16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Do not use the moisture control in the buckets or in any small container. It keeps the soil too wet in small containers. Use the plain stuff.

You can mix in some of the Black Cow just don't overdue it and keep in in the bottom half of the container. Save the 10-10-10 for after first fruit set and then make a a narrow trench an inch or two deep about 1 inch in from the outside edge of the container. Put about 1 cup of the 10-10-10 there and cover. It is similar to what is done with Earthboxes. From then on you will have to use a liquid fertilizer diluted to 1/2 strength to water the plant every 7-10 days.

Dave

This is why you would want to plant in containers. This is a squash, but tomatoes look pretty much the same. This specimen came from a 1 year old raised bed.

I am converting all of my susceptible plants to containers. Five gallon is sufficient. I currently use cheap box store potting soil, but I will convert for winter tomatoes and squash to Al's 5:1:1: mix.

I think the only organic matter in this pile of sugar sand is the root knot nematodes.

Larry

I'm in Chicago. The potatoes never showed signs of blight though.

It's pm not late blight.

I'm learning as I go along. I don't mind thinning them out if it's going to cause a problem but separating them before transplant I thought would have caused trauma to the roots since they are so intertwined below the surface? I guess I am stuck with the current medium/ cup size to prevent further issues, I will wait and see and take my chances. It was recommended from the local nursery to use this potting mix but I see there are obviously more robust options. if these don't make it I may be off to the market to purchase some of their seedlings in progress.

When they are at such a young stage, a very delicate seperation is easy, if you do it slowly and don't force them apart.
Next time try multi cell starter flats and put one seed per cell, if you want 6 good agressive plants, start with 9 seeds per variety.With germination percentages taken into consideration, depending on your variety and seed vendor,even if you end up with 9 plants you can pick the 6 best to use and give the rest to family and friends.

This is my first time growing from seed and ive been using the fox farm ocean as well. Im pretty happy with it. I also mixed in extra perylite to help with drainage and ive been giving them small doses of fish emulsion once a week. I didnt think the price was too bad. I bought the 40qt (approximate) bags for around 12 bucks The peat pots have thier issues and i dont think i will use them again but im learning. For lights ive been using t8 daylight bulbs and keep a fan on them. Getting pretty excited about 3 weeks till they go in the ground.

argh! so so jealous!

Still waiting on mine to "hatch" lol. put them into the paper towels saturday/sunday.

@:^(

TomNJ, we are practically neighbors! In in C'burg, outside of town limits in Montgomery Co., halfway between the hospital and R. University. I'm usually in Floyd once a week or every two weeks. (if you like Mexican food, try El Charro - yum)

I must say I envy the space you have! I'm on a little mobile home lot and the park owner is fanatical about neatness (not a bad thing in a mobile home park) So I'm limited on space, with the added constraint of trying to keep the veggie bed invisible. I'll be interested in how your garden does, I'll have to watch for your posts.

btw, I'm a Connecticut transplant myself, way back in '89! We could start a Yankee club - lol

Hi Cindy,

I'm just north of the town of Floyd, eight miles up the 221. Our new "farm" is 25 acres, but the veggie garden is only 50' x 80'. I'm hoping to be vegetable self-sufficient in time.

We split our time between our NJ home and the Floyd home and will eventually move permanently to Floyd. We ate at El Charro last week - yummy is right - and frequent Mickey Gs (tonight) and the Pine Tavern when in Floyd. Love this area!!

TomNJ-VA

Thanks, Sandy...I will keep an eye on that...

Thanks, Joe...(I actually came across that earlier...my neighbor has tried capsaicin repellant and had only very limited success with it on the initial placement of it - later they came back.)

My sister and also my friend have had success in trapping skunks in live traps. You have to throw a blanket over the trap to carry it off and then they don't spray you, you put the blanket over you when you're walking up to the trap and then shrug it off of you and onto the trap. Then you open the door without letting it see you and cover yourself up with the blanket again so,it doesn't see you while you're releasing it far away from your house. It works! Good luck...

