16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Sungold sounds like a good one to try, maybe I will try that.

If you haven't tried it, you'll be in for a pleasant experience. It really is tasty, as well as prolific. Too bad it's a hybrid and we cannot save seeds!

Linda

Hi PC, Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for the reply!

I'll bring the lighting down to 16hrs. Initially the grow light was a few inches above the plant, though with the new tent I had raised it a few feet above to get the light spread covering the floor where the herbs and lettuce live. This has made the plant stretch right out trying to get to the light. I'll raise the tomato plant within a few inches of the light again.

Analysis of the Ionic is N-2.3, P-.33, K-2.9, Ca-0.95, Mg-0.42 (%w/v)

It also contains all the trace elements. Recommended EC is approx 1.4-1.6mS/cm which is a little above your recommended max. so I'll drop the concentration a bit. I thought an excess of calcium could be inhibiting nutrient uptake so I've stopped the nutrient the last 4 days, just water but have seen little difference.

I plan on mixing my own nutrient soon, I'll be testing it on a batch of lettuces to see how the ratios affect the yield. Though this Ionic is only $8.00 and at the listed dilution will make over 1000L of nutrient.

How do you know I have excess salt? Is it something you can see with the plant?

Thanks for the help, I'll make the changes as per your recommendations and post how it goes!

Hi BennVenn,

I didn't realize you are in Australia till now... who in their right mind isn't growing their tomatoes outside down under in this wonderful season? You know 80% of the North Americans are foaming at the mouth just waiting for Spring here ;-) Just joking around ... I'm sure this is a great learning experience. Let me just give a few pointers and address a couple more doubts you had.

OK, $8/1000L for an all-in-one product .... hmmmm Unless I'm wrong that's 3 cents a gallon, way to go mate! .... wait, let's just look at it to be sure ...

OK, the formula is no good for fruiting tomatoes, though it ought to be ok for greens and herbs. Potassium nitrate was not the way to adjust it, it should have been adjusted with sulfate of potash, and we don't knowthe micros so who knows except the leaves don't show any problem with them yet. Too young to say really. I looked at the way the leaves curl in your excellent pictures and that is why I thought you had some accumulated salts already. But it could be that the plant is simply weak. Both are likely. Coconut based substrate is less forgiving on roots than a mineral substrate and when repotting that is an art, not a science where you rip as few roots as you can and open it up somewhat, and put it in its new place avoiding compacting in any way so the roots have time to spread out. I think your comments about roots and water are not far off the mark, except that it is oxygen, not water that is getting excluded and this will be a risk of fungal problems now ... another reason not to dawdle on repotting.

We didn't talk about the composition of your source water. 16 CF is fine at this stage including the water ;-).

OK, if that is fine ...back to the formula, if it is one liter (100:1), you are blasting the poor plants with nitrogen, and unless your source water is passing through a calcite mine, the calcium is not a problem, but will likely become your first deficiency ... it's too low. The formula will work fine at 200:1, but as the fruit load increases, then iron must be added as long as you want to use this sub-optimal tomato product.

What kind of grow light do you have? can it deliver roughly 500 W/m2? OK, well, at least 350, but to each of the leaves? All right, you can twist the tomato plant's arms some and have 200, but that will only get by. Unfortunately it is the lower leaves that are doing most of the photosynthesis and the bulb must be near them unless it is one of these expensive new bulbs that claims a mini-solar directed output. Still the nice reflective room you made is better than I ever had.

Your choice of plant variety is a problem to light up. It is a vigorous indeterminate which needs to make lots of plant mass to complement that fruit mass you're after. Consider a manageable dwarf variety for indoors like that ... and adjust your expectation actually, back to being realistic. You can utilize light with enormous efficiency then. Google the Southern Hemisphere dwarf project and get a good one of those and you'll really have a wonderful project.

OK, I hope I helped more than I confused... but I'm thinking it might be a bit much ... let me know if it's helpful or I if need should clear up or said something dumb lol.

PC

Daniel, what is the variety of your bulgy-shaped tomatoes? I had some of a similar shape and colour (crimson/dark pinky-red) with amazing flavour. The best I have tasted.

I'm sorry tete-a-tete, but I don't know the variety. This year I planted 35 varieties.

It was pretty difficult in that "jungle" to see what varieties were the tomatoes I picked up. Many vines were 15+ ft. long.

Next year I'll have a CLEAR system, to know EXACTLY what variety is EACH tomato in my garden.

