them to get in there. digdirt just posted about the fan while I wrote this so no need to have added that except to say agreed.
PC
What I'd do in your situation is to run straight sections of the wire ( w/o wrapping at each post) every 5-6" apart as plants grow and use twine to tie wires to running posts and also to hold plant stems to wires where needed. You will in essence use the wire as a partial cage rather than Fl Weave. Both construction and teardown will be much simpler.
Seysonn, LOL,
"We[Florida] ought to call ourselves the Partly Cloudy State instead of the Sunshine State," Miami-based meteorologist Jim Lushine said. "But it probably wouldn't get the Chamber of Commerce's vote."
Florida has more days where between 20 to 70% of the sun is blocked by clouds than anywhere else in the continental United States, weather officials said. Weather experts said warm water surrounding the state, high humidity and a long rainy season make for cloudy skies.
The "Sunshine State" means a lot of things to a lot of people. Due to our latitude (not mine, but those further to the south) we are the "Ultraviolet State", but definitely not the Sunshine State. New Mexico puts the Sun on their flag and South Dakota was "The Sunshine State" before it changed to "The Mt. Rushmore State". Arizona has over twice the annual Solar radiant energy in a year than Florida (Solar energy isn't that popular here). Washington (Seattle) has 16:00 hours of daylight on the First Day of Summer, and Miami only 13:45.
Good luck with the peroxide!
PC
Jennie,
Yes the mold can persist for a year and it isn't cold that kills it, but dry conditions that are key. That's something many of us just can't get. As far as the hydrogen peroxide, I've been on a kick to use it. My understanding is that it will work if you can soak the surfaces where it might be, but putting it into the soil is probably not going to be effective beyond the very top. This is because the hydrogen peroxide is not like a fungicide/moldicide in that it is an oxidant like bleach that just destroys any organic substance it contacts, so if you have an organic soil which all are, it will react and dissipate almost instantly. If you put it on cages, pots, etc., within 30 minutes it will be gone. That's actually a benefit since the only residue is water. Bleach leaves salt residue, but if you are just doing cages that might work well.
Hydrogen Peroxide works great on surfaces though and I ended up using it diluted 50:1 and thoroughly soaking everything before planting. I am very satisfied that it worked well and is effective for me in my conditions. It has been about a month now and I've got no mold so far, even though one month ago I cleaned my growing area out after a bad mold winter mold storm in there when I pulled the plants (around the first week in March --- they were bad). If you spray it, be extra careful not to breath peroxide in, since as mentioned it is reactive and will hurt your lungs just as quickly ... they are organic too ;-)
Other home remedies for mold I've played with are milk and cinnamon oil. Seysonn uses neem oil, which is probably best for the plants if necessary and you aren't depending on copper or Daconil which are both more effective fungicides especially when used preventatively. Be sure to diagnose whether you have gray mold or tomato leaf mold when researching what you might do.
PC
It depends. Both seeds can be equally healthy and viable . So you make a choice which one you want to keep. You can wait actually keep both of them much longer in 3' pot and see which one is doing better. When I have 2 per 3" pot and I want to keep both I would separate them when they are up to 4 inches tall. By then the seedlings are not root bound yet in 3" pot.
BUT since you just want to keep one you can eliminate one of them much sooner.
Seysonn
Sounds like you're on a slope, which should be safe against ponding. That may mean that your raised bed will have the downslope wall higher than the upslope wall, but that should be OK. You may, as a result, have deeper soil on the downslope side of the bed. I would not recommend making the surface of your raised bed sloped.