16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Thanks Yardenman
I have already thought about various options.

Actually when 5' is used as base, (with a 6" overlap) you can make a cage with over 17" diameter. Then if I make them 7ft tall , each cage will cost me about $9 plus all the struggling with bending, tying. Another MINUS of cage is winter storage.
For the above reasoning, I can use a lighter gauge galvanized material and make trellis with 1/2" EMT. So that is what I am going to try on one of my raised beds this year.

Seysonn.

Well, if you go with the 5' high, you can make them as large around as you have CRM. I made mine 2' diameter.

But the CRM cages I made 25 years ago are still fine, so consider it a one-time cost and forget about it.

I simply store my cages behind the shed each winter. But what's wrong with just leaving them in place if you don't have a place to hide them?

The lighter cages don't stand the test of time or the demand of each season, in my opinion.

Elight, I'll try to attach a better picture of my light stand first. And I used to use chains to adjust the height of the lights over the plants, but that got tedious and awkward. Instead, I built little wooden stands to place UNDER the seedling trays to raise them closer to the lights.

It wasn't very hard to build them. I simply cut some cheap plywood to tray size and glued on sides of various heights from scrap wood.

Below the picture of my light stand is a url to my blog post about the tray stands I build to adjust their height.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tray Stands

To add more about light stands, I use daylight or grow bulbs in the lightstand. Some say it isn't worth the cost, but I can usually find them on sale sometime in late Winter at nearly the cost of regular shop bulbs. I think the extra light spectrum is beneficial. Plants grow best in natural sunlight, why not try to duplicate it? I could get into the planty physics if needed.

If I were to construct the light stand new, I would use two 2-bulb fixtures separated by several inches. The single 4-bulb fixtures are narrow and don't illuminate a whole 2'x4' shelf as well as I would like.

The productivity is good too. I think those 4 lighted shelves produced (with some shifting out as early-to-plant plants matured and were replaced with later seedings) 14 flats of healthy sturdy seedlings last year. And I could have processed more if I had reason to.

The shelf unit is only $80 at a Big Box DIY store. And well worth it. The rest of the year, I can store a LOT of gardening tools and supplies there and the floorspace is minimal.

Hope this all helps and that you (many people) will try the idea.

Because the farmer from whom I get my potting mix already includes agricultural lime in his "landscape mix," I don't add any calcium other than what may be in the various fertilizers, including Fertilome iron and micronutrient supplement, that I use periodically during the season.

Yes, a friend who grows tomatoes in 5-gallon bags of coir in hoophouses has a fertigation system that injects a high phosphorus liquid fertilizer four times per 24 hours and liquid calcium once per 24 hours through his drip lines.

I think adding calcium to the potting mix during the growing season would depend on 1) whether the original mix was deficient in calcium to begin with, 2) whether your potting mix is comprised of enough organic material and clay to create a high enough cation equation coefficient to bind the nutrients to the potting mix particles for the plants to take up, and 3) how much water you pass thru the mix leaching out the calcium and other nutrients.

Just to resurrect an old thread and mention that Burpee is selling the Bush Big Boys again. This fine bush tomato disappeared for a couple of years. I have not done it in a container but it does very well for me, produces more than my heirlooms, and is a pleasant a little sweet 10 -12 ounce tomato. Works well in the cages.

I grew this season dwarf Green Jade, the taste is good but difficult to tell when is ripe, I had to go by touch. In my garden considering the amount of foliage was not that productive, maybe in the spring season will do better....

Here it is with a Kosovo

And right now the variety that is so productive in my garden is Green Zebra cherry, and is not difficult to tell when is ripe because it gets a yellow tint. it is coming back the next season for sure!

Silvia

I grew Indigo Blue Berries, they did seem to take a long time to get ripe. Mine were prolific and out of three varieties, they produced the most. I was still eating them, long after the others were done. They turn deep red where the sun doesn't hit.

From what I have read from the source you linked as well as the many other info sources available, there is no prohibition on seed saving as your title says.

However there are restrictions on disseminating those seeds to others without any regard for the regulations and safety considerations. Germination and mis-labeling issues aside (since most traders are willing to accept those risks if necessary), spreading seed-borne bacterial and viral diseases via traded seeds from unknown sources is well documented. That is something any state that wishes to protect it agricultural interests has a right to enforce.

