16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
It is easy to have too much root mass for even an 18 gallon container. All other variables being even, the root mass of just 1 indeterminate tomato plant can easily overwhelm a container that size. For example check out the size Raybo uses for his Earthtainers - 31 gallons.
Once the plant is root bound, then regardless of the size of the container watering will be a problem unless you use an automated, timed drip irrigation system.
I'm not saying that a tomato can't be grown in an 18 gallon container. It can with work and care. But you also cannot just assume that the size is of no concern.
The point is there are many factors that control and contribute to the process. Choosing to focus on only one factor - type of soil mix - and ignoring all the others isn't going to solve the problem.
So focusing instead on getting the right variety of plant planted at the proper time for your area, into the right size container (preferably self-watering) with any quality soil-less mix and providing it with a consistent balanced amounts of sun and erecting shade when needed, water, nutrients, and care such as avoiding over-watering and/or shallow-watering that creates water-dependent plants equals success.
Growing in containers is an artificial environment for many plants so it requires extra attention of ALL the details. But it is possible to do. Many of us do it every year.
Dave
Thanks Tom. I finally picked them today and they are lining my kitchen window. If then don't turn red, I can paint them and hang them from the Christmas Tree! I think that I'll stick with summer tomatos next year. The season is longer and I have better results.
In order to get them to ripen quickly try this little trick my granny taught me:
Put the tomatoes in a cardboard box with a lid, or a paper bag if you just have a few. Place a couple of overripe bananas within the container you are using. Seal it up best you can without making it air tight. Keep checking every couple of days for ripe tomatoes.
I've always done it this way on faith, but there is science behind it. Fruit (tomatoes are technically fruits) ripen by the presence of Ethylene (it's a maturation hormone in fruit). This is the same way commercial growers ripen their fruit (they pick them green and then ripen them by flooding shipping containers with ethylene gas, causing them to ripen on the way to grocery stores). A banana is known to produce large amounts of ethylene, and by putting it in the same container it will cause the tomatoes to start ripening from its presence. Hope this helps you get those red tomatoes you are after!!!
Robert
There many many accessions that have been brought back from the Galapagos islands and made available, most of them small fruited varieties, some named, some not, some currant tomatoes, some not.
But if you're talking about the tomato called Kumato, also known here in the US as Rosso Bruno, and bred by Syngenta in Europe with so much hype that I think it's ridiculous, then no, it's not a scam. THey first introdced it in England and Australia maybe 6-7 years ago, I didn't check, and then in the US as Rosso Bruno, but it's also now available here as Kumato.Identical tomato, two different names.
Regardless of the name it's an F1 hybrid and folks have been growing it out to get an open pollinated (OP) version since they like the taste, which I don't.
Somewhere in the hype you might have read about Galapagos Tortoises, etc.
Hope that helps, from someone who does like what's known as Sara's Galapagos, for instance, which is a wee sized stable cross between a currant and ?????. The Galapagos ISlands are also the home of the species S. Cheesmanii, the salt tolerant one that has been used by hybridizers to breed tomatoes with increased tolerance to briny waters.
Carolyn
Thanks for the offer tracydr.
lol!!! thank you Travis, I have been thisisme for many years. I'm also thisisme on eBay and have been since before it was eBay back in the old Auction America days. Over 1,000 positive feedbacks with a 100 percent positive feedback rating and still counting.
Hi tracydr, I order my seeds early. At this point I have an under the counter refrigerator packed bottom to top with seeds. About half are left over from last year and the rest purchased in the last three months. At this point I'm not looking for anything. Though if I could get them I would love to have 2-3 Purple tomatillo plants in a couple months.
Yes Indigo Rose is a tomato and its dark purple and supposed to be tasty. Its also supposed to be an open pollinated variety and stable so I can save seeds and have seeds to plant next year too. Territorial Seeds charges $ 6.50 for shipping. All they have is a 1 gram pack available at $ 9.98. Which is why I purchased a 30 seed pack from Nichols Garden Nursery for $ 2.45. They charge $ 3.95 for shipping. They have a good Garden watchdog rating or I would not have purchased from them.
At Johnny's Indigo Rose is back ordered. I really like the seed quality at Johnny's. They are high volume plus they only stock current season seeds which keeps their stock fresh. However I have waited for back ordered items to come in with them before. Items they show as back ordered are often delayed again and again until our early planting season is over.
