16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

You're welcome. Yes, you found the right one.

I'm growing too many varieties this year, and needed to know which are what height so I can make the best use of a really mixed bag of old/new low/medium ring supports, 100' of 6' stock panel trellis, and however much Florida weave is necessary to handle the rest. So I was checking all the varieties at both those sites and recording the heights in a new category on my (embarrassingly-long) master list.

I was surprised how few I found on Ventmarin; in my memory, when I didn't care about height, they always listed it!

I had a couple of years of French in college, but the online dictionaries aren't much help with horticultural terms. My main problem at Ventmarin, though, is that when I see the word "cerise," I keep thinking pink rather than cherry....

I am growing Bush Tomatoes this year because I just didn't want to hassle with 8-10' tall plants on my back deck again.

So I chose one called Better Bush that only gets a max of 4' tall and produces copious amounts of 4" tomatoes that have a really good old time tomato flavor.

Just grow Bush Tomatoes and you are good to go.

I have one 4' tall planted about 7 weeks ago and has at least 60 tomatoes on it right now, have harvested 6 so far, 3 were small 2 1/2" and 3 decent size 3 1/2 to 4".
most all the rest look like they are going to be mostly 4".
the other one I planted 4 weeks ago and it is 3' tall with tons of blossoms and 9 small tomatoes already, that one will take over when the first one dies out in a few weeks.
When that one dies I will plant one more, probably about first of August to take over in October.

Is is possible to plant more than one tomato at a time in one spot

Most tomatoes are large (i.e. broad) plants, unless you prune heavily (some people prune to one stem or two). Obviously, the fewer stems, the less fruit, so the only reason for pruning heavily is lack of space.

If you had two varieties and only had space for one plant, you could plant them in the same hole. They would need more water, fertilizer, etc., and they probably wouldn't be happy. Unless the two varieties had very different fruit, you might have difficulty recognizing which variety you were eating.

Last year I bought a Black Krim seedling. It was actually two plants in one pot; I think I wasn't aware of that when I planted it -- just thought it was one plant with a sucker (one of the terms for a tomato branch) growing from the underground part of the stem (I had other seedlings like that). But when the plant bore two kinds of fruit it was obviously two plants -- and at that point I began giving them extra water and fertilizer. They were crowded and not real happy, and the BK died before the end of the season.

can there be more than one planted in a container

Raybo/rnewste puts two tomato plants in his homemade rectangular Earth-tainers, which have a total growing medium of 24 gallons -- so 12 gallons per plant.

Now if you were growing dwarf varieties, you wouldn't need as much space or as large a container.

So in other words, everything depends on how much room you have, which varieties you're growing, and how large the containers are.

Even big containers, you'd have to heavily prune if they are indeterminates. My 17 gallon is already filled up by my Brandy Boy

garystpaul -- I have 9 plants in containers on my patio .
To date I have used insecticidal soap and seaweed foliar spray and that has helped some , but the whiteflies are not totally gone . Any advice you may offer is appreciated .

for this small number of plants I would put rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol and water (ratio of 1 part alcohol, two parts water) into a spray bottle with a few drops of liquid soap as a surfactant. Spray the entire plant, especially undersides of leaves, to the point of run-off. This works for me. Good luck. Gary

As soon as my plants put out good sized leaves above the first level, I cut off the lower ones. If you go out after a rain and see that dirt has splashed up on to lower leaves, you might want to cut those off as well.

To avoid disease problems, mulch well from the day you plant out, so that the leaves don't touch the actual soil (even if they do touch the mulch because the plant is still so young).

Then once the plant is larger, cut off the lower leaflets which touch the mulch so slugs can't eat the leaves.

I would buy something with higher N untill the plants are a little more mature.

In my 10 gallon containers with miracle grow potting soil I used miracle grow tomato food 18-18-21 once a week untill they started blooming now im using Green Light Super BLoom 12-55-6 but will be cycling it with the miracle grow to maintain K

Just make sure when you water, you water enough that you see water coming out from the drainage. Dont want anything like SALT building up in your containers.

I was using 14-11-25 last season for my container toms and peppers. Last year season started in april, finished in october, i was using only the mentioned fert and had abundance of fruit (started feeding when the first truss appeared). Ofcourse if you want that *little bit extra* you can always try to adjust ferts with different stages of growth but a simple balanced fert with a higher K will usually do the trick for the whole season. In late september, as it got cold, i did get some signs of phosphorous deficiency (purple veins), but at the time it had more to do with the temp of soil in container then with the actual phosphorous lacking.
Also, i've used that same fert for toms in the ground in garden and they didn't complain either :)

Sorry about your tomatoes. They look grim.

Need considerable info to even attempt to resolve your challenges.

How big a container are they in? Length by width by depth?
And how many in each container?

Are you fertilizing?
If so, with what? what strength? and how often?

As for watering, I trust looking at the potting mix (or soil, when in the garden) and feeling.
How deep is it moist?
Does water run out the bottom when you water?
How often do you water?

Seems like whats happening is they were are low on nutrients, started showing the signs(mainly yellow leaves from not having enough nitrogen) especially now that its blooming it uses more. You noticed and were hoping it was just lacking water and added even more which if anything probably made matters worse by keeping the roots from absorbing what little if any nutrients are left if any from the miracle grow soil.

Of course this just speculation and my theory of whats going on, considering Im assuming that they have not been feed besides what nutrients were in the potting soil. If there were the case I would let the soil get back to how you had it and FEED it!!

Always post in the same thread you started, that is as long as the images relate to the thread's subject.

So, yes, please post pictures. We like them *very* much!

Ok. No problem. I should be a pro at this by now since I have had so many problems this season. It just seems never ending. But on the bright side I do have successfully pollinated peppers and I believe my FIRST TOMATO!!! starting to grow. Sorry, I'm really excited about that, it's a Big Rainbow Tomato. I'll get pics of it tomorrow too so I can make sure it is healthy.

Anyway, the following pictures I have attached are not of the originally wilting plants I mentioned. These pictures are of the other tomatoes I planted on 5/8 in a raised bed across the yard from the other tomato plants. So far in this bed I have had to pull one tomato due to something burrowing into the stem and eating it hollow (never figured out what it was but found the entry hole right below the first stem, so ruled out disease). Also found a small black catapiller with I believe 2 green stripes on the sides eating one of my plants. I was surprised it wasn't a hornworm as I have spotted them already as well. Otherwise these problems have just arised in the last 3-4 days probably. I also have leaves that are not pictured that have a "shot hole" like appearance. I thinking that may be from flea beetles as the eggplants have the same "shot hole" spots, but haven't seen the flea beetles yet, so not 100% confident about that. These plants have not been fertilized yet as they were just planted 2 weeks ago and most of the have the yellow-green color you see on the single leaves. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions!

Also, the pictures of the beds were taken 5/9 so everything has grown a couple inches since these pics.

Here is a link that might be useful: Plants and problem leaves Pics

Thanks that was is great info and am going with straw

Best choice IMO, by far.

Dave

I didn't see that part! : )

THE link to Tania's page indicates that that variety was introduced to the US as Carrot-like, which I mentioned above and isn't that different from Silvery Fir Tree as Tania also mentioned.

Where did you get the seeds from that you've been growing Carrot-Like for so many years?

I can think of very few places where seeds are available, or were, or are now, see Tania's page for the now part. ( smile)

Carolyn