When trading seeds it would be great to know if they were harvested properly, labeled correctly, and stored to retain viability. But more important, it serves us all well to insure that those seeds have been properly disinfected prior to planting.

Dave

That legally bothers me about as much as copying Commodore computer software did in the 80's. MY concern is keeping those damn seeds OUT of my garden.

The 2 dwarves I tried last year did not survive, but I think I have learned a few things since then. These are from supermarket tomatoes.

Garf, Most tomatoes cannot tolerate Miami, FL summers. That has nothing to do with dwarf tomatoes. Even, if you remember it right, two out of three of your own tomatoes from store bough died too.

Seysonn

I also try to plant as early as possible by taking several measures:

== picking some early varieties, some mid season.
== By covering the raised beds with Black plastic, couple of months prior to plant out, to help raise soil temperature and prevent from getting too wet.
== I have built couple of portable mini hoops that I use both hardening off and protecting from wind, cool temps and too much rain.
== I also make small cages from rabbit fence wire and wrap them with bubble wrap. Works kinda like WOW.

By doing all those things, last year I got my 1rst ripe tomato on/around July 7. That is unheard of in my climate. This year I intend to beat that.
So we had ripe tomatoes in July, August, September and some in early October.. That is pretty good in PNW, NW Washington state.

Seysonn

Premio - Harris seed - . Resistant to Tomato Mosaic Virus, Verticillium Wilt and Fusarium Wilt (races 1,2), and intermediate resistance to Stemphylium.

Heinz 2653 - resistant to verticillium and fusarium.

From what I can see, you are trying to grow early maturing varieties in hopes of beating late blight but the varieties you have chosen are not necessarily good choices for the stated use or for their bred in disease tolerance. I think a better strategy would be to grow late blight tolerant tomatoes to start with. Mountain Merit would be justified IMO. Iron Lady might be worth looking at.

This turned out to be a vine type weed. It has been trashed.

This turned out to be a vine type weed. It has been trashed.

Could not resist ordering Jersey Boy. I needed more Brandy Boy seeds so figured I would kill 2 birds with 1 stone and order both. I didn't want to try and see if I could find this in the nurseries this spring. Hope I won't be disappointed cause I have high hopes for this one.

Carolyn hit it :

Any hybridiser can cross Rutgers and Brandywine to produce , more or less, the same outcome. So if I was interested in Jersey Boy I would rather buy Red Rose ($2.95).

Seysonn

New code for free shipping fs347 !

Edited to add: OOPS! It is for $50 or more order!

This post was edited by wertach on Tue, Dec 16, 14 at 11:36

NYFS15

That's the code for free shipping from Burpee that is good today 12/30/14. No minimum order is listed, so it probably works for everything or anything from them.

PC

my only real hope for continuing to grow these giant tomatoes is to plant the next generation of seeds.

Well, that depends how many seeds you have. It also depends what your object is, in growing Big Zac.

Perhaps you intend to plant all the seeds at once, in a go-for-broke attempt to win NZ's giant tomato contest (if there is one).

Or perhaps you simply assume that all your seeds must be planted this year or they'll "expire." Some folks aren't aware that tomato seeds, if kept from high temperatures, can last a dozen years or more.

Then again, this is mid-summer in the Southern Hemisphere, so perhaps you've planted all your Big Zac seeds already....

Thanks. I only had one small pack. I did hold some back and that should get me another year at least. But I've heard so much about these that I was hoping to hold on to them. Guess I'll try planting some of the seeds next year and see what happens :-)

I don't know about the ground temperature issue. Actually heat comes up from the ground too. And it is warmer deeper in the ground than on/near the surface early in the season. Besides that, when planted vertically, deeper, the buried portion of the stem will grow root as well

see the picture

Seysonn

I'll try to play around with deep planting and trenching next summer - see how it goes...

Fireduck
Your soil mixture is almost identical to what I use in containers and I have high yields of tomatoes compared to most people I know. Something that I should have been doing from the beginning though is a good one to two inch layer of mulch to keep the moisture in and the top layer of soil from baking in the sun. I just use pine bark and it's made a huge difference.

W...you make an excellent point about mulch. My area is much cooler in the summer than you. However, I think the mulch would definitely be an advantage for me, as well. I have lots of wood chips from the local tree people. I might consider straw, however. It might be easier to remove if I want to re-work my soil at a later date.