16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
I let them ripen on the plant to a day or two before eating. I use some fertilizers that I like to think the fruit will consume somewhat in the 24-48 hours, after being picked, so I don't eat them right off the vine until I go more organic.
My neighbors notice the ripe tomatoes more than the green ones and they say, "Oh! you have nice tomatoes." It's important PR here. If there is no color, no one notices as much, and then they think the plants are too messy for their chemical lawn culture neighborhood.
But the effect of seeing ripe tomatoes on the plant makes everyone feel happy, and think "yummy", including too many creatures that get to eat too, always, it seems on the early morning of the day I'm going to harvest them, and I always harvest arounf 8:30 AM ;-( But the neighbor thing is important.
I know you likely have this figured out, but I had a similar experience this year when we turned from 20,20,20 to 9-15-30 we send that through drip irrigation. Each plant only sees about a quart of water each week.
I have to purge lines and always end up with a gallon of concentrated solution. In this case I filled the 5 gal bucket with water to dilute it and poured it over the last 4 plants in the row. They recovered within the week. My point? In my case I wasn't giving enough nutrients or water.
I had the same problem. Tried some fung oil and this may have helped a little. We kept getting a lot of raining humid days this year. I trimmed off all effected areas and disposed of them. This helped for a while, but has finally taken over even into my cherry tomatoes and zucchini... Any thoughts to prevent this next year???
I don't have a hipboard/ribbon on yet, that will be in the spring. I'll have to run ropes from baseboard to baseboard until then. Yes, I read in manual to use short (relatively speaking) pieces so if 1 breaks you don't lose it all.
My groundposts have 7/32 holes in them - PO (nursery) had nails stuck through and hoops sitting on top. They took the plastic off over the winter and I guess weren't worried about wind - the hoops must have been bent by rain collecting in loose plastic?
I don't know what kind of drill bit and how much torque you need to drill through galvanized steel hoop (sorry, I don't know how thick)? DH breaks drill bits going through wood, I can't imagine asking him to drill out 44 hoops (going through both sides of both ends of 22 hoops). I was thinking just putting a tek screw into each hole, so 2 going into 1 end/groundpost, from opposite directions?
I won't be leaving this up during the winter either. if we get strong winds (this summer kept having warnings but never saw any), the tunnel has about 1/2 mile to the south to go before it hits my uncle's house. I'm hoping it wouldn't clear the knob of ledge with the apple trees right at that end of it though, or the CRW fence around the main garden on the other side of the knob, or the blackberry hill the other side of that, or the stone wall and trees on the property line, or my uncle's pond ;-)
I don't think wind from the south would lift it with the knob there, but we have a rise to the north and a lot of trees before you get to my house (about 500ft as the crow flies NW). Trees to the east and my pond to the west with more trees behind it.
Yea if you take off the plastic in the winter that should save you from the snow issue.. Suprisingly with just an average sharp metal bit and an 18v hammer drill you could get right through the steel.. Although if you tek screwed each side I'm sure you'll get away with it (perhaps someone with more experience like Bmoser could confirm this).
It sounds like you have some decent wind breaks too, so I wouldn't be too worried.. Nice property huh?! That's great..
@lindalana - started my batch of tea finally, she's foaming up nicely and smelling wonderful! Lol can't wait to see how it finishes.. I will be honest in saying that I was a little impatient .. Although the compost has cooled to outdoor temps there are still some solid pieces of organic material that haven't decomposed so I had to pick through those.. That's what I get for adding material towards the end of the active phase .. Should've left it alone lol .. Now I'm either gonna to have to remove those pieces, or heat the pile back up..
Daniel wrote
Well, seysonn, we'll talk about pruning vs. no pruning in a new thread that I'll start soon.
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That is interesting. I have been in this game for years. I have my opinions and never insisted that I am right. But this thread is not about pruning although it might have crossed over.
Topping end of season is altogether a different thing, as I have tried to explain in my opening post.
Look forward to your thread.
seysonn
Yay, and Christmas came early- Sen Say will be coming my way as well as Orange Minsk Heart and Daniel Burson with Margaret Curtain...
SuncityLinda, my friend just reported that Sarah Black was one of the most productive for her out of about 100 LOL
Indian stripe was real gem of tomato this year for me. Now we will see what Daniel Burson is going to do.
Thanks Carolyn & Marv, I'll take a rain check on those seeds Marv unless Carolyn wants them LOL ⦠till I can figure out how to successfully grow big tomatoes in my climate, since it sounds like the crème de la crème of BZ breeding material. It is more of a sour grapes sort of thing, probably. The breeding pressure is for the single huge tomato which I'm not that keen about for the following reasons. Other traits have been compromised, that in a vigorous, stabilized OP line should be there. I think the BZ crowd is committing a terrible error by successively omitting excluding traits just to get the one. Could be wrong about it but there is no real target from what I see other than size ⦠seems logical that other traits are going to the wayside and that is not how a real head breeder would define a program. They are probably going the wrong way and need to incorporate new traits into it by reaching out to tap other genetic resources not present.
