16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Thanks again Dave

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

Good plan and definitely easy, thanks!

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.

ref:The Sunshine State

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

Wow! I think there must be at least two strains of Mr. Stripey. I grew it several years ago. The ones I grew look nothing like the pictures above. They were salad tomatoes. The stripes were a lot more pronounced. The plants were productive (unfortunately). They were total spitters - very bitter / acidic.

Tigerella is also often called Mr Stripey. It is a small tart salad type.

Wherever Gary Ibsen found the tomato that became Julia Child, he obviously chose the correct one. Everyone who's grown it seems to describe it as tall. I'm assuming that the relatively few leaves emphasizes the height.

That's only right for a tomato named for a woman who was 6'2"!

You might consider giving your Julia Child tomatoes some extra potassium and phosphorus, and not giving them as much nitrogen (fish emulsion and lots of other stuff like that may be high in nitrogen; so, be careful). Then see if that changes anything production/leaf/stem-wise. I don't know if it will, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Thanks Shawn.
Good to know that they are also disease resistance.
If I had space, I would've grown one but I have toooo many already. I saw the other day HD selling Bonnie Juliet plants. I was tempted to get one. Plus I am growing a similar thing ( I call it mini Roma) from store bought fruits. Most probably it is Juliet.

Seysonn

I use Juliet for canning whole tomatoes - thanks to their thick skin, they stay whole and don't go mushy in jars. Long-lasting, disease-resistant plants and very productive too.

I also doubt that adaptation can take place in 3 years.
However it is know fact that plants in general do adapt to their environment and becoming NATIVE. But again, it is long process, I believe.

Seysonn

Well, I guess genetic variants that are less suited to the locale will fail to thrive, and fail to yield seeds for the next year. Of course, if genetic variants are that common, you're going to get them every year, and seeds from an especially well suited variety can't be guaranteed to retain that quality in the seeds they produce. So the idea sounds a little slippery.

Would be interesting to ask the MN State Horticultural Society exactly who "generally" thinks it.

I try to avoid both Chicken manure and rabbit manure. I have found bone in them. This tells me that they compost their dead animals. So what you get might not be REALLY just manure.

Seysonn

I don't compost my rabbits, but what if someone did? What would it matter? If it's fully decomposed, it's fully decomposed. Even a cold compost becomes pathogen-free if allowed to sit long enough. Of course, one would need to be knowledgeable to properly identify fully decomposed compost.

If you transplanted to bigger pots, best to use regular potting soil. Seed type is ok at the beginning because they don't need much to get started. Fish emulsion is a good source of Nitrogen.

Seed starting mix is for seed starting. Potting soil has extra goodies/nutes that seed starting mix doesn't have. Most nursery employees are there for a paycheck, and have little actual knowledge of life in the garden. Their expertise is in counting seed packets for inventory. Fish emulsion is a good … start ...

My raised beds are 11" but the underneath is native ground/soil. Most of tomato roots do not go straight downward. I think the tap roots serve an anchor.

But in a container 12" or more is better.

<Are you stating that when I plant tomatoes in the ground, the roots go downward, more than 10 inches?>

Heavens yes. I have dug up (when you pull them you never see all the length) plants with 3' long roots and even then very likely didn't get it all. Taproot plants can easily grow roots several feet long and in general, the bigger the plant the longer the roots. Article below talks about a measured growth of 22 inches in 3 weeks time. In a container they coil around but the deeper the container the better by far.

Interesting article on tomato root development

I grow okra and tomatoes side by side in rows 4 feet apart and 150' feet long, North to South. I am the one who developed the 'HEAVY HITTER' strain of Clemson Spineless okra that grew over 60 branches and nearly 300 pods of okra. I've picked 22 pods per day from just one plant. Currently this new strain is under seed increase through our State's Ag University and the Department of Agriculture. It will be released for limited distribution in the Spring of 2013.

In NE OK, the sun gets hot. Tomatoes won't produce flowers once the temp reaches above 85. Planting okra to block high sunlight/heat can prolong the fruiting of the tomatoes.