16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
The coldclimategardening link above is a good one. You can get frost (as in, white crystals on a windshield or a rooftop) when the air temperature is above 32F, and the air is humid. That's because the particular surface cools especially efficiently. But that's not going to hurt most plants. A freeze is when the temp drops to 32F or below. As noted above, a "hard freeze" is something much lower. 28F or so.
"Only a thin layer" is a subjective judgement and likely means different things to different people. And of course not all grounds are the same. :)
But in general, using coffee grounds is one of those things that can't hurt and might help down the road".
From your description of the new growth your plants are likely NOT responding to the coffee grounds but to something else like insufficient N, Coffee grounds just don't work that quickly. When you do see a change in the plants from coffee grounds it is usually a brief response unless they are used in excess. Keeping in mind that legumes (beans) do not require extra N like other plants do, some sort of more readily availble N source may be needed.
Dave
I'm not sure that coffee grounds are really acidic. Certainly not after they've been brewed. The roasted beans are acidic, but the acid is water soluble, so most of the acid ends up in the coffee. If you want to acidify a bed, you're probably better off pouring coffee on the bed rather than using grounds.
My understanding is that the grounds are actually abut 2% N. Not bad. So in a compost pile they work like "greens" even though they are brown. I have heard (I can't remember where) that uncomposted coffee grounds actually stunt growth, if used in large quantities (as in, 25% of mix). So although they have nitrogen, uncomposted coffree grounds don't release it in a very usable form. So if you use uncomposted coffee grounds as a soil amendment, don't use too much.
If you have a source for a lot of coffee grounds, get yourself a compost pile! I routinely use coffee grounds in my compost pile.
I'm in Southern California and I grow tomatoes year round even through winter. In winter I grow tomatoes and zucchini in earth boxes along a south facing wall. They get a bit frost damaged and look like heck at times, but they do produce. I plant out for winter in September and for summer around st patty's day.
Here is a link that might be useful: organic winter tomatoes
I can't comment generally on the results like antonaki who has grown it a long time, but I can share what happened to me. The plant is a very metered production plant in cool weather for me. By that I mean it started out relatively slowly and stout like a sailor, then like clockwork, flowered in cycles like it really wanted to take off.
My problem is it got too cold, since I started it in mid-late August for reasonable growing conditions that ended this year in mid-November. For a variety famed for perfectly shaped tomatoes, you can see in my pic one of them was a double tomato, and on the plant there is one with lips, which supposedly is very rare to have deviations from globe. I would not consider this a large tomato, just a medium globe (5 - 6 oz tomatoes).
Overall my yield won't be as productive as I expected, but I only have one poor plant to judge. Had it been warmer the plant really showed potential and that is evident now as it is the healthiest of all my plants after they endured two or three season ending freezes in the last couple of months. I love the flavor and texture though. Just a note that it is probably more juicy for some people's tastes and does have many seeds. The skin in humid conditions was not tough as I expected it to be a little leathered (result: not).
It just has a great balance and most of all I like the aftertaste which is a clearly a bit sweet, maybe because I could leave it on the plant much longer than maybe I should. I think it is just a classically well-balanced tomato. I'm sorry you had bad luck. If you can slip in another plant to try again, I hope it works out well. This plant and fruit is very disease resistant for me and the tomatoes have a long hang time in part because of that.
PC
This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Fri, Jan 23, 15 at 15:11
I am not a container farmer, but have transplanted volunteer seedlings over the years. Mostly the results were low fruit yield or small fruit. These volunteer plants were in the garden beside healthy and good producing plants. I have concluded that the reason for poor production from the volunteer plants was that the seedlings were from hybrid tomatoes.
I have the same experience
Here is a link that might be useful: تبدÛÙ psd ب٠html
I find that almost any picture I can take outside, with natural light, is better than any with unnatural light.