Daniel, thanks for the suggestion. But this is an old thread about "planting plans" and I will just let it ride.
OTOH, I thing the two ( what to grow and what NOT to grow) go hand in hand , as part of the plan, to me at least

BeesNeeds , ... That is very interesting : Growing just one color.
I like colorful basket of tomatoes; Red, Pink ; Brown, Bi Color, Brown, Yellow/Orange, Green, ... But always Red/Pinks are dominant. Well, we all have different preferences.

This post was edited by seysonn on Sun, Nov 23, 14 at 12:14

HOW MANY VARIETIES YOU GREW/MENTIONED ?:

A rough count in this thread alone shows that in 2014 close to ONE HUNDRED varieties mentioned/grown.

Maybe another hundred was not mentioned ( just GW members). But I have read that there are 20k tomato varieties in the world today. Let us say that there are just 2k. So we are just growing one out of 10 of them. I have come to believe that smart gardeners like YOU screen and pick the best to grow. So , instead of going to the commercial seeds catalog I would pick my tomato plans based on the recommendations and reviews right in this GW forum. AND that is what exactly I have been doing. I bet growers like Bonnie listen to you as well and grow/sell what is REALLY good stuff.
Thank you all

Seysonn

Actually those are good ideas from grubby's input, especially about gaming the last frost. But you'd have to get lucky because your last frost date ranges to April 20, and the way this year is going winter isn't giving any breaks.in the southeast, but mabe the southwest will have better luck and maybe you can get a few weeks.

Since it is the first time he's growing I was trying to keep it simple. You won't believe all you can learn by going through it one time with the surest thing and then if you get into it you can build on that with experience under your belt and do some of the stuff other forum participants do to increase their luck. Now I'm bucking the recommendation again with plants when the season should be over (as of two nights ago, hard freeze, 9a). It kind of gets tedious instead of fun at times, and there is really no substitute for getting a productive plant that allows a beginner latitude to make a few mistakes but still get his bushel full to show for the effort.

Best gardening
PC

In addition you will be dealing with wind, quite a lot of it in your high dessert location. Get your tomato plants set out as early as humanly possible. You can purchase or make frost caps or purchase specialty product to protect young plants. Your best bet will likely be smaller tomatoes, including cherries and salad size.

Hi JennieBoyer. I am not a fan of fried green tomatoes and don't think tomatoes should be cooked BUT I found a nice recipe for green tomato soup. I believe it's from Epicurious. You can also make chutney (I've never made it but I've heard its good).

Here is a link that might be useful: Green Tomato Soup

There are only so many uses for green tomatoes and I believe that unless you like the end product you are better to not waste time preparing large quantities of it. I decided this morning to compost over 10 bu. of larger green tomatoes which I had picked prior to the freeze and the last farmers' markets I attended. Eventually they all rot if just held in storage and even those that turn color lack the flavor of a vine ripened tomato. I still have a few bu. of colored tomatoes but what I envision is a weekly sorting routine to toss the decaying fruits and in the end we will have eaten a dozen or less tomatoes.

My vote and my quest is for the vine ripened tomatoes next May. I believe the overwhelming majority of my tomato customers feel the same.

I grew a different one, Indigo Blue Berries. Tough study plants and
the flavor is good when they turn red where the sun doesn't hit, not orange, red. They were a longer DTM than Black Cherry and Esterina (a hybrid) while I was dying to try them. They were the most prolific and were still producing into fall. I had six of them this year. Next I want to put one in an upside down thing, easier to see under them.

Mary E.

From another tomato discussion board we can't link to here - "Taste is not really mild but more mellow yet a fairly complex, well balanced taste."

I find them to have little to no acidic bite yet not overly sweet. An underlying smoky flavor I find in many of the black/blue varieties. But as we often say here, taste is totally subjective so YOMV,

Dave

edited to note correct spelling for searches is Helsing Junction Blues.

This post was edited by digdirt on Mon, Nov 24, 14 at 13:21

What a nice greenhouse. Enjoy. (I have nothing to offer on how to grow in one, though). Children's hospital is lucky to have someone as dedicated as you raising funds for them.

Caryl

I'm in SE MA as well and I think with your set up you can definitely get them in that house fine. I mean with hoop houses I've made I'm setting them in the ground April 1st or so. I have to take internal precautions like covering them with fabric like weed guard but they live. You've got an engineered structure with heat. I think your plants will do fine. Light is a factor as others have said. Those Bonnie types you see are grown in Alabama I think. Their greenhouses are warm but they also probably have hot lamps above them. Don't for get fans and rotating the plants to make them strong. Don't know if this would be too expensive or impracticable but you really want nice looking plants use fabric pots. By impracticable I mean transplanting or the cost and weight of a final destination(I'd go with 30 gallons if I was planting at home). It's amazing the way the plants just get all bushy and healthy thanks to the self pruning going on below. Another consideration is to maybe sell the fabric pots with the tomatoes and even have a sample on hand to demonstrate(meaning you start a plant now and transplant it into a decent size fabric pot(10-20 gallons)for the wow factor).

