16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Being new to gardening (3rd year), I successfully planted bush beans amidst my tomato plants, as well as barren zucchini on one corner and non-existent cucumbers on the opposite. I realize this might be overkill, especially in a very tiny 3X5 bed, but I am still learning. In addition, I have containers still producing tomatoes and pole beans. As I prepare for unruly weather conditions this fall, what should my primary focus be in order to maintain healthy soil and optimal crop production next year? Thank you in advance.
eh, how about this?
Here is a link that might be useful: back to Eden
I find it far easier to modify the growing conditions as much as possible to the needs of the plant rather than trying to modify the plant to the less-than-ideal growing conditions. Shade cloth, increasing air circulation with increased spacing, planting crosss dominant wind direction, can all help to varying degrees.
Dave
Dave,
Thank you for your input.
A few things:
(1) Those strategies help, and I certainly try to make the environment as cool as I can with good airflow, but the effect is limited for me. I have gotten feedback from a few Central TX gardening gurus...inevitably they always conclude that I'm just wasting my time trying to find a remedy ("tomatoes just don't like the heat...get your crop in as early as possible"). Good airflow and partial shade may be enough for your environment, but it is a different story for many of us. Most people around here just give up on new fruit being set in late June/July and hope that later in the summer it is mild enough for a fall harvest.
(2) I do have meager success with heat set varieties in the summer and I'd like to absorb those capabilities into better tasting varieties. I recognize that if scientists who breed tomatoes for a living haven't breed better tomatoes for the heat, there's not much hope for me trying to do this myself (although I do admit that most scientists are likely focused on commercial gardening).
(3) Even if I can't overcome tomato genetics, I'd like to understand the limiting factors better. I like data and the scientific method, but publicly-available scientific data on heat stress in tomatoes is hard for me to find...I've had some luck scouring the web for publications from large universities like NC State and UFL who pursue this kind of research. Some of it is only available via subscriptions to research journals.
(4) Cross pollinating manually is very simple. I don't see this as a huge burden for a backyard gardener.
Bob
A tomato is about 94.5% water. That leaves 5.5% solids. Any typical tomato has half of the solids being sugars (2.75%). Of those 2.75% about half are Glucose if it is nice and ripe. Call it 1.5%.
That is very low.
You canâÂÂt just say variety X is a diet or low sugar tomato, because conditions of the harvest are what dictate the sugar content. That said, the easiest place to get a low sugar tomato is to buy one of the lousy cardboard commercial mass produced green gassed tomatoes at the supermarket. These tomatoes will be the lowest sugar you can find. The less taste it has the better, same as most diet soft drinks. The difference is probably a store bought cardboard tomato having 1% simple sugar (call it your 1% lite blue cap tomato) and your good home grown heirloom having 2%, properly matured, call it your red cap tomato. Doesn't really matter much what cow, errr, variety. You just want a tasteless tomato, to which you can perhaps add some fresh basil, artificial sweetener and a little vinegar to design whatever you feel is appropriate and meets the good taste your Mom deserves. Given these differences I doubt it makes any difference but others can answer that better who live with Diabetes.
Good luck and I hope your Mom can have something she enjoys. Eating half as much of a delicious heirloom sounds like a better plan to me than wanting twice as much of a cardboard red thingy.
I have a diabetic long time friend. He eats just about all kinds of fruits and vegetables, like banana, carrots, apples .. along with his medication.
He has told me that what is important is total calorie intake, not just carbs. Carbs in fruits and vegetables are not like sugar (granular) in soft drinks. So per PC's numbers, if you eat 3 oz a good tasty tomato you might get about ONE gram of sugar. Is that too much for you ?
I suppose there are different severity of diabetic . So the best way to to talk to your MD.
Well, to me those red maters have been on the vine for too long already :-)
At the end of season, I would pick any and all the ones with a hint of color break and ripen them on the counter. The rest (Much greener and smaller ones) can be pickled, made relish with, or fried. Another use is composting .
Posted by wertach 7b SC (My Page) on
Thu, Sep 18, 14 at 15:45
Don't tease us seysonn !
Recipe please!
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OK. here is the direction to make Indian Pan Bread:
-- 2 cups flour
-- 2 TBspoon oil
-- 1/4 tsp salt
( mix them first )
-- Add 1 cup of water
MAKE A DOUGH.(knead for a few minutes on the board)
- Divide into about 5 -6 uniform doughs.
