16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
well my row of planter runs North south and I get full sun from sunrise to sunset. the row is actually perpendicular to sun's patch so my North South row is good I guess. I get yor point. I plante then 20 to 24" apart. I know its a bit too close but I did well last year and I wante to get few varities this season. Good thing is if I got it mixed, I got at least 2 or 3 of a kind next to each other so that would help somewhat from overtaking issue
thanks for replying
Every year I plan to put indeterminate tomatoes with other indeterminates, and the determinates all together and every year I wind up not doing it. I plant my tomatoes three feet apart and have run them in north-south rows and in east-west rows with six feet between rows and have never seen a problem that I could say was due to mining indeterminate and determinate tomatoes.
I suppose with closer plantings, it could be a problem, but I think if your garden has full sun, it won't make a difference.
Betsy
My opinions.
Cherokee Purple is not purple. It has a clear epidermis and I refer to it as a so called pink/black. An excellent variety for almost everyone. Craig LeHoullier got the seeds from J D Green and Craig has been my best tomato friend for 20 plus years and he sent me the seeds after he first grew it out in about 1992 and I've grown it many times since. I reciprocated when I was given seeds for Indian Stripe and sent seeds to him ASAP to see if IS was what I thought it was, that is, a version of CP, and he agreed it was.
Purple Calabash I simply cannot stand the taste of, far too aggressive for me. But it's one of the few varieties that actually has some purple tint to it. So see what you think of the taste and I do know some folks who like that kind of taste.
Purple Russian I haven't grown.
Carolyn
I plan on buying 3/8" rebar from the big box store, $3 for 22' length, I will cut it into 3 lengths and I will get decent 7' sections, 12" into the ground and I got a decent 6' tall tomato stake. I want to do florida weive using these rebar stakes. This is my weekend project as my tomatoes went into ground 10 days ago and they really took off!
Many of us who can tomatoes regularly always freeze our tomatoes whole until there is enough to justify a big batch for canning. Makes them much easier to peel too. It's a common practice.
Be sure to join us over on Harvest when the time comes to can them.
Dave
Your problem is definitely your mix. Tomatoes will grow fine and be very healthy when grown in a heavy mix. They just grow very slowly. I actually start mine out in garden soil and just start a month early.
Once you put them in the ground, they will take off. Next year, you need to either ditch the garden soil and add vermiculite or ditch the other stuff and just grow with dirt and accept the slow growth.
I'm a relatively new gardener, so take my humble opinion with a grain of salt, but I think that landscape cloth is pretty much the devil's work. We had it put down by our home's former owners all around the beds on the side of the house. The problem was that eventually you get a whole ecosystem of really rich material growing on top of it, but not blending through into natural soil layers like nature intended. Moreover, it DID stop most of the roots from growing through it, so the roots on top were spindly little things going all throughout the top of the cloth looking for a way down (and these are roots from big hardy bushes that couldnt get through). Then to make matters worse, the roots underneath the cloth had grown to press up against the cloth, creating weird air pockets under the cloth, which is terrible for the roots.
Long story short, I wouldnt touch the stuff with a ten foot pole. We put down chicken wire made of metal below our beds as a precaution. But anything, even nothing, has to be better than that cloth.
This thread explains much of what I have seen the last 3 years. Each year, everything starts out nice plants are green and growing well. When it comes time for fruit, my big beef is like a cherry tomato and the plants tend to peter out by Aug. I also have a black weed barrier about 10" down. Guess whats coming out next year!
Agree with Jim and you also need to remember that given high heat and high humidity you can vibrate them to death with whatever you want - toothbrushes included - and it won't make a darn bit of difference because the pollen isn't viable.
Dave
I can't really tell from the photos, but as the plants grow, monitor the new growth. If the very new growth is not twisted, that would indicate the twisting was caused by herbicide damage (or some other cause which is no longer present).
Mind you, the original twisted growth will not un-twist.
If the newest growth over the next week or so is just as twisted, then you have either a virus or some continuing factor like juglone in the area of the roots.
