16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

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.

You accidentally wintersowed them. I do all mine that way and they look like that right now since they came up about a week ago when the weather warmed to the 60s.

By late May, however, when they've been in the ground for a bit, they'll take off and catch up. And yes, they're probably a little sturdier than the ones started inside. My brother starts his in a hot house and they're usually far bigger than mine when it's time to plant out. But last year we got our first ripe tomatoes in the same week.

I just planted some seeds outdoors in egg cartons. Will leave them out there and water when necessary so they can freeze over night and warm up during the day. We are might have some rain or snow tomorrow according to one forecast but another one says it will be clear. I think that I will cover them with saran wrap plastic over night in case we have some rain or snow.

IMO that looks more like sunburn than frostbite. Did you harden them off? Are you sure there was frost?

There wasn't frost but it got down to about 32 or 33 degrees and my garden shed is missing half its roof. Storm last summer blew off half the roof and it hasn't been repaired yet. Your right, it does look like sunburn now that you mention it.
Maybe could be sunburn since the roof isn't all there but the problem seemed to start after that cold night. They almost drowned from the last rain. I think all that water probably took away all the nutrients out of the pot. My poor tomatoes are having a rough start this year.

Thanks to both of you!

Dave, you really hit the nail on the head. I planted 8 toms (all indeterminates) in about a 4x8 raised bed space last year and thought that was enough room to breathe. I did eventually have trouble with disease and overcrowding.

I'd much rather have fewer healthier plants and more fruit than the mess I was wading through last September. Plus our third baby is due mid-July and the less plants I have, the less I have to tend.

And good advice on the Celebrity, I had only read about how they were good producers, until just now when I read they were more of a determinate type. I assume they will do better in containers as they're more of a bush than a vine?

Thanks again, my plan seems to make a little more sense now.

My raised beds are 4 ft wide. I put 2 sweet 100 side by side at one end and 2 sungold at another end.

Yeah they grow like crazy. I use 7 ft tall CRW cages and let them drape over the sides and ends of the bed.

If you grow them like this, you will need a small ladder in the fall.

Rick

I use metal electrical conduit ($3.29/10ft at the box stores) cut in half to make 2 5 ft stakes and drive 12 inches in the ground. I used to use zip ties to attach the cages, but now use short lengths of solid electrical wire. The copper wire is easy to bend and can be reused for years. Any construction site should have scraps of electrical wire.
Jim

My local orange store sells 18 inch pine wood stakes. 12 for $4. I routinely look in the cull bins for discounted/free wood that I can use in my garden to make A-frames or support stakes.

They won't last forever, but they're cheap enough.