Unreal tomato

[Oldman]

A few weeks back I took an image of a new tomato plant in that growth container I made. It was posted in last month's newsletter.  Well you will not believe just how big it is now. 4 -5 X in less than a month. I will post side by side images next month. Also I will post an image where I have 3 tomato plants growing out of the bottom of a 5 gal bucket with 3 pepper plants growing out of the top.

Talk about pushing micro-gardening to the max....I have it down to a science.... now if I could just get Susan to let me have those chickens.

Believe it or not in this city we can have up to 10 chickens, some rabbits --not sure how many and a couple of potbelly pigs.

[pensrock]

Raye, did you have any problems with the 'late blight' on your tomatoes last year? Mine looked great and within two days they were all gone. Have not been able to find a real cure for it. I probably will not plant any this year because of it.

[ArnieM]

I'm looking forward to the pics of your "new tomato plant".  Also thanks for your "how-to" article on the growing container in the newsletter.  I currently run two Earth Boxes and am getting short of space.  I have five each of five varieties of Pepper Joe's pepper seeds started and they'll be looking for a home soon.

Last summer was a disaster up here - mostly cloudy, cool and wet.  I'm hoping for some better weather this year.

[Oldman]

Raye, did you have any problems with the 'late blight' on your tomatoes last year? Mine looked great and within two days they were all gone. Have not been able to find a real cure for it. I probably will not plant any this year because of it.

Late blight is a term that gets the hair on the back of my neck standing up quicker than anything else. This problem is caused by weather condisions.

However, understand that all blights are a fungus. There are chemical applications that will help control these types of fungus. 

As an organic gardener I have taken a differant  stance. I'm a strong believer in compost tea. In the late fall when weather here would promote a fungus I soak a bag of mature compost in a 5 gal (US) bucket. After 5 days I delute it to 20 gallons. I then spray at least twice per week all of my night shade family plants. Making sure to get to the underside of the leaves and all other parts of the plant.

Maybe I'm just lucky but I have not seen late blight in years.  Also understand that I push my plants to be as strong as they can organically.

May I suggest you try one of my Growth containers as outlined in the last newsletter as a test.
My best to you if you try one out!

I'm looking forward to the pics of your "new tomato plant".  Also thanks for your "how-to" article on the growing container in the newsletter.  I currently run two Earth Boxes and am getting short of space.  I have five each of five varieties of Pepper Joe's pepper seeds started and they'll be looking for a home soon.
ArnieM
Last summer was a disaster up here - mostly cloudy, cool and wet.  I'm hoping for some better weather this year.

First allow me to say that I find it heartening that you read what I wrote. I've have had my doubts that what I had to share about gardening would be accepted in a newsletter about smokin' foods.

If you will give me the dimensions of your growing area, the average daily sunlight, we can come up with a program that will wow you neighbors.

While Earthboxes are great I really have no use for them. When I can show you how to grow 3 tomato plants, & 3 pepper plants out of a 5 gallon bucket I believe I have taken Micro-gardening to a higher level.

So send to me at q u e s t ions @ r m in or. com (no spaces ) your growing area size amount of sunlight and we can take those numbers and get you on to true Micro-gardening.

BTW I had a friend who grew a pineapple on the 15th or so floor in NYC. I also have a friend who grows tomatoes, lettuce, cukes etc. and he lives in Alaska.

A lot of it is about variety and timing.

[pensrock]

Raye,
   I read your write up in the news letter and am going to make a couple growth containers as soon as I find a couple buckets with lids.
That was very interesting reading and will be very easy to make.
I have a couple questions:

1. Do you put a stake in to tie the plant to as it grows?
2. Is the fertilizer added at planting enough for the whole season or do you add some liquid fertilizer once the plant begins blooming?

Thanks for the advice.

[Oldman]

Raye,
   I read your write up in the news letter and am going to make a couple growth containers as soon as I find a couple buckets with lids.
That was very interesting reading and will be very easy to make.
I have a couple questions:

1. Do you put a stake in to tie the plant to as it grows?
2. Is the fertilizer added at planting enough for the whole season or do you add some liquid fertilizer once the plant begins blooming?

Thanks for the advice.

I think I know where you are going with your questions, but before I advice you tell me what you want to grow? Let's start out with something safe.  Later you can experiment. For example I have 10 differant tomato plants growing out of the bottom of 5 gal containers. The only one I've grown before is the Cherokee Purple. The rest are new to me. Half are open pollinating and half are not. Half are determinate hybirds and half are not.

My advise to new gardeners is it is better to grow a Celebrity hybrid with its high disease resistance and heavy yield than a Cherokee Purple. Now the Celebrity is classified a determinate tomato, but I have a hard time going along with that statement as I've have had them produce up until the heat kills them.

Also do you have access to mature compost?

As for containers check out a local sandwich shop etc. and ask them for their pickel buckets with lids.  Stay with food grade containerss if they have been used.

Let me know what you want to grow.

