16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
It makes a big difference what varieties you planted also and if you got them in early before the extreme heat hit. Find out what tomatoes produce well in your area. Some varieties take all summer to produce and if it gets hot they may not set fruit. It was unusually hot here last year so I only had tomatoes from plants put in early under walls of water. The ones planted at the proper time did not set fruit.
It very well could be the excessively fertile soil or the lack of light. Can you trim a limb or two and get more light? Do you have a spot with more light?
A couple of rebuttals. First, about the heat, if you have an uncontrolled heat mat, I agree you are best without it. But if can control heat by using a controller that measures soil temperature so that you go no higher then standard room temperature, your plants will love it. Then there's peppers, which LOVE warm roots at any stage.
As far as watering, it's best to use a well drained soil mix, even for seedlings. With a well drained soil, you are best off off watering from the top, but using something like a baster to avoid splashing the seedlings and throwing up soil. I agree that a mesh on bottom is best to prevent sitting in water. The movement of water from top and draining out the bottom will draw fresh air into the root zone. Watering from the bottom will only push air out and tends to saturate soil.
Of course if you are using crappy water retentive soil like MG seedling soil, that may not apply, but I would hope gardeners doing their research on this site would already know the benefits of using fast well draining soil less mixes, even for seedlings.
Actually I find that peppers much prefer cooler roots as seedlings. We intentionally keep then at the ambient temp of 60-65 degrees in the greenhouse to avoid leggy growth and to encourage stocky, sturdy plants with a well developed root mass rather than lots of top growth. They really love cooler roots when planted deeply into the garden. That seems to be the consensus among professional pepper growers at any rate.
As to top watering 'drawing" air into the soil, that is difficult to imagine given the way osmosis works. The water fills the air cavities in the soil while displacing the air in those spaces at the same time.
So I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on methodology then.
Dave
Big pink I havent seeded in years. If its not too late I may give it a go! If your seeding all these varieties can you utilize the leftover seeds you dont use for next year?
So Sorry about your lost plants.
Do you sell these? Or do all those go in the garden?
Aside from all these dwarf varieties, which are generally meant for pots, if you have room, you can grow regular varieties by training. You can top them, espalier them etc. You may get a larger yield doing this, then growing dwarfs. It all depends on how much you are willing to put into it.
Scientists have been studying nutient needs of different plant types for years and most have noticed patterns of supplementing that yield good results. More has been done lately with tomatoes because it is a crop lending itself well to drip fertigation technology. Often the results are not just in yield but also on fruit quality and in lower disease incidence. I've noticed a trend in tomato fertility that indicates a grower not only should be soil testing regularly but also taking leaf samples to determine what nutrients are actually low in the plant tissue.
But my simple answer to your Q is yes. Two major nutrients, Nitrogen (N) and Potassium (K) are needed in larger quantities after the plants set fruit. Nitrogen is naturally depleated and K is often determined to be low as tomato plants take up larger amounts. A word of caution-Too much of a good thing at the wrong time can be worse than nothing.
A word of caution-Too much of a good thing at the wrong time can be worse than nothing.
Amen to that. With tomatoes and other cycle-dependent plants, the timing of feeding is as crucial as the type of fertilizer used. A point many ignore.
"Natural"? Do you mean 'organic'? Yes, my personal preference is high quality, well-aged, manured compost worked into the soil before planting and used as a side dressing for all in-ground plants. But it only works if your have a very active micro-herd in your soil. Plants in containers is a whole other ball game and discussion.
Compost tea used for fertigation as well as any of the many organic liquids such as fish emulsion, liquid kelp, etc. works as a supplement. If you search 'organic fertilizer' here you'll find many discussions and recommendations.
Dave
Well, you sure won't get the same production from a pot that you will in the ground. I save my pots for smaller tomato plants.
Sun Sugar splits less and is sweeter than Sun Gold. Oddly enough, it also has thinner skin for me.
A real treat for your son might be a currant tomato. It might drive you crazy, but I'll bet he'd love it.