Hi corpus,

Good move pulling it. Clearly the plant has a disease indistinguishable in symptoms and appearance from TSWV, so it really doesn't matter what it was from a practical point of view.

Think about this one not as the plant you had, since, in fact you never had it; it wasn't going to be a good producer no matter what and it would only have infecrted other plants via sapsucking insects sooner or later (And I hope this didn't happen).

jean, he'll have to call the Ozzie Ghostbusters at this point since unless I'm mistaken, the plant was pulled if you read the thread. Also, pictures are no way to confirm anything ... they are only indicative and vary since environments and genetics make life fun. What is important here is following the progression of symptoms which were in lock step with TSWV to be messing around, so the stunted plant was pulled.

corpus, just a suggestion, but if your plants are taking off, the season is still young. You can just root a roughly 15 cm side shoot (sometimes referred to as a "sucker" in the USA) and easily catch up with the season since you don't have a spare. I do that all the time (but never have places to put the plants ... right now there are three sprawling in a noodly like web (angel hair?) over my thick carpet, under a weak fluorescent light as I slowly realize it won't be happening for them).

Take the side shoot cutting from your favorite plant/variety you've got already in the garden and you may even come out ahead ;-)

Thanks for the feedback, and if you happened to take any pictures of the more advanced stage before you pulled the plant, you can always post them ;-)

PC

Here is a link that might be useful: Rooting Tomato Side Shoots

This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Mon, Nov 17, 14 at 4:33

Thanks Jean, yes, there was some doubt and I decided to err (if I was erring at all) on the side of caution.

PC, thanks for your advice! I'll try that. We call them "laterals" here. I didn't take any more pictures. The plant was perhaps half the height of the best others and wilting - I didn't hold out much hope for it.

Thanks again!

Fermentation leads to the seeds becoming much cleaner and they won't stick together afterwards, when dry. This makes them easier to sow.

Thanks PC for the summary. Saves us having to go watch the video. Blender? Wonder how many seeds get damaged or destroyed in the process? No fermentation? No disinfection? No thanks.

Only 24-48 hours drying and on plastic coated surface is not nearly long enough to prevent molding during storage.

Dave

Thanks.... will be sure to pay attention next time. first time trying in a container. Didn't think they would grow, was experimenting. House not upside down, neither is my plant. There is only one plant in the container.

If you click on any upside down picture, it opens up in another separate window where it is right side up.

Remember we all use different brands of computers or hand-held devides with various operating systems to access the internet, and with constantly changing technology they can 't all intermesh as perfectly as we would like.

Tomatoes can take one-off temps of 28 degrees and often bounce back with little ill effect. However, sustained temps below 45 degrees are devastating to them. Tomato plant biochemistry relies on rubisco which is part of the translocation biopath that moves nutrients and energy from the leaves, through the stem, and into the roots. Temps below 45 degrees pretty much shut down the entire translocation biopath though the most intense effect is around 35 degrees. So putting it in perspective, there are no surprises here. Tomatoes can take brief periods down to 28 degrees, but can't handle sustained cold temps.

All common tomato varieties die dead dead dead below 28 degrees. There is a small amount of variation, I have a few lines that can take temps lower than 28 but absolutely cannot take frost forming on the leaves. I got several lines of tomato and grew them in 2013 to evaluate cold tolerance. This included numerous Russian lines as well as several wild species from TGRC. The short story is that all of them die when frost forms on the leaves. The longer story is that a few of them are able to continue growing at temps between 32 and 45 which is deadly for ordinary tomatoes.

The best result of the 2013 growout was finding a S. Habrochaites line that is nearly immune to disease in my garden. There was also a S. Pimpinellifolium that is significantly better than any of my current lines for septoria tolerance. I grew F2 plants from crosses with these plants this year and plan to grow F3's next year in a search for better disease tolerance in a decent quality domestic tomato.

I went out last night, as temps were dipping to the mid 20's and I wanted to get the last butternut, and there were MORE TOMATOES out on that plant. The last of the few blooms it had with temps around 50 went on to become tomatoes, and looked really nice despite a dead plant with frost forming on them before my eyes, a few were even blushing!