* Sorry but all I see in these pics is stress.
Don't be sorry, thats great news ;)
We'll keep monitoring the plant and see what comes out in the end. Maybe we'll end up with some nutty-flavored tigerellas, who knows ;)
TYVM all for clearing this out.
Cheers,
Djole
I think everyone here has hit the nail on the head. That was my instinct as well, but I wanted to get a second opinion. Fran35, no I haven't used manure at all in my garden. However I do suspect herbicide damage. I've been checking for whiteflies, aphids, etc but I've had a lot of spiders (that I have to try VERY hard to leave alone lol!) and I haven't seen any so I don't think that's the problem. So I pruned up the bottoms a bit (didn't want to do too much and stress them out more) so they're not hanging down in the soil now. I skipped the mulching for now. I'll save that probably for next month. Until we get well into summer, we usually get a fair amount of rain. I spread some organic tomato fertilizer today and I'll have to water it in tomorrow morning. Hopefully that will help. I just read something about too much nitrogen causing leaf roll but hopefully that's not the case here. With all the rain, I highly doubt it. The thing I suspect that has had the greatest effect on at least the upper leaves might be herbicide damage. Everyone around here has been spraying their yards regularly. I googled herbicide damage and the images look just like what I've got here. The good news is, it's not dying back so they should be just fine. I just hope it doesn't get any worse. I know it must be normal for a little bit of foliage to die off, especially around the bottom where it gets old. Plus I would think it needs to get rid of some to put more energy into the top growth. But it still makes me nervous, being a new gardener and all. Am I right about that? It's my first garden so if I mess something up and lose all my tomatoes, I'm going to be so discouraged. But I know that's how we learn. I'd just rather learn from others and not my own mistakes. lol!
So last week we had a bad thunderstorm move through. Wind gusts up to 80mph. Yikes! I've lived in Oklahoma my whole life and I don't think I've ever witnessed wind like that before. It blew our brand new grill out into the yard and banged it up. Sad face :( Anyway, I covered my pepper plants with large clay pots since they're still short enough. They did just fine thankfully. My squash plant was even small enough still to sort of be stuffed into a 3 gallon pot. It probably wasn't too comfy in there, but it didn't get any damage! It's HUGE now so I hope our severe weather is over for the season. The tomatoes had some branches that got blown around so hard that they sort of went limp. Only one small branch actually broke off so I spent an hour or so the next day strapping up the weakened ones. All is well now. Anyway, I brought in my potted plants, including a Better Bush tomato. It's working on it's second fruit set and flowering like crazy. In the last few weeks, since harvesting the first of the fruit near the bottom, the leaves at the bottom of the plant have died back. I left the pot indoors for a couple of days because the weather was still a little nuts. I don't think it liked that at all. The leaves and stems are turning yellow from the bottom up. Even the leaves around the current fruit set. I am not sure what's going on there but I did ad some home made compost to the pot a couple weeks ago. Maybe it's off balance now? I added the same compost to my peppers and squash and they are all doing great, minus a pepper blossom turning yellow and dropping here and there. Just one or two, I'm sure that's normal. They're still producing and the foliage looks fine. I put just a sprinkle of tomato fertilizer in the pot and I'll water that in tomorrow morning as well.
One last thought for the night. When I sprinkled the fertilizer around the tomatoes in the garden earlier, I noticed within minutes, ants all over the surface carrying away bits of the fertilizer. Anyone else ever seen that? Should that concern me? I just kinda thought it was neat.
Jennifer
If you gonna eat those ants, wash them first :P
Otherwise, just keep leaves off the ground either by mulching heavily or pruning anything a foot off the ground, preferably both. And dont over love/babysit them.
I have a friend who owns a waterfront summer house, who planted my seedlings both there and at regular house last year... ones he didnt have time for grew the best tomatoes.
Granted he was watering his primary house ones daily, eventhough I told him not too.
Point is, sometimes the best cure is to let em do what they do :P