[pensrock]

I have a couple raised bed gardens and have been using them with great success for years. I normally grow peppers, sweet and hot. Tomatoes, cukes, onions and garlic. Thats about it. Because of the late blight last year I'm afraid to grow tomatoes in the bed again cause the fungi may still be in the dirt. So I figured I would do two or three on the deck using your set up. At least I'll have eating tomatoes. This year I'll just plant onions and peppers in the raised bads maybe a few kohlrabi.

I'll probably put a cherry tomato in one container, most likely Sweet Millions, they are a great tomato. In the other I would like to use the Celebrity hybrid, but we have not been able to find them around here the last couple years. If I do a third container, maybe a yellow tomato? Not sure what will be available.

As far as compost goes, all I can get around here is either mushroom compost or bagged compost. The mushroom compost is from the mushroom farms, after they grow mushrooms a couple times, they change out the compost. I have used it before and its good stuff but I think some of the nutrients are used up from growing the mushrooms. My raised beds were filled with top soil / mushroom compost and peat. Every fall I chop up the leaves and bury in the beds. Its full of worms. :)

[ArnieM]

Raye - I have some of those 'containers' in your article though I wouldn't exactly call 'em food grade.


I currently grow on my deck which is south-facing.  The deer can't get up there.

This is a pic from last year showing (among other things) the Earth Boxes.  I used trellis work and bamboo stakes to hold up the plants.  The plants didn't do all that well but everyone liked the ribs  ;D


I have a plant hanger on the wall and did upside down tomatoes a couple of years ago.  I'd like to find a variety that would do well there - maybe the Celebrity you mentioned?  The Cherokee Purple tomatoes from Penny's look interesting but right now I'd like to just have a nice, edible quality tomato as opposed to the expensive plastic tomatoes in the store - yes, even in the summer.

Pens, yes, I did stake mine but nothing grew over 2-3 feet tall.  I'll defer to Raye as far as fertilizer goes.

[Oldman]

Well I took a good two hours to explain what I saw from the last two postings only again to have this site lose my information after pre-view.

Today I work on the reply from my outside office. That now is 4 systems where I have had problems here. Don't anyone give me any crap that is it an IE problem. I have posted about this problem before... but~~~~

I'm so ticked off that I'm ready to go to another site and offer my knowledge there. In fact I do regret leaving the organic posting boards of three years back so I could help out  here.  

I'm not angry with the members here... but I think it has come time for me to make a major change in my offering here.  I don't need to waste two hours of my life on a posting that goes poof.

What I'm going to do is set up a gardening area on the recipe site. I will still author a section on gardening as long as the newsletter allows me.  However, I will only reply to questions on a set of posting boards I know will not dump my reply(s).
Olds

[FLBentRider]

FWIW - When I compose anything that's apt to be longer than this reply I use notepad or something like it and compose it offline, then paste and preview.

[Ka Honu]

FWIW - When I compose anything that's apt to be longer than this reply I use notepad or something like it and compose it offline, then paste and preview.

Glad I wasn't the first to say that.

[ArnieM]

Honestly, I wasn't sure what to do with this thread.  I like the growing suggestions and really appreciated Raye's newsletter article on the growing containers.  Speaking only for myself, I appreciate the info Raye has to provide for us.

But, it seems like we're going downhill.  The suggestion by FLBR is sound and KH made a safe reply and returned back into his shell.

I hope you just had a bad day.  Please remember that computers suck and things will be better. 

And, get rid of that 16.5 inch shotgun. 

My best regards to you.

[Bradley (Head Office)]

Hello Members

I am aware of the problem with the postings jumping all over

This is a problem between IE8 and this version of SMF

I am running IE8 with the compatibility view turned on and i do not have this problem
on either my home PC or the one at my office.

I have asked our IT dept. to look at this again and see if there is a fix.

If you have IE8 on your computer then add this website to the list to run in compatibility view.

Brian

[Ka Honu]

Firefox.  Yes!!!!

[Oldman]

Brian,

Greetings. I was running IE 7 today. Only my home office (2 systems)  and one satellite office have IE 8. I hope this info helps.

Posted by: Ka Honu 
Insert Quote
Firefox.  Yes!!!!

There is a big differance between a 64 bit and 32 bit system / program. Firefox is 32 bit. The compatibility mode Brian speaks of is IE running in a 32 bit mode. This is almost like the old story of the chichen and the egg...only MS created a dual system. For Example there is the normal "program files" and then there is a folder labled "program files (32 bit)." That is not to say all 32 bit programs will run on Win 7. MY FTP Pro I use came out when 98se was the operating system and it runs fine on Win 7. However, my Nero 7 was a total nightmare. It would not totally load; you could not repair it; you could not uninstall it. It took a cleaner to finally get it off of my system.

I would not yell Firefox Yes!!!! to loudly or one day some hacker might figure out there are enough out there to hack.

ArnieM &  pensrock  I have a full day tomarrow, but I will post to you both when I get in. There are some areas I believe I can be of some help to you this year. Just to throw this out to tease ya I have an employee who told me I could not grow successfully 4 plants in one 5 gal container.  I will show you an image tomarrow of 5 - 5gallon containers with 26 plants going like gang-busters!

Good night
Olds