16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Will the air temps be different than where they are now. Will the sun exposure be different than what they have been exposed to?
Odds are the answer to both is yes. Then they need to be hardened off first.
Hardening off is nothing more than providing for a gradual adjustment to any change in environment.
If you can't move the plants to allow for that gradual adjustment then modify the new environment somewhat - rig up some temporary shade in the hoop house and monitor the day/night temp extremes carefully for a few days. You may have to lightly cover them on cool nights.
Dave
Right....when you break it down like that it makes sense, so my instincts were right.
My next question then is : I had them under lights 12 hours a day, so now I will harden them off by bringing them outside, but if I put them in the shade/direct sun combo are they getting the same light as they were under grow lights? So am I done with grow lights at this stage ? I know this probably seems like an obvious question but I guess it seems hard to understand the difference between artificial lights vs sunlight at this stage for me !!
As long as it is an indeterminate, it is virtually impossible to kill through physical damage. It will grow back very easily, it will just be bushier than before.
Also, if you want two plants, stick the broken top piece in the dirt. Don't even have to do anything special to it, just stick the broken bottom in wet dirt. It'll root and you'll have two plants.
It's 55, not 65. Zone 6b plants can normally go out in mid-late April but even with the crazy weather this year they should be able to go out this coming week given the forecast.
Personally I would remove them before you transplant them outside. That puts the plant back in to vegetative growth and root development mode which should be the focus right now.
But you can leave them if you wish. The odds are the plant will kill them off in some fashion anyway due to all the transplant stress.
Dave
Hard to give best opinion without pics, but in my case, if there is a problem it's usually human error. Like Linda said, too much fertilizer will kill seedlings (been there done that,) overwatering (how do you know soil is dry?,) light, temperatures, etc.
What did you do differently since they were green and healthy?
I have a couple big gardens myself and still enjoy growing some in pots.
Indeterminate's...25gal. nursery pots work well for me, you can use smaller but need to feed and water more. I like some time to myself. lol
This post was edited by pasco on Thu, May 2, 13 at 20:05
I had BAD experiences with those 5 gl. buckets from Home Depot: short, thin plants, no fruits. Maybe I over-watered, maybe I made too few holes at the bottom of the bucket, maybe the soil was not fluffy enough, maybe⦠Anyway, IâÂÂm not going to use those buckets anymore.
I had EXCELLENT results with BIG 
like this one - the bigger, the better. Probably because they are biggerâ¦
So, everything will go in the ground, where ALWAYS everything was fine.
The variety you ask about is completelyy gentically stable, it was borught back frim Siberia by Bill McDorman whi was the first person let into Siberia after sanctions were removed, He brought back many named varieties andmany of them have become faves..
Two of us bought seeds for al lof them when he first listed them.
If it;s just ONE branch that has PL leaves and nowhere else on the plant then I;d suggest what it might be is a somatic mutation,Most mutations occur in the DNA of seeds but somatic mutations occur in the cells of plants .f a
'If it truly is a somatic mutation, then seeds saved from the fruits from that branch should give plants with PLfoliage,
I;ve been lucky to have seen two somatic mutations over the years.
Hope that helps.
Carolyn, who linked to it at Tania;s site and if you look at seed availability there are two places offering seed for 2013
Here is a link that might be useful: Olga's, etc
nothing to my tomato plants so far, but I found them crawling all over my other plants. apparently the larva can cause swelling in areas of plants, with certain types of midges. I also know that there is some that attack the buds of tomato plants, at least in hawaii lol. but my tomato plants arent budding yet... I found it difficult to find information on what they do to plants so I was just curious. the weird thing is that the midges are all gone now but there is dead ones all over the tomato plants and I know that tomato plants are a part of the nightshade family so I was just curious if the tomato plants poisoned them? I was more concerned about my other plants but I tried googling this with no results. my tomato plants are healthy as heck right now which is pretty awesome because I am a first time grower. they are actually almost to healthy... they are growing like crazy and I have so many!! they are of the Tigerella variety.
Could these be fungus gnats, aka fruit flies? They like the damp soil of houseplants. This year, for the first time, I found some in the hairs of my tomato seedlings' stems.
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/tomato/msg0316540831177.html
Before transplanting out, and at that point the seedlings are 6-9 inches tall, I used to take of all buds and blossoms, and that b'c you want all plant energy to go into making a great root structure as well as good stems and branches, keeping the plant in what's called the vegetative cycle before letting it go into the sexual cycle of blossom formation, fruit set and maturation.
And that b/c energy is diverted to the sexual cycle at the expense of the vegetative cycle,
But if I had plants as big as yours are already, I'd just let them do what they're going to do and not worry about it.
Carolyn
I planted the top in the ground as suggested. It is growing, albiet slow. I put a lawn chair to provide shade. Thank you for the help.
Tim
I think the lawn chair is an amazingly innovative idea for shade!
Glad to hear the plant is coming back.