16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
I made 15 remesh cages a few months ago, for the first time. I didn't want to use anything additional.
I just bent the ends with a drive extension bar of my hex ratchet wrench (you know - the set that was $5 made in China from Autozone on sale for ... Father's Day LOL) so only a reproducible length of the tip looped inward. When you do this a small hook is there. The approach I took was with some vise-grip pliers. I adjusted it to close incompletely, up to a gap of about half the thickness of the CRW diameter. Then I crimped the remaining distance to close the hooks tightly, driving the hook-tips into themselves to make closed loops.
The closed loops present no sharpness danger for these done this way. It took a little practice to get in assembly line mode, but if you get the knack of it the sharpness is totally neutralized by catching the last mm of the tip the right way. I prefer this design because it maximizes the circumference rather than wasting the leaders or putting them to protrude where they could present a danger. I used ten squares plus the complete leader up to the 11th on many without including the 11th vertical, which was left to begin the next cage. If I were not pressed for space I would have wanted one more square though. Compromises, compromises.
No blisters, but I did sport a couple of cool Wolverine cuts on my legs in the process of making the cages ;-) A protector on the end of each might afford something extra, but that extra would have been unnecessary as far as I can judge on these.
Hope that presents yet another option.
PC
So how did the pots come out? I got 10 boxer brown longest lasting root pouch 25 gallons and 10 of the 30 gallon pots this year. I am growing potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash, pumpkins, watermelons, eggplant, and peppers. These are very large pots. It costs a fortune to fill them. I mixed wholly cow, peat, a ton of perlite, and some homemade compost. A few of the pots have a small amount of pine bark. Most all of my plants are doing well. I ordered these pots from greenhouse mega store two separate times paying 10.00 shipping each time, since they ship from Illinois I also paid sales tax. The pots were a fortune too. I want to order about 20 more pots in a 15 gallon size for some strawberries that are getting eaten by slugs and other things in the ground. I like the root pouch longest lasting the brown, they seem like they will hold up for a long time. I have had a few yield pots last year and they didn't even hold up the whole season. Looking for strong pots that I can maybe buy cheaper. Dave you still use those grow pots? I seen them very cheap online maybe too cheap to believe. Thank you so much.
I have done it in 90 nents grocery store bags. They did better than plastic pots. Also they did not rot or fall apart. But they were like 4 gallon capacity.I strictly used them for hot pepper plant. If you want an 8 or 10 gallon, you have to take the expensive rout; buy commercial bags.
For medium , I blended/made my own 5-1-1 mix
Sey
Jennie, was it contagious to other tomatoes nearby? I'm thinking of uprooting it and planting it in a more isolated area - if not uprooting and throwing it away.
My leaves might have "fuzzy spores" or at least something white-greyish but it's not very obvious.
What fungicide did you use?
Akaur, I grow in containers and they are very close. I sprayed with Daconil weekly and it did keep the other plants healthy until late in the season. My other plants did get the same thing late in the season, but by removing the bad stems and leaves on the other plants they remained healthy. The spraying did not stop the progression of this disease n the Cherokee Purple.
Jennie
That was the most fun thing I've written today ... and your Mom has very good taste! Make it a big dollop! Mayo on raw tomatoes is part of authentic Southern eating in some parts ;-) Did you know that when a tomato grows like this, we call it cat-facing? Yup.
Meow!
PC
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the photo, that has answered a whole host of queries. Here in England we would class this as a determinate variety (Bush) and not an indeterminate (Cordon/Vining) variety.
Mine are grown in a glasshouse to help maintain a decent temperature and are currently about 3 feet tall. I have been removing side shoots as the seed packet stated that they were cordons. I shall stop doing that now and allow them to put on side shoots. Support will give me a few problems but I will find a way around that as they grow. I may have to remove a plant to make room for the bushy growth as I hadn't appreciated how big a plant this variety would be.
The flowers on the lower truss are fertilized and fruits are setting, so I'm looking forward to sampling the taste, fingers crossed!
Thanks once again,
Kindest regards
Tony
Tony -
I usually consider determinate/indeterminate to be indicative of the fruiting schedule. That is, determinates do it all at once, while indeterminate do it continuously. Certainly indeterminate varieties tend to be somewhat more vining -- cherries are very much so. But Costoluto Genovese fruit throughout the summer, unless the temperatures get really high. No question that one can try to get vining tomatoes to bush by trimming. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.
Now, having said all that, I am somewhat perplexed that while my plants are now loaded with fruit, and growing like crazy, the flowering has stopped. That's unusual. I hope these plants aren't going "determinant" on me! It may be that the plants are simply smart enough to know that they can't easily support any more fruit until a lot gets harvested.
Dan
Prairiemoon, I got my Wall of Waters (actually they were Gardeneer brand) at a local garden center. I had to go to a nursery, they didn't have them at the big box stores. Like you, I couldn't wait for delivery.
Are you in Massachusetts? They make Neptune's there? I thought it was produced in Alaska. Yes, for being made out of a waste product, it is not cheap. It is hydrolized, though, which Alaska brand is not. Probably accounts for the difference in smell and NPK.
Sey, correct me if I'm wrong but i don't think your NPK calculations are accurate. I think the only way you can drop the (K) percentage is by removing (K) from the fertilizer which I'm sure you are not doing. How did you come up with 15? Was it by mixing 10+16?
Damage which is very similar to 2,4=-D also occurs with herbicide carryover in organic matter such as manure, even though composted.
Please see this link: herbicide carryover info
http://smallfarms.oregonstate.edu/sfn/f09Herbicide
Also do the bio-assay suggested at that link to verify if that's the problem.
I had a few tomato plants that looked exactly like that last year. Of 8 plants in the bed, 3 of them had that problem and the rest were huge and healthy, even though they were only a couple feet away.
It was my first year gardening so I had to buy a couple yards of compost for my new raised beds. I'm not sure if there was something in the compost or if something sprayed on the corn field across the street drifted into my yard, but the plants never really recovered. They continued to grow new twisted leaves and stems, but never set any new fruit.
Or you could try my PVC cage. Costs about as much as a TTC, but I think they're better. You can make them any size you want. I limit mine to 6 feet tall only because I'd have to use a ladder to pick fruit up that high.
Actually, I know of a bunch of experienced gardeners that do amazing things with self-watering systems. Some really rock the Earthboxes. And you must not have seen Raybo's Earthtainers yet. Or the rain gutter grow systems.
But, it's a totally different philosophy. And I think it works better in some parts of the country than others. Here in the PNW, I go with 5:1:1.
Also, a true self-watering container is a lot different than having water in a pot's saucer.
I don't think that is correct. EB is the concentric circles, not Septoria.
Early Blight Pictures
The pruning and spraying are both preventive measures. Do them both on all of your plants regardless of infection. Myself, I tend to rotate fungicides, usually between Copper, Daconil and Mancozeb. About the stem, I am not sure because the picture is a little blurry, but could be bacterial lesions, but I have had similar injury from twine rubbing stems if I was staking/tying.