Of course professional photographers have the right equipment to take photographs with artificial light.
just my $0.02.
regard, Tom
Yesterday I planted tomatoes outside on spec and last night my wife said it was going to go down to 37 F. Since I have a bipolar micro-climate here, that went over not-so-peachy-keen. So, the most valuable lesson in pushing the season can be "are the plants small enough to still cover with a bucket at sundown"?
Pushing so early has risks like "failure", but a whole second set-out two weeks later is good mandatory insurance. You just have to be willing to pull the "bad" plants later on and put in beans!
@daninthedirt: at the urging of people local to me I started using shade cloth as a sunscreen, strung vertically away from the plants. It seemed to work, just nothing spectacular. Good enough to try again, though, even with the winds. Also, tomatoes can shade other tomatoes closely planted, also to a limited extent.
Thanks for the insight about shade cloth on tomatoes. Good idea to string it vertically, away from the plants.
Good point about tomato plants shading other tomato plants. Now that I think of it, I actually have two trellises for my cherries, one a few feet to the north of the other. That northern trellis (especially the lower parts) doesn't get as much sun as the southern one. That northern trellis is just as unproductive in August as the southern one. So I'm inclined to believe that shade cloth won't do me a lot of good. Of course, most of the flowering late in the season would happen near the top of the trellis.
Hi Pat, I am learning about this whole seed growing thing. When you put your small plants under lights...do you worry about temperatures in your garage that may fall to 45-50 F at night? Some say cold nights stunt growth. I prefer to do my lights in the garage...which is warmer than the February nighttime temps...which might get down to 40 or so.
They tend to be for commercial growing in commercial green houses. The thing is many do not have that great of a flavor. They are bred for being able to put out lots of tomatoes that have a longer shelf life so they will make it from the grower to the markets, and keep on the market shelves longer. (Not saying they taste bad. Most just taste bland compared to the non green house varieties.
Mike, I agree completely with using Joe's Pink OXheart, but if it were me I wouldn;t use Indigo Rose, the reason being that many who have grown it did NOT like the taste at all.
I think it does need to be a bit sweeter IMO and there are plenty of other varieties that could introduce not just that but also the antho and you might consider something like Purple Bumble Bee to name just one,
And it's good to remember that in the F1 that small fruit size in dominant,
And I hope that when I finally get my seed offer up ( not here at GW) and running that some will use it in breeding projects, b/c it is unique IMO.
Carolyn
I have used a pop up greenhouse the last two years. The first year it worked great but last year it was a very cold spring and I had to leave it closed up more than I liked. Basically I would look at the forecast and unzip it for the day based on that. Cooler and cloudy not very much and warm and sunny halfway or more. It would be better for sure if you or someone else was home to baby sit it but you can make it work even if you are gone all day. If you get one avoid the clear ones as they will burn stuff up in a heartbeat. The main upside is you can start stuff later and avoid the lights but if you have a very cold spring it can be a hassle.
How many plants are you planning on putting out.
If it is not a whole lot of them I would suggest the ones that are the stand up ones. They cost about $20 or so. They work to protect things in a light freeze. If it super cold then bring them in for the couple of days. My thing is it gets cold here at night early on. So I have a low tunnel. Most of my annual flowers survived in it till the temp stayed below freezing for 2 days. When the time comes for me to put the seedlings outside in the low tunnel they will be outside by day, and inside at night. If temps are expected to go below the mid 20's I will bring them inside till it warms back up.
Oh and with the smaller shelf type ones you can keep things warmer with a single heat lamp running at night.
Alfred Hershey came to Cold Spring Harbor in 1950. Two years later, he and Martha Chase performed one of the most famous experiments in modern biology, the âÂÂWaring blenderâ experiment, which reinforced the findings of other scientists that genes were made of DNA, not protein. The discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, first described publicly by James Watson at the 1953 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium entitled âÂÂViruses,â heralded a new era in biology.
Above from your link.