I only have one 30 seed pack of Indigo Rose which I plan on planting since I don't know what the germination rate will be. Last year I had a bunch of extra tomato plants because I put 2-3 seeds in each pot and ended up with 2-3 plants in each pot. So last year I was able to trade some and give others away. Would you be interested in a trade? I only plan of growing 2-3 Indigo Rose plants in my garden and hope to have a bunch of extras. Any chance you could grow a few extra Purple tomatillo's and trade for some Indigo Rose plants come planting season?
I'll probably make an order of purple tomatillos from somewhere. Assuming I have good luck starting them, I'd be very interested in a trade. I'm starting some tomato seeds today and won't need much but those Indigo Rose sound interesting.
I'm starting some ground cherry seeds, too so will let you know if I get extras.
Worse comes to worse on the on the tomatillos we can always get some green ones from the produce market and get the seeds from them but having the purple ones would really be nice.
Carolyn said: "Knowing WHICH specific diseases are found in your area and being able to identify them is very important."
A fact that also applies to gardening in general but it's just plain-out ignored by many folks. Having a good garden is not just luck and hard work, it's knowledge and skill too.
There is something to be said for fruit appearance and when it comes to Better Boy I give it a thumbs-down. Fruits usually have yellow shoulders which look sickly when compared to many other varieties. I would even prefer the European green-shouldered varieties to this one.
I'm hesitant to comment since your methods are a bit controversial, yet somewhat what I've been doing for many years. The biggest difference is that I transplant 10-12 week old plants in a greenhouse soil in early March.
In essense you need to really pay attention to pot size and light intensity after seedlings reach the 8-10 week stage of growth. Depending on variety you will likely only need to wait 50-70 days from fruit formation til ripening.
Those first tomatoes are worth their weight in gold and I would suggest merely thinning the first few blossom clusters to 2-3 fruits if plants are displaying good growth at that stage. Keeping temperatures optimum is important once flowers are forming but you need to arrange for more sun. We have adequate sunlight in March & April at our latitude but 6 hours of it is hardly enough. Cut that tree down now.
The search here will pull up many discussions on 'topping' and in most you will find that yes, there are adverse effects - loss of production and stress to the plant that can have health effects.
But if 6' is your limit for some reason (I assume it is your support method?) and you don't want to grow determinate varieties that are naturally shorter plants and if you don't want the plants to just drape back down the supports as they do normally and if you don't mind the loss of production then give it a try. But leave at least 1 plant growing naturally for comparison to the ones you top. The experiment is a good way to learn what works best for you.
Dave
The later method that you mentioned of tying the plants to train them laterally is an effective way of controling height but you will need a fairly strong sopport system to hold the increasing weight of new growth and production. Often you will have intertwined growth if you train upper plants within the same row but I find that in the last month of the season this is less stressful on cherry types than lowering stems to control height with a high tunnel, stringline support system. In fact, the more intertwined the growth becomes the more the plants seem to support eachother to avoid breaking stems.
I bottom water my tomato plants. I put one seed in each 16 oz. styrofome cups with holes in the bottom. I set them in the bottom of milk jugs that I cut the top off. I keep two cups in each with about one inch of water in them all the time.
As for soil. I plant them in nothing but composted oak leaves.
The leaves do stay a little yellow, but when they are planted in the ground they quickly green up.
Click the link. Here is a photo of my tomatos ready to be planted in the ground. I planted them in bigger pots. Now I use smaller pots. Bigger pots are harder to plant out. I started these earlier. I grow my seedlings on the porch with a window to the south.
Karyl
Here is a link that might be useful: Tomatos ready to plant out.
P20 and OSU related lines were not completely stable lines when originally obtained. They were not "hybrids" at that time. There has been enough time since being released that some would be stable provided someone applied selection pressure and proper isolation from outcrossing.
The jest is that what one person may call P20/OSU could be different than what another person does. Depending on how long they have had their seed, what consistent selection pressure they applied and how carefully they have maintained it would determine how stable it would be and how it performs.
I agree with the Dr and say go with Indigo Rose.
It's easy to breed in the purple traits. So there are already more purple types around (though likely not completely stabilized). Most may look interesting but end up being mostly junk. The purple traits come from wild species and one has to work against their negative carry over genetics when trying to improve the flavor. Flavor improvements too will happen if made a priority and crosses are made to better tasting lines. Improving flavor is more problematic than trying to just get the purple genes to show up.