- roll into about 6"- 7" diameter rounds( sprinkle flour on the board and the dough as you roll. You can stack them by sprinkling a little flour(not to stick together, then cook one at a time)
-- have your (10") pan preheated >> med-high.
-- cook until nice golden brown ( about 60 to 75 second on each side). PRETTY MUCH LIKE HOW YOU DO PANCAKES.
I spray lightly with Pam. But with Non-stick don't have to.
Enjoy them while warm
THAT IS ALL THERE IS TO IT
TOTAL TIME: Less than 30 minutes
This post was edited by seysonn on Fri, Sep 19, 14 at 14:15
I like your recipes, I hope I will try it :)
Usually my breakfast consist of cup of coffee (sometimes with milk) but without any sugar. Also, for example, today I ate oatmeal with fruits. I like it because it keeps me feeling fuller longer.
Sometimes it also can be salad, eggs or sandwiches.
www.krosagro.com
This post was edited by krosagro on Tue, Sep 30, 14 at 6:06
If you are looking for compact plants I would try Sophies Choice, for a red, and maybe Azoychka for a yellow, although that one got about 5 feet high in a 20 gallon pot for me, it would have been closer to 4' in the ground. The height of the pot causes it to be higher than that. I personally don't feel that there are many that can match KB in flavor, but those are better than the standard "patio" plants I see locally.
Posted by roper2008 7a-8 (lroper99@yahoo.com) on
Fri, Sep 26, 14 at 17:12
KBX seems to be the more popular of the two. .............
I cannot grow
PL tomato plants anymore. They always get grey mold.
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That is very interesting roper.
I have a strong feeling that PLs are more susceptible to some kind of mold diseases.
CASE IN POINT: Bloody Butcher, Matina, JBT, None of the RL varieties had that problem. So , I'll tray stay from PL as much as I can.
So I'll grow KB (RL ?): my final answer :-)
"Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink."
OMG, that makes total sense!!! I looked into it and found these pictures of drought stress:
http://www.longislandhort.cornell.edu/vegpath/photos/drought_stress.htm
Which looks close to what I have, even down to the v-shaped notches. Actually, now that I think about it, the wilt diseases induce drought stress, too. Now I understand why it seemed like a vascular wilt.
The size of the pot should be fine. I had a bunch of tomato plants in 5-gallon buckets, thinking they couldn't possibly need anything larger, and they got completely root-bound. When I planted this one I put it in a pot that is much larger- a little over 12 dry gallons when I calculated the actual volume.
I'm going to flush it, but is it ok if I use tap water as long as I let it sit for 24 hours so the chlorine can off-gas? Thanks so, so much for helping. Hopefully this will work- it's my last surviving tomato plant!!
Chlorine isn't usually a problem in an organic soil, but it will set back to some degree a healthy microbial community and I don't think it will have enough punch to damage the roots under those circumstances.
To make life easier, there is no need to immediately flush and if you must use tap water, (I much prefer rain, because the tap water is of undetermined composition).
Just water your pot the normal amount and then add an extra gallon at the regular water intervals which will overflow and if you can get a handle on it being about a gallon of excess that's best, not more than once a day, on a sunny days when the plant should be taking up a lot of water. Since it is a 15 gallon pot, figure effectively used as 12, figure there are about who knows ... five gallons of water at pot capacity. So do it about 5 times and you should cut the salinity in half. If you use tap, depending on the water hardness it may take about 8 overflows of a gallon, it may be somewhat hard and more dangerous to the plant than the reactive chlorine is the sodium and chloride. What ever you do, do not use water passed through a home water softener (the ones you buy bags of salt for, check you are not using one of these - you shouldn't for a container. Outside hoses usually don't go through the softener). Distilled water at Walmart is 0.88 for gallons here in the aisle that has water to drink. I don't trust the 0.25/gallon RO machines some places have since who knows whats growing in them ;-) Rain is free though, you want some, we just got an inch today...
Just because it looks convincing I'm not assuming ... keep the skeptical attitude, since it still isn't slam dunk. The attitude I took here was if it built up slowly you can take it down gradually. No big deal, just makes it a less messy job and plants don't get shocked from gradual change ... See if you can get some rain or distilled water though if you want to be sure you are getting the full effect of the dilution. Lots of ways to do it, some more predictable than others.
Hope that helps
PC
It does look like a nice one. Less seed/gel, more meat, full flavored.