Yes, others already had determined that DNA was composed of nucleic acids, not proteins,
And yes, Watson did present his findings at the summer symposium, which happened each summer but at that time was not a faculty member at CSH.
I too worked with phage as well as with other systems.
YOur link was great b'c so many of the names I knew well,like McClintock from Cornell, where I went,Luria, and so many more.
Please forgive me for posting more, but sheesh, it 's been a long time since I've seen those names, and yes, I attended two summer symposia at CSH myself.
Carolyn
Carolyn
A piece of that same Sungold plant is still there. So is a Black Cherry. I cut them off at soil level late last fall, but hadn't pulled up the roots. And they didn't have sense enough to notice the frost. Both are growing like crazy.
I guess I accidentally started my tomato season a few months early. A happy kind of accident, eh?
"Are you saying you got some Rebelion seed somewhere?
I had no idea anyone else could think of that. Wonder how
you did it. Is someone selling it here now?"
Ooops - sorry sneezer - It is the Marbonne (F1) seeds that I have purchased. Thanks for correcting me on the Marmande also - I can grow them a lot better than I can keep them straight - haha
Thanks for the correction. I hope your Marbonne does well.
I'll be looking for results, yours and others' around the forum come summer.
Actually, after my experience with "the R fruit", I'm a bit leery about the whole
trend of "improving" highly successful heirlooms. I just think something is being
left out of the mix as has happened so many times before. Especially from the
point of view of individuals growing for themselves and their families.
However, it's best to keep an open mind and I intend to do that and continue
to hope that the "project" turns out more successfully than I expect.
yardenman,
I tried grafting for the first time last year. I practiced all winter long. I got 0% yield the first couple of times I tried. But by the time February rolled around, I had the process nailed down and got >90% yield. The key learnings I got were 1) you need very good contact between the rootstock and scion and 2) you need to dial in the recipe for the healing chamber.
For #1, I found that getting good contact is extremely difficult with an angled cut because if the angles are off by even just a little, you get a gap and it's game over. I tried all kinds of jigs to help make the angled cuts uniform and repeatable, but I didn't have a lot of luck. So I ended up going with a basic horizontal flat cut. After that, my yields improved dramatically. The way I do it is I put a grafting clip on the rootstock and scion. I then lay a razor blade on the top surface of the clip and make the cut. This gives me a nice flat cut that is very repeatable.
The 2nd thing is to nail down the recipe for the healing chamber. The recipe will be different depending on what setup you have. I use a propagation kit with an extra deep dome. I put about 1/2" of hot tap water in the tray and then place a heating mat underneath the tray to keep the water warm. It takes 8 days for the healing to occur. The first 4 days I have a towel draped over the dome to maintain complete darkness and keep things warm. On the 5th day, I remove the towel, open one of the vents in the dome, and turn on one lamp (for 12 hrs). On the 6th day, I open the 2nd vent and introduce a second lamp. On the 7th day, I crack open the dome to lower the humidity even more and introduce a third lamp. On the 8th day I remove the dome completely and stay with the three lamps. On the 9th day, the plants are healed and ready to go under the lights in the garage.
The best way to fine tune the recipe is to graft a plant onto itself. This way you eliminate the contact goodness as a variable and you can focus on getting the recipe right.
Good luck!
Amazing. I thought a flat cut was the WORST way to go! Live and learn.
I have a humidity stand and it was warm upstairs where I had it, but I didn't use extra heat. I'll try that.
And I think, (from your description) that I left the grafted seedlings in the dark too long.
Thanks for all the advice!
Thank you!
Do you know what the days to maturity (DTM) were for your plants? That is the average amount of time it takes from putting a 6-8 week old plant in the ground until the first fruit ripens. It occurs to me that even though you are in a beautiful climate, 60-70 degrees is a little low for tomatoes, and probably slows down ripening. Also, your day length is about 12 hours year round, right? Are your plants getting enough sun?