16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
DRtomto~ I mixed up the recipe you posted for deer detterant spray and have used it. Wonderful, that it does go through the spayer hole and does not clog. I see that you recommend that it be re applied after a rain. My husband is watering our tomatoes with an overhead sprinkler. He did not think this spray would have to be re applied after he waters. I think he is wrong, according to what you write. Am I right?
donna-
I usually give the new growth, the little tips of the new growth, a spray after a rain or shower. There's no need to ever water the plants leaves, all the water absorbed by the plant comes from the roots.
Why this stuff works is because deer don't eat meat(protein). Eggs are protein, so they are naturally turned off by the odor. They also don't like the capsaison in the red pepper. Bugs don't like the garlic. Also the longer it sits in the bottle and gets stinky the better it works.
I live in the country and have deer all around me. I eat deer and have venison in my freezer year round.
People that I have given this recipe to can't thank me enough. This stuf works better than a electric fence. We literally watch the deer walk right up to the plants, take a smell, turn their heads then walk away. Pretty cool to see.
,Dan
I have a few of my parents' very old and rusty, short, wide ring cages which I use for short varieties. I think I've seen a few cases where a tomato presses against the ring and there is an indentation (not an actual hole), sometimes dark. I always assumed the sun heated the metal and it burned the skin of the tomato. No idea if that's what actually happened.
Missing, I mentioned the physical denting, which is what I called it, in my post above and no, I don't think it was b'c the metal got hot and did it. It's just a physical thing when the fruits enlarge and just happen to be next to some wires of the cage so get pressed against it.
It has happened for me when growing tomatoes in standard tall CRW cages as well as the short spiral ones, which I've used for quite a few years now since I have to grow my tomatoes only in the backyard in 12 gal Gro-bags and have Freda put the short spiral ones in the gro-bags to get a bit more height to the plants before they flop over.
Carolyn
hi grrrr.egg no probs I go down below freezing. The first tomato last year was Marmande which set while others had their flowers falling off. This year I'm trying more cold climate varieties including pathenocarpic tomatoes that set at lower temps. many of these are available in Oz. Cheers Max
Greetings from very far away! The temperatures you quoted are outside temps, right? What matters is the temperature inside the hothouse. For myself, on a sunny February day in Illinois, which is our very early spring, it can be 7 degrees Celsius outside and yet still be 35 degrees inside. Solar gain should make it nice and warm inside, and you should have tomatoes as long as things don't freeze on a cold night. Good luck with everything.
Yeah, that's deer. Notice the edge that they bite off is never a very clean cut, because deer have only one set of front teeth and press them against an upper jaw pad to tear off foliage. They always seem to be too lazy to eat the entire plant and prefer to nibble out the tops instead.
Around my area deer eat the tops of big plants, and eat small plants (tomatoes) down to a 2" stem stub. The problem has gotten worse the last few years in our suburbs. You can see a deer standing in someones front yard eating off a tree in daylight.
I put out dog dishes with water outside in case a animal wants to eat a tomato for the water content.
I would guess that its Roma. Volunteers can be pure or crossed. Many of my volunteers are pure from the previous year whereas others are clearly crosses. I'm with dickiefickle on "new varieties." I think some of them are the same plant re-named something else. Or, in some cases, they descend from the same seed source. For example, I have found little difference between some of the black tomatoes. Other times they may originate from a seed mix up and someone who buys it renames it something different. For example I have a tomato that my father purchased at a nursery that was labeled brandywine. It turned out to be a black tomato of some unknown variety. Its probably black krim or black, but it does have slightly different cracking paterns (concentric versus radial). It also tastes slightly different than other blacks. However it does breed true and is most likely just a strain of some existing variety where someone switched the id sticks or mixed up the seeds they were planting. In any case, its not a new variety, just a mislabeled existing variety. A stablized cross on the other hand is something different and should be named.
My Frost Free season extends from 15 Apil to 21 November,and I usually plant out early and extra early tomatoes around the first of April and then again the first of August.
You should be harvesting tomatoes long after mine quit. What's your fertilizer regimen?
Jan
Rather than focus on the variety, which usually has little to do with the chronic problems you describe, focus on the soil you are gardening in.
Something there is clearly out of whack - nutrient levels, moisture retention or most likely the soil pH. You can begin with having a soil test done at your local county ag extension office for about $10-15. They will advise on what all needs to be done to fix your soil so it will grow things.
Dave
I have read (but not yet verified) that horn worms will glow under a black light. If you buy a cheap handheld black light, which are about ten bucks on amazon, and go out there at night with it, they should glow in the dark for you. One horn worm will devour a big plant in a couple days. All you have to catch is one or two, and it will make a big difference.
Looks like just dead tissue areas from leaf miner damage. It doesn't hurt the plants. Just snip off the worst of the damaged leaves so the larvae can't survive.
Please don't obsess over leaf miners. The plants survive them just fine and too many times trying to treat for them does more damage to the plant than they do. As said above, you just squish leaves to smash them and remove the leaf if necessary to control them.
Dave
Sucker myth is an old legend based on the belief of ancient Greeks that suckers (also known as additional growing tips, side shoots, and many other names) SUCK and draw energy from the plant, thus disrupting the energy balance in cosmos and inhibiting the plant from using its energy for more noble causes (like producing more fruit).
They've been proven wrong.
Usually we plant in April and turn out June 1st, never get tomatoes till mid to late July. This year we had tomatoes in the potting shed before turning out and we currently have a steady supply of them now. I may not plant as early next year (we had a warm May and got lucky here in Buffalo area) but it definitely helped them being early, no doubt. I will probably plan some beef stakes early and see how they turn out. I've never had a ripe beefstake before mid August and had given up on them.
Yeah, the main issue I've run into starting too early, is lighting and space. Plants start to turn purple under the leaves when the light is insufficient. I use a few T5HO's, but not a bank of them. As soon as I get them in the greenhouse, the purple goes away. I don't find in the long run, that I get more yield, so I now start the recommended 6-8 weeks before final transplant. This minimizes light stress, and I don't need to transplant out of 3" pots before I do final transplant.