16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Alrighty. The pots are filled with local red clay, Miracle Gro Garden Soil and Black Kow manure. I chose three varieties specifically for pot/patio. Patio Goliath, Solar Fire and Super Sweet 100.
I don't know anything about the varieties at this point beyond they are for pot planting and hot, dry weather.
You can buy ready to install small drip irrigation set-ups from many different sources. They are complete with timers, pressure reducer, feeder lines and drip emitters for approx. $50 or similar set-ups without the auto timer for any where from $15 to $25 if there is someone who can turn it on and off for you. Example of one below.
Dave
Here is a link that might be useful: Container drip system
Next time put the pot in a 5 gallon bucket or Aluminum baking pan, fill the space around the pot 1 inch for every day you will begone.
This work great for short span of time, no more then 5-7 days. As soon as you get home remove the pots from the water bucket. I have done this with Japanese Maples, fig trees,& many house plant in hot August heat of the South.
If it's truly Early Blight ( A solani) your homemade baking soda spray is not going to help. The Cornell recipe, which I don't think has any oil in it, is OK for use on ornamentals but not on tomatoes.
Since I've never used baking soda on tomatoes I don't know if they are frying but I wouldn't expect individual black spots if they were. Rather, since you coated the leaves I'd expect to see whole leaves going south.
What you need is a good anti-fungal if you know that the disease is a foliar one caused by either Early Blight or Septoria Leaf spot. Neither of which actually have spots that are truly black, but the foliage diseases caused by Bacterial Speck and Spot do give black spots. And being bacterial anti-fungals don't work.
Carolyn, who also suggests that really nothing should be sprayed on tomato foliage, with few exceptions, when the sun is high in the sky b'c it can burn the leaves.
Thanks for your input.
A question about snipping off leaves - what about the leaves that only have a couple small spots on them? Are they salvageable or will they just spread things along, even if they are sprayed?
A question about spraying - how do I get it to more fully cover the leaf surface and the underside? Any tricks to that?
The solution to over watering is DRAINAGE and proper "Potting Mix", not garden soil, make sure your mix isn't heavy.
Just drill about 10 or more 1/2" holes in the bottom of a 12-15 gallon pot.
If your soil is light and airy and the drainage is really good you basically cant over water.
If anything one of those globes will only keep your soil wet.
I'd like to second Dave's point about plant labels and tags. I gave away over 70 tomato plants in small pots this year, with the sole proviso that the recipient use the wooden markers provided. And I kept a list of who got what. That way I can ask later on how a particular variety fared in that particular garden.
On the other hand, I quite dislike the all too common practice of sticking a plastic marker in among newly planted annual flowers. Fussy, I know :-)
WC2K8,
Interesting subject; I don't grow long keepers, but getting back to your question, there are 2 others - 1 of which might only be available from SSE members, Mercuri Winter Keeper.
Another- I've seen available at a few online merchants is Yellow Out-Red In. -R
csunbean, you can pick tomatoes when they're semi-ripe or when they're completely ripe, but either way you shouldn't pick them until the color "breaks." To know what color that would be, you need to know which tomato you're growing: the 'Fantome du Laos' ... or the plain 'Fantom' from Totally Tomatoes ... or something else?
If you're not sure what the name of the variety is, do you still have the seed packet? If you don't, where did you buy the seeds? If you bought them in a store, do you know the brand (Burpee, Ferry Morse, etc.)?
Have you checked Craigslist for compost or manure? Unless you're in a very urban area, it's likely that you can get manure delivered cheaply, or go pick it up for free if you've got a truck or trailer. If anyone near you has livestock of any sort, they would probably be thrilled to let you clean out the pens and take away the manure for free. Before I had a truck, I'd fill up Rubbermaid tubs of horse manure and bring them home for the compost pile. These days I get a 12 yard load of horse manure mixed with shavings and hay dumped in the fall and leave it in a pile to compost all winter. In the spring it is broken down and ready to be worked into the garden.
You are killing your soil with commercial fertilize...it's "Crack" for the garden. The more you use the more you have to use.
Compost, grass, leaves, weeds, horse, cow, sheep, pig, chicken manure. put in pil, make damp, turn every three days, and a little dirt from the woods, vacant lot, somewhere that hasn't been messed with for awhile. Make compost tea, water plants with it and put it on their leaves in the evening. Let the chlorine bleed of your water before using on you plants and making tea with.
Get your garden off the crack. I never buy fertilize. Quit all the tilling. Get a lawn mower with a bagger...empty bag into a pile...there's your compost. Quit working so hard.
No, it is a rip-off and preaches all sorts of weird junk. Unfortunately it keeps rearing its ugly head here and on other tomato-growing forums in discussions, strongly negative discussions except for the spamming by the seller. I linked a bunch of them below you can read through if interested.
Don't waste your money.
Dave
Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato magic discussions
Wow there seems to be quite a variance in appearance in the Mr Stripeys, of course not including the Tigerella's which are clearly a different variety. Is the variable color envoronmental or nutritional? Perhaps both?
*****
If we were comparing differently named gold/red bicolors I'd say the difference in the degree of coloration is variety dependent with respect to DNA.
But when looking at pictures of a single variety and seeing such variation, I don't know if it's environmental or nutritional, b'c there's no way to know how differently different folks grow their tomatoes, what they use for amendments, where they grow them and what the season was like as to weather in that season.
But I can't help wondering if the different coloration of the specific Variety Mr. Stripey, or the color variation that can be seen with many others of the same type, might be due to specific seed sources with perhaps a mutation thrown in here ot there.
No way to proove that either. LOL
Carolyn
The Mr Stripey tomatoes I've grown on and off for several yrs look like the ones pictured in Carolyn's link. I had 20 oz Estlers Mortgage Lifters last yr weighed on a Paula Deen scale from Wal-Mart but a 24 oz Mr Stripey was my biggest. Besides being oblate it was also oblong. They are a sweet tomato that I love if fresh and not watery with egg and bacon on toast. Wow!
Sorry, but it was at Walmart 4 years ago,but it was called Tiger.
jolj,in any one SSE Yearbook one can find the following varieties, pretty much the same but from different sources:
Tiger
Tiger Paw
Tiger Stripe
Tiger Tom
Tigerella
Tiger-like
Tigerly
Tiny Tiger
And while almost all of them are called tart by the folks who list them, and almost all describe them as red with yellow orange stripes, and while almost all of them are small, I'd like to say that there are real differences between them, but can't.
Carolyn