You don't say where you are in the country. That might help. :)
But, regardless, it sounds like you need to do some serious soil amendment if your soil drains too fast or not at all. Maybe mixing them together would help. lol Bunny, llama, alpaca and goat manure would probably be the safest to turn in and use immediately. Mushroom compost is my favorite growing medium. There are countless threads to refer to for advice in this area.
Find someone local who knows gardening in your area, and ask lots of questions. The Master Gardener program can refer you. If someone starts talking sprays and chemicals, say thank you very much and find someone else. That's your baby you're protecting there.
There seem to be a lot of PL plants in the Early Girl packs at commercial vendors this year - lanky ones. I bought one just for fun. Doesn't seem to like my growing conditions, but it set early fruit. I also saw a big Early Girl plant at Walmart with a branch sported to PL, but I was too cheap to buy it at the moment. Probably should have taken it home.
If your looking for a variety with few seeds give Ashleigh a try. Red beefsteak, excellent flavor with fruits averaging over a pound. The first eight fruits off the vine when I grew it were all over a pound with a total seed count of 15!!!
http://www.glecklerseedmen.com/Ashleigh/p80687_5460823.aspx
Here is a link that might be useful: Ashleigh
Good idea Ami, on Ashleigh or any other dense fleshed beefsteak variety, or for that matter almost any heart variety as well.
Rich, just a bit of a personal comment here about your wife being told to not eat any small seeds. And this situation has come up here at GW many times.That used to be the case with regard to some intestinal problems that they thought were due to small seeds getting caught in the pouches of the GI tract, but is no longer true.
So you can Google the diagnosis that your wife has been given to check that out. And after that she might want to consider a consultation with a differesnt gastroenterologist.
Carolyn, who has some, ahem, knowledge of these things.
Someone here, some years back ... maybe Raybo/rnewste in his Earth-tainers? ... posted photos showing how to use two of those 3-ring things to make a taller cage. The top 3-ring is inverted and the two largest rings are attached to each other with 3 cable-ties. Apparently it works well.
(I reluctantly confess to having purchased several of the 3-ring contraptions yesterday at WM -- for small tomatoes!)
You don't know if the Kumato you saved seeds from is genuinely F1. In the case of Campari, the people who have grown it out found it be quite similar. I recently participated in a global swap and Kumato F2 was shared by a participant--a lot of people have the seeds and I expect this coming fall there will be discussion about the reliability of the F2. Whatever they will be I expect them to at least be yummy. It's certainly worth a growout.
T
Last year I grew italian heriloom. I know its not a true paste tomato, but it was grown in Italy where they make a lot of tomato sauces. I found it was a good slicer eating fresh because it was almost the best tasting tomato in my garden, but also meaty enough to make a good sauce. It was fairly productive and is going to be a staple in my garden. Taste wise it was about 3rd out of about 35 varieties. Thats saying alot because I choose most of my varieties based on their taste reputation.
I also grew san marzano, amish paste. San marzano I thought was too soft and spoiled to easily for my uses, though it was VERY productive. My amish paste was not planted in the best of locations in my garden (a somewhat shaded area) but it had fair production of tomatoes smaller than usually proclaimed for this variety. It was middle of the pack for me on taste (possibly because of less sun). I am going to try it again in a more sunny location because I believe I really did not give it a fair shake. It has a good reputation locally here in Utah on taste, productivity, etc.
It isn't so much a specific combo as ANY combo. Whatever varieties you happen to be growing. If you are growing only 3 or 4 varieties then mix them all. If growing 30 different varieties then it's even better. :)
I've made some great sauce using San Marzano, Beefsteak, Brandywine, Eva Purple Ball, German Strawberry, NAR, Opalka, Sun Gold, etc. well you get the idea. The more the varieties, the more complex the flavor.
Dave
Most of my tomato friends switched from using just paste tomatoes many years ago b'c the taste of most of them, with some exceptions, is not great, they're more susceptible to BER ( blossom end rot) as well as Early Blight ( A. solani)
I could list the paste varieties that I think have great taste if you want me to but I also know that there are many many threads here already with those suggestions.
When choosing what to use to add to paste tomatoes for sauce I strongly suggest using as many heart varieties as you can b'c they have dense flesh and few seeds and great taste/ And also dense fleshed beefsteak varieties for the same reasons.
Carolyn