Ohio, I know! Haha, my boyfriend is constantly calling me the tinkerer because I can't leave the plants alone, lol. With yard plants, I felt like I could only amend as much as I could -- but now being limited to containers and so much on the web (especially here), I'm out of control, peering into each plant and noticing if even one thing is not like it was an hour ago. Luckily I am almost out of room and only a few seedlings left to mess with and then I'm done -- for this season, lol.

With the only-HP seedlings, whatever happened did happen in about 24 hours, so I guess it wasn't the soil. I thought maybe it was too waterlogged or _______, and hence turning yellow. And perhaps coincidental but the growth since putting it in 5:1:1 has been green. Bizarre -- but fascinating.

Re: Bougainvillea -- I would have never considered GM for it. (See? Now I'm thinking, "Hmm....maybe I can try that!" LOL!!) I would have thought, Ohio, in full sun in the heat of summer, it would be a mess in GM. I had one that was 20 feet plus at my old house, and it was a mini project to sit there and water that thing in the ground. That was my logic, anyway, in why I attempted pure Pro-mix HP first...

Thanks for the reply, Ohio! :-)
Speaking of whiteflies, now I must go find if that's what I saw this morning. I am all grossed out right now and will post on the pests forum. Blech.

Gardenweb88 -- sorry for hijacking your thread for a moment!

Grace

I grew two Willamette tomato plants last year. One in a five gallon planter with black gold potting soil and 25% perlite mixed in, and one in a five gallon bucket with 95% perlite and 5% grow rocks untop of the perlite. Both were grown out side. Toward the end I added some fertilizer to the blackgold plant. The perlite plant was grown with General Hydroponics 3 part flora nutrients from beginning until harvest. Both plants produced great tasting tomatoes.

Bottom up watering? That's fine if the mix is wicking water properly. With a consistent good wicking soil mix it should wick right to the top of the mix and appear moist. I'm not sure whether it's too much or too little water, but I would suggest doing a through soil probe to determine just how moist it is. I agree that they don't usually yellow and die from too little water, they usually just get a little floppy, and respond quickly to watering. I water from top down with a good draining mix, so when I see water running out the bottom I know it's watered. The mix drains well enough so I rarely, if ever, have to worry about overwatering.

Here is a side view. I am using my phone to take these so it's hard to get a good one especially since it was overcast. They're embarrassingly pathetic looking in person. I don't think I potted them deep enough and I'm sure the pots are already too small. Ugh.

Could too much fertilizer do this? Maybe it's the miracle gro??? Hopefully they can rebound from this. If I restart them now I think they might be big enough by the time it's okay to put them out.

This post was edited by kgolomb on Sun, Apr 21, 13 at 15:31

s it ok to rinse out the sprayer and hose, and just alternate the solution as needed?

Yeah, with great care since many of them contain emulsifiers and oils so a quick rinse and dump with cold water doesn't cut it,

But just ask the gardener who didn't get it rinsed well and ended up spraying herbicide along with the fertilizer if having only one sprayer is enough.

At the very least separate marked sprayers for fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides to avoid cross contamination can prevent a lot of grief.

Switch to hose-end sprayers. They are small, easy to store, and cheap.

Dave

go to three sprayers, one for weed killer, one for fungicide and one for pest killers. You can use either of the ones that aren't weed killer for fertilizer. But don't use the weed killer one for anything but weeds!

It's possible it was the hard freeze, but if it was covered, usually only the outside portion of the plant touching the cover would be dead, and the damaged part quickly turns dark and not a gradual yellow wilting like yours. It kind of looks like wilt, but the plant is so young, it might not be. I would probably remove the hopeless foliage (or not, you could wait a while) and hope for the best.....

This post was edited by edweather on Sat, Apr 20, 13 at 16:38

it looks like sun and windburn. If it just went from the greenhouse to a sunny day, and then some wind, and then some cold, wow for all that it looks pretty good. I would just leave it alone. It will recover.
if it looked good when you got it, then it's not wilt. it wouldn't show that fast.