So in creating the monster among giants, the latest BZ doesn't appeal to me as much since it is too resource intensive to carry a plant for just one tomato in North Florida. I will be growing MegaMarv in the spring, not for Guinness, but just because you gave me some info on it and I value the personal connection. Here's the problem, to grow a giant I need to carry it through the summer, which is a lot of work for 75 days. Late March is transplant date and June gets too hot at night and requires vigor in a plant to do this. I'd like to see a southern bred, southern edition of Big Zac OP rather than protected culture more temperate climate ones currently coming out. TimmâÂÂs is quite vigorous, and that is pretty much the best compromise I can get. The newer one you have is probably some excellent breeding stock to backcross to F6 and then make the selections ⦠rather than continue selecting to an evolutionary dead end ⦠there is something great to be said about vigor IMO.
But you know what ⦠There was this guy that âÂÂinventedâ every single determinate tomato ⦠a stoneâÂÂs throw from where I grew up, a generation or two earlier, by just saving the seeds from one weird plant he caught with his eagle eye. The man was a natural and the stuff of legend. I bet when people saw that straggly plant that died at the end of its cycle there were similar comments from the peanut gallery. The proof will be revealed in time and all critics will disappear into the woodwork when a vigorous line comes out that is easy to grow for the masses. JMO
Dominick, since the tomato is not the cherry you were expecting, it very well may not be the color you were expecting either. It's possible it may turn out to be a yellow or "white" tomato instead of a red. I don't know what zone you are in, but if the nights (or days) are starting to really chill down, you may want to pick them and continue to ripen them in the house in warmer conditions. If they continue to stay yellow instead of pink or red, you can determine ripeness by a gentle squeeze which will feel soft and giving, not hard as a rock. I know I have missed peak ripeness for paler yellow and green when ripe tomatoes many times, because they just did not look ripe -- until I noticed they were starting to split.
Daniel, also to question whether to skip on watering during August, this was from market grower in one of the warmer zones, so yeah, it is doable for sure. Good mulch and good soil practices will give your tomatoes long roots. If your tomatoes roots grow only 8-10 inches down then there will be need to think why and what can be changed. Those ones will for sure need frequent watering. I know I tried to dig one tomato in June and it was job and a half for me.
Both pots are too small to grow tomatoes in. This 10-Gallon Smart Pot would be a better choice.
Also, I would be more worried about the limp stem of the tomato in the bigger pot.
We picked this AM (DD and I) and while the sun was warm, she said the big tomatoes were cold. My cukes have been over for a while, I'm hoping the 2nd planting of squash survives the weekend b/c there are some nice ones coming, just slower than they were when it was warm. Still waiting for ripe peppers.
Thanks all. Lycopenequest, I spray in the early morning before the sun hits the plants. It isn't chemical drift from nearby, I lost almost all my tomatoes one year from herbicide damage, so know what that looks like. I am beginning to think Linda is right and this is Grey Mold. This plant sits in the back of the garden so gets much less wind and airflow than the other plants. I am getting a touch of it on the other plants, but I am able for some reason to contain it on those. The dwarf with the very dense foliage started out with white spots and then got the brown areas with visible fuzzy growth. But the end result of the leaves looks identical. So I think it must be grey mold and probably this plant suffered more as it was at the back of my garden. Thanks all,
Wicker can poke holes in tomatoes. Wire is better, or best (if you have the room) is stems down on a wire cake-cooling rack, single layer.
I pick at first blush, and try to put greener ones on the bottom so I pick into buckets and bins, sort them out and try to lay in a single layer to ripen when I get back to the house. The riper ones from the top of the bucket go into the market bins after I cull through what's left over from the last market (I cull every other day, sometimes 2 days in a row).
End of season greenies get laid in newspaper in a single layer in boxes I get from grocery stores or BJs. But it's just too hard to pick into those. And end of season are so hard I don't worry at all about picking into 5 gal buckets - I'm just trying to harvest them before frost!
It's pointless to spray when disease isn't preset.
We still don't know anything about fertilizer.
Was it used?
And if so, when and how much?
If only watered, even if the potting mix already contains fertilizer, it needs supplemental fertilizer.
It's pointless to spray when disease isn't preset.
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It is a common practice to spray tomato plants regularly, from early on , with anti fungal and anti bacterial, as a preventive measure. Often it is too late to try spraying when the plant is full infected. Most tomato plant diseases are fungal/bacterial.
So it is an option:, to prevent or to fight the disease.
I'd lean toward the stray seed theory as well.
If you like, go ahead and save seed and regrow next year.
Also, unless you have bees buzzing around your tomato plants, your chance of cross pollination is 0, no matter how close adjacent plants are.
Good luck!
Lee
Thank you everyone! I think I will save the seeds and give it a whirl next year.
Barb