16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Hi Linda,
Glad to hear the B.f.C. are up and growing!!!
I am actually using a 50/50% blend of the Old Tomato-tone, with the New Tomato-tone. So, it is a bit more potent rather than just using 100% of the organic New Tomato-tone.
In addition to the Tomato-tone, I will supplement with Grow Big and Tiger Bloom ferts during the Season.
Now getting the EarthTainers prepared for plant-out March 1 this year. Been a VERY warm Winter here - in the 70's for the next 10 days.
Raybo
Thanks Ray, I thought that was the case. I supplement also but I am going to use at least 1 cup organic mixed in and two cups in the strip. I may use more since the Garden Tone I have is something like 3s and 4s for everything. Cant remember if its 4-3-3 or vice versa. Going to be a great week here too, in the 80s!!! I planted out early March last year but we all had such bad spring storms I am planning on late March thru April staggered plant out. Probably will plant a Moskvitch and maybe SunGold earlier. LInda
Just a clarification on 5 gal. containers. You can grow any indeterminate variety in them if you provide the plant with support and and give it nutrients two to three times a week. Daily watering will be required and during hot weather watering twice a day may be required. I've had plants load up with 20-30 fruit no problem. Container Ted who posts at TV lives in your neck of the woods and does both growing in containers and in the ground with the wildlife you mentioned. If you like shoot me an e-mail and I can put him in touch with you. Ami
I use four-foot shop lights with a mix of cool and warm flourescent 40-watt bulbs. With those, it's best to keep the lights as close as possible, like no more than an inch or two. Even if the lights touch the leaves for a few hours, they won't burn. When my seedlings are growing well I have to raise the lights a bit every day. I also have to say your soil looks too wet. Once the plants develop leaves, you need to let the soil dry out a bit between waterings.
Ohiofem,
Too wet, yes, I agree, but also NOT ENOUGH LIGHTS!
Observe the way that the two rows in the foreground are leaning towards the rear, while the seedlings towards the rear are bending forward. The ones along the centerline just appear totally confused.
Those seedlings are starved for light. It looks like they are under one weak lamp. Nowhere near what they need in order to avoid legginess.
In a way, lowering the single lamp is going to make the seedlings along the edges lean even more.
I'll repeat what I said to bailey, who also has leaning seedlings.
Is your lighting setup at least as wide as the all the plants you are trying to grow under it?
Ideally your fluorescent light array should be a little wider (and longer) than all the trays of plants you have under it. That way the plants sense light coming from all directions. Otherwise, of COURSE the plants are going to "lean in" to try to get closer to the lights.
I use simple 4' fluorescent double shop lights, set side-by-side-by-side. There's really no need to buy anything fancy. You might check out the "Growing under Lights" forum here for more tips.
Here is a link that might be useful: Growing under Lights
As I posted above, my tomatoes did good last summer. The main thing I battle is early blight and so does my neighbor who uses Daconil on his 500 plants. This yr my strategy for late tomatoes is to start some from seed and set them in large containers in the 5-1-1 mix about July 1. But seeing as how the spores are air driven this prob will be only partly sucessful unless I use the spray. I am not going to spray in my garden but I might do 3-4 plants on my driveway.
As I said before, my yield was disappointing. I grew my plants in smart pots using 5-1-1. I had more leaf disease than usual, which I think now must have been early blight. I have never sprayed for disease, and only used a little neem for white flies.
My plan for this year is to use Actinovate as a soil drench and spray along with potassium bicarbonate from the beginning as a preventive. I came up with this plan based in part on a discussion on this forum started by Raybo linked below. If he sees this I hope he will chime in.
Here is a link that might be useful: Serenade vs Actinovate
I have no idea why the fruits of all three plants ripened in one day. Most unusual for either det OR indet plants.
Those who list it in the SSE YEarbooks say nothing at all about ripening fruits all at once.
And you're sure that it was Chocolate Stripes that you were growing?
I wish I could help more, but by now you've read the page at Tania's tomato data base, so there's really nothing more that I can add.
Sorry.
Carolyn
cut those leaves off your the plant well be die when you water feel the pot put your finger in about a inch and if the soil is dry then you know its time water again and the problem is with the spots is you maybe be watering the leaves make share you dont water them and the stim my plants last year got black spots on the leaves and stimes
It's not red, but Cherokee Purple has been practically free of diseases for the last 3 years, whereas most of my other 20 or so varieties have not had the luck the Cherokee Purple has had. It has also been the best producer and one of the first to produce. Of my 66 toms this year, at least 15 will be Cherokee Purple.
I don't know about others but I have drip setup where I put flag drippers, 4GPH. I figured tomatoes need 4 to 6 Gallons of water per week depending on soil conditions. I have set the timer to water once every 3 days, for 30 minutes. It keeps the soil moist throughout the watering cycle and never gets dry. I plant tomatoes on raised masonry planters that has sand/clay and lot of compost fill. The reason I water every 3 days is because the same waterline on same timer waters my entire veggies garden with 5 other planters. I had to find balance between eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes.
I have a south facing sunroom in upstate NY. I am planning to keep the windows to the house opened so the sunroom stays warm at night. It gets warm enough during the day. Do you think I will have enough light to prevent leggy seedlings if I have an oscillating fan blowing on them from day 1? I origionally planned on starting my seeds 2nd week in april, but it's been so warm up here, I thought maybe I could do a small batch a month earlier to see if I could get lucky and get a jump on part of the season. Also the sunroom has south and west windows, so I get good light in there from 10:00 AM till about 5:00 right now, it will be until about 6:00 in another month.
I do have a good-sized double-layered hoophouse, though even before I had that I still started tomatoes quite early, transplanting out under wall-o-waters. One pre-hoophouse year I had ripe 'Early Girl' tomatoes by the end of May.
In retrospect though I might should've held off the bulk of the planting until this month, which would have had the later-planted seedlings at about six weeks for giving away to people without gardening structures around our frost-free date of ~April 15. But we'll see how the Nebraska weather looks then. I've only been doing seedlings for other people for a few years, so I'm still working out all the kinks.
The Siberia and Wisconsin 55's, plus the ones for my own family's consumption get seeded early though, and go into the hoophouse (or under water cloches) well in advance of the frost-free date. Before too long they'll likely be living outside, too, in the hoophouse or in the 4' x 8' heavy-duty cold frame supplemented with a seedling heat mat.
What do you mean that your summers have changed?
Jrslick:
I'm interested in your plan for cold weather (nights). I will plant a few hundred plants in a tunnel in 2-3 weeks but I plan to provide heat as needed thru April. With a little extra heat most of those nights the plants seem to grow better and produce much earlier than without. Do you use row cover within the tunnel or any other protection?