16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Hi Rita, I wsh we had Lowes in my area. How much were they? I'm going to check Home Hardware and see if they have them the green coated ones are much better. I'm getting excited about the garden. Did you shape the beds first and put any kind of edging?
Sharon, scroll up and look at my last picture. You can see where I have the bricks as edging. The cages were $6.47 each. And thats the thing. You don't need a Lowes in your area of you order on line. Right now they have free shipping but thats only for a short time.
Earlier in the year Home Depot had free shipping for a time. And I ordered all the green coated metal fence posts I needed at that time.
All the previous discussions here on how to root cuttings.
Here is a link that might be useful: Rooting cuttings discussions
I will say yes if it is the very tip or a sucker off of an indeterminate plant. I did this last year, mid August (frost usually by mid September) and grew it indoors. It was spindly and pathetic, and stopped growth during December and January. February I saw new leaves off the top, let those grow, then pinched back to hopefully encourage a sucker or two from the branch axils lower down. I also rooted the tip. I took 4 cuttings from the plant this way, the tip, and then each subsequent sucker branch when they got to be 3 inches in length. The last 2 cuttings I took (near mid April) grew the best and were the ones I put out in the ground. They have grown like monsters with the exceptional heat we've rec'd this summer.
Reason I did this was because I liked the tomato (sunsugar cherry) and knew it was a hybrid, so saving seed was out. Plus, I was paranoid that all the local places wouldn't offer it next year, and I've wanted to try this experiment ever since I'd read about someone else doing it. This spring I made a mental note of the (2) places that did carry sunsugar cherry should I want it again (and one was sold out already when I asked about it), and I see that I can also buy seed for it. One thing that makes me nervous about this method is should the mother plant have some disease or genetic flaw, that of course, will be carried to next year's
crop. I had fun though, and enjoy eating those tomatoes knowing they are from 2011's plant!
Darlene, your title says black spots on smaller varieties ( plural) of smaller tomatoes. What other smaller ones are you growing and what larger ones are you growing that have no spots?
I can think of some reasons for small black spots, but most tomato diseases are equal opportunity diseases and wouldn't distinguish between small and larger fruited varieties.
And off hand I can't think of but one disease that would cause small black spots that might be seedborne.
So the next question is, did you raise the plants with the spots from seed that was purchased commercially or get the seeds by trading? Or buy plants themselves from a nursery or similar?
Carolyn
Here is a link to your first post of this question from early in Aug. The reply was asking for more information. If you didn't get the reply then it was routed to your junk/spam email box by your email provider. Likely these replies will be too. It is always best to come back here and check your posts for replies.
Dave
Here is a link that might be useful: Your first post of this same question
If the plants were surely diseased, I would pull all the bamboo supports and toss them, but if you can't or don't want to toss them, you can soak them in a dilute bleach solution to try to sterilize them. Then I would pull all the plants and clean up as much of the fruit / plant debris as I could find, bag it up (plastic trash bags) and put it to the curb for pickup.
That said, in general, I'm not a huge "garden hygiene" fan. When you know the plants were diseased and you don't know what it was, it's best to exercise caution because certain pathogens can survive in dead or rotting plant tissue - so the less you have lying around the better. In cases where the plants were not diseased, I'm not so particular with clean-up. I'll clear the garden enough that I can get through it - get the bulk of the dead top growth and then I'll mulch over top of the rest.
If the pathogen is a soil borne disease, moving your garden probably won't help unless you can really put some significant distance between the old and the new; and even then, it's possible it could be spread by simply tracking it around on your shoes. If the pathogen was wind borne, it'll probably just come back next year anyways.
Well to all the non-believers out there (including myself...I was almost ready to give up on this plant)....yesterday I saw that one of the blossoms that had been on the plant for like 5 weeks, with no change in it at all....there's now a teeny weeny hard bulb shape emanating from it! I'm sure it's the start of a yellow pear tomato! Yeah!!!
Cool, hope youâÂÂll have many yellow pear tomatoes.
yippee1999 wrote: >Am I wasting my time watering it every day?!
EVERY DAY? YouâÂÂre kidding right?
I live in your area - Long Island, NY - and I water every 2-3 days.
My tomatoes trellis has a roof that serves both to:
1. Avoid overwatering or unplanned watering from heavy / long rains, and
2. Protect for a few days, from strong sun, the recently planted seedlings / companion plants
To control even more the watering, I also have a DRIP IRRIGATION SYSTEM:
@ Amisoup: Tx for the nice words. IâÂÂm happy that my set up, serves you as inspiration.
@ garf: Yes, I spent some time on that. Last year I built the trellis structure, this year the drip irrigationâ¦
You spend VERY little time if you plan THOROUGHLY: projectâÂÂs design, list of necessary materials, order of operationsâ¦
Start doing things in early spring, and in the early morning. Avoid working between 2 and 4 pm.
I wear hat, long sleeve cotton t-shirt, garden boots, nitrile gloves, working glovesâ¦
When you make a post for the forum or post a follow-up right above where it says Zone and User Name it says
Image File to Upload - Choose File (Button) Just click on the Choose File button.
Or go to photobucket and copy and paste the html url, the one that begin Dave
Yes, 1 gallon is far too small, especially for indeterminate cherries that will grow into huge plants. I use 5 gallons for small bush tomatoes like Tiny Tims. I would go much larger for a cherry. I only grow cherry in ground due to it's large size (usually the largest tomato plants I grow). But if I was to grow in containers, I'd go minimum 10-15 gallons.
Also, compost is not a suitable grow media for containers. Please refer to the container forum for better soil mixes.
In addition to your container, I would also bet your soil is too heavy. Compost is basically the same as growing in garden soil. It is too heavy. You will get an 18-inch plant with a handful of tomatoes. Get a 5-gallon bucket and a bag of at least Miracle Gro potting mix and you should do OK.
You will do better if you can grow in the ground if possible.
Umm, milk, water and hydrogen peroxide are all chemicals.
Blight is a general word that many use to describe a sick tomato plant but it's best to be able to ID the specific disease involved if one can.
First, I Don't know where you live which would help narrow down the possibilities.
If it's a foliage disease I'm just noting that there are no varieties, hybrid or OP, that are tolerant of the common foliage diseases, but I don't see any spots on the leaves that would indicate that so please do note if you see any such leaf spots and if so please describe as to size and color and shape and if there are any yellow halos around them. Also if there are any dark colored areas on the stems.
If it's a systemic soilborne disease, such as Fusarium or Verticillium or several others, again, it depends on where you are in a geographic sense, then there's nothing to be done at this point.Even with hybrids that have tolerance to some of the soilborne diseases all it means is a week or so more of growth before the plants go down. There is no such thing as total resistance to soilborne diseases, and the genes that are bred into many hybrids are of best use to large scale commercial farmers who base when they harvest on Brix levels, which is a measure of soluble sugars and the extra few days that tolerance brings can allow for those Brix levels to reach the right level.
It would also help to know if you're growing other tomato plants and if they all have the same symptoms.
Carolyn