Double up what mule said. The original P20 seed I got from Jim Myers 5 years ago were not at all stable. I saved seed from the deepest darkest fruited plant I had the first season I grew them and grew seedlings the next year that ranged from little anthocyanin to the same dark color of the parent. It is more stable for color now after a few generations of growing a single line, but the flavor is still poor. Keith's crosses with better flavored tomatoes are starting to show results. Hopefully within another year or two we will have some good tasting tomatoes that are jet black.
DarJones
Yes, they can survive and produce.
This happened to me as well last summer. Freak wind storm came out of nowhere and ripped a couple limbs off my blue tomato plant that had blossoms and even some small tomatoes on it. My first time growing a blue, and I really wanted to keep as many as I could get, so I potted the torn limbs up and hoped for the best.
Those limbs not only survived, but the fruit that was on them survived, and they continued to produce for the rest of the season.
Wasn't covered in as big of fruits as the ones on the main plant, but they were producing. Didn't even use any kind of rooting hormone, just stuck the torn end in some potting soil and crossed my fingers.
It'll look like they're wilting and dying for a while, but just keep watering them normally and they'll bounce back.
Here in Orange County, CA the last two standing out of 26 varieties I planted were an Opalka and a Black Cherry. They have survived a week of 35 to 38 degree night time lows. Even though it still had green foliage on it and still had tomatoes on it I pulled the Opalka yesterday, and will pull the Black Cherry today even though it still has green foliage and some green tomatoes on it because I have no hope of them ripening with this unusual cold spell we have been having. The partially ripe Opalkas still tasted good, but the partially ripened Black Cherries had a terrible taste.
I don't know what variety I have out there. Pulled all the markers when I thought I was going to yank the plant back in July. Decided to keep it along with a few others. The others succumbed to winds from TS Lee in September. The one that remains is a beefsteak ... probably Beefy Boy or Church. We had lows in the 20s & 30s for about a week, so I covered it and stuck a light in the cage. I see blush on one of the tomatoes today. Would love to have a fresh tomato for Christmas.
Reggie,
As I understand what you are doing you are essentially "potting up". And I realize you are going from and to the same sized pot.
There are broadly differing opinions about the advantages/disadvantages of potting up so far as plant development is concerned. For the past several years I have planted into 18 in trays. I put 5 seeds into each cup
then transplant out to the same sized trays. The cups
measure 3.5x3.5x3.5.
Years ago I started in smaller cups, potted up 2 or 3 times
and everything was ok so long as I was limiting my labor to
maybe 2 dozen plants total. But now I grow about 60 per year and give away at least 150 more to friends. Maybe some less this year if I can just sum up some self discipline!
I do note a small difference in the vigor of transplanted seedlings--they seem to a bit better to me but not by much.
But I have had ample chance to observe downstream performance of plants given to friends and compare that to
the non-transplanted plants I save for myself. I feel any differences ever noted are easily charged to soil and cultural methods.
Now I do put a lot of the stem of my plants underground when I plant so that they can develop lots of side roots to feed nutrients up into the fruit and foliage. Most others don't do this so maybe what I observe is from more a difference in cultural practices than seedling development practices.
Suggest you might want to try an experiment with one of your varieties.
I have four children, my youngest daughter is bigger than her older sister.
Right, but with tomatoes on the same plant, they are genetically identical unlike your children (unless your children are identical quadruplets that is).
Yumtomatoes,
My eyes and my mouth suggest to me that all the tomatoes on one plant may not be GENETICALLY IDENTICAL!!!
Furthermore, I have saved and kept segregated seed from two
tomatoes sourced from the same plant. These were planted in rows side by side the next spring. There were observable differences in row to row performance, as well as
plant to plant performance in the same row.
Of course, there is the rare chance one or both could have been externally cross pollinated--not very likely.
On only one occasion have I gone to the trouble of bagging
a blossom cluster before they opened, then saved the seed for future use. Though I did not do side by side row comparisons from seed collected from more than one tomato
I did see plant to plant variation from single tomato sourced seed.
I have a suspicion that there are trivial genetic variations in all seed from the same fruit and major variations between some of the seeds. I can't otherwise account for what I have observed.