As for type, I have no idea. But since you didn't remember the name then maybe it was generically packaged as "Beefsteak" etc etc.
Hold onto seed and start them a couple of weeks earlier than your other seeds. If next summer's temps are higher then maybe it will coax more production out of the them.
Steve.
Bees are becoming primary concern for me, next year we have plans to add bee theme to the plant swap and set up table for swapping on bee favorites... I have phenomenal annual which reseeds, impatiens glandulifera, great bee magnet. It is 6 feet tall and needs no care whatsoever...
Am thinking I had just about every known fungal and bacterial problem with my tomatoes but the LB.
I am not fond of Daconil, nor do I like copper. I have long standing habit of eating tomatoes off the vine...
There is no one spray that will work year from year, just as Daniel got lucky this year with copper next year could present different picture, wind direction will change, weather will be more unfavorable, really does not depend how experienced or careful gardener too... life happens...
LB is tough, so sorry you had been hit so many times.
Tania from tatianatomatobase, reports that open tunnel structure, i.e. similar to greenhouse but with 2 short sides off has been really helpful to protect from air borne problems, Tania does not use any sprays. This is the route I am considering adding to my aerated compost sprays. I do feel comfy with my microbes LOL
May I suggest that you consider getting Mountain Merit and including a few in your garden next year. Also, Iron Lady has significant tolerance. They won't totally stop Late Blight, but they will slow it down significantly and will give you more time between fungicide applications. Yes, copper is a fungicide!
This little guy popped up in the yard mid season and fruits are now turning color. I did not plant any cherry or paste types this year but have been overloaded with them.
I am still picking full size fruit and have about 30-40 ripening on kitchen counter. :-)
Today I visited my local community garden. The tom plants are not doing so great. The lower leaves (about 2' and lower) fell and the tomatos are very small. But the cherry tomatos are still going wild, but with even smaller fruits.
I do not know if this is normal, or the plants are not watered enough, or they should rotate the beds more often. I do not see any obvious diseases....
For what it is worth, my Japanese Black Truffles are putting out about 30% round fruits this year... and I have 4 plants of them and they all are doing it. I have grown this variety for about 4 years and they have always been very pear shaped. Go figure...
Thank you. I guess we will have to see. I still think it will turn out to grow beefsteaks. But I will have fun waiting to see. Interesting that it is not following the "norm" for environmentally caused changes, but I can't get past the fact that I have found a few beefsteak shaped fruit on the same plant, so to me, it really has to be environmental. As you may have guessed, I don't buy lottery tickets very often either, lol. A bit too pragmatic. But I do love the look of the fruit. I find the yellow heart shape to be very pretty.
Yeah, talk about differences. Here SM fizzled out after few years of growing, just not making it for me. Some years when it is hot and dry summer we do ok, get us back to typical rain, cool, windy June with some sunshine, oops SM is done.
Overall I am more and more sure that having varieties that do well with setting fruit in cool weather, high adaptability and do well in short seasons is way to go for me.
I like Prue a lot but this year was not good for Prue, so not good that I likely not grow it ever again. Orange strawberry was great find this year though.
I think of paste tomato more in terms èIf I cut it and juice is running down my fingers, it goes into juice making bucket, if there little to no juice, going to sauce-dehydrating pileè
Thank you, Hudson. My name is Deborah. I'm only a container gardener, in southern California. I don't know how to upload pictures here, and besides, the only plants I have currently are dwarf lemon, orange, and pomegranate trees, a huge lemon verbena, a Tuscan blue rosemary and a ficus tree in my kitchen. I always have container tomatoes. I'll be planting radishes and peas after our expected heat wave is over. I thought your pictures of your perfect raised beds with the mountains in the background were absolutely exquisite and I admit I was envious !
Hi Deborah - thanks for the info. I think container gardening is much harder than raised beds or direct in the soil gardening. What little container gardening I have tried - didn't turn out so well.
We all have something to be envious about - the only trees that grow around here are pine trees and quakes ! You are getting ready to plant radishes and peas and I am winterizing - it is already freezing most evert night here.
Thanks for the complements on the photos - posting photos is easy once you know how. There is a thread I noticed about how to post photos - if you have any interest. Well - sorry to say the last of our ripe tomatoes are in the "fridge". This time it is out of necessity as well as a preference. Still some on the counter though - waiting to ripen.
Speaking of trees - we just planted 50 quakes down our driveway - that was a lot of digging!