Myth-Busters Tomatoville-style - The Results Are In! (pics)

[rnewste]

Well, "hasshoes" has a good memory, prompting me to finally post results of my comparative trials this year. As sometimes happens, too many trips to Germany, Singapore, China and Taiwan kind of interfered with the more quantitative tests that I had intended to log with detailed record keeping. Also, while on some trips, Dear Wife called over her buddies from Church and when I returned home - - plants were stripped bare like a swarm of locusts had descended upon my EarthTainers!

Anyway, I was able to draw conclusions in some of the experiments that I will further confirm next Season. I'll start with the Myco-Grow inoculation experiment. I had (dumbly) inoculated nearly all of the 52 plants growing in the 26 EarthTainers in my zeal to get really big tomatoes this year. What I should have done is a better control experiment inoculating only half of the 'Tainers. So, I must state that the results of the Myco-Grow experiment were inconclusive. True, I had an (over)abundance of tomatoes this year:



But if you recall seeing the photo on the Fungi Perfecti website of the guy holding his 2 onions - - with one treated Myco-Grow much larger than the other - - then I can somewhat conclude the same thing happened to my tomatoes. Example: my Indian Stripe tomatoes were "malformed" as Carolyn put it in a post, with lots of (unexpected) lobes, etc.



Several of the Indian Stripe were very oddly shaped, and they should be more uniform:



Now was this caused by the inoculation of the Myco-Grow, or too much water, or ....... Hard to say, but the photo of the guy's onions just flashes back in my mind that while it may be beneficial to onions - - my results on tomatoes were inconclusive. For my Fall crop, I have cleaned out the old potting mix and replaced it with new Miracle Grow, not inoculating this crop, so Indian Stripe fruit comparisons will be interesting;



On the comparison of Sta-Green (Lowes brand) vs. Miracle Grow Potting Mix, I found plant vigor to be better with the Miracle Grow (WITHOUT Moisture Control version). Here are two Brandywine X Neves Azorean Red plants with the one on the right in Miracle Grow, and the one on the left in Sta-Green:



Regarding the fertilizer strip, I found that doing a "picture frame" trench along the outer perimeter of the 'Tainer produced more fruit and made for a longer lived plant.



The Carmello that I planted out March 22 is still producing tomatoes as of today, yet the one with the single mounded strip died off many weeks ago. Again, only one 'Tainer done this way, so not a statistical sample quantity - - but I will be using the picture frame pattern in all plants next year.

What was "Confirmed" as the Myth-Busters say, was the results I saw on multiple "A/B" partitioned 'Tainers using the two fertilizers. Fruit productivity on the Tomato-tone side significantly outproduced that of the "other" fertilizer brand. The Big Beef plant on the right had the Tomato-tone fertilizer strip:



There was a similar ratio on Stump of the World and Earl's Faux 'Tainers as well. So I am hooked on the Tomato-tone brand from now on.

Results of the Lime vs. Epsom Salts were inconclusive, as the plants seemed to respond equally:



I am now running a trial of Actinovate, Myco-Grow, and nothing in 3 'Tainers of Oregon Snow Peas to do a more precise comparison, so we'll see over the next 3 months what this yields.



Hopefully, next Summer won't be as crazy and I will be able to do quantity and weight counts, etc. ....if I can keep those "pests" out of the garden. Pray for me!!

Ray

[Vince]

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[Vince]

Tomatoes gone wild! This is what you SHOULD expect from airy potting mix and your results look fabulous. And it seems your earthtainers are the right balance between hydroponics and purely organic gardening(theses topics get fuzy but I mean no rock wool).No hard feelings, I really love your earthtainers, but for you to make them practical to the wide world, the instructiyons will have to be ADAPTABLE TO MULTIFRACTION OF A DOLLAR BUDJETS. If it is cheep they will come....

[rnewste]

Vince,

It was never the intention of the EarthTainer Project for it to be a "cheap EarthBox knock-off". The goal was to design a self-watering system that could house BIG plants. The EarthTainer holds 3.3 cubic feet of potting mix while the EarthBox only holds approx 1.5 cubic feet.

The fact is that the EarthTainer costs more to build than the cost of a ready-to-go EarthBox, just in materials alone. However, the EarthTainer has an integrated tomato cage system that is just not practical with the EarthBox. So folks can decide what is appropriate for their needs, then make their decision.

Don't get me wrong, the EarthBox is a great product - I own 2 of them - - but if you really want to consistently grow large heirloom tomato plants or corn for example, the size of the 3.3 cu. ft. EarthTainer seems more appropriate to me.

But having said that, one could take an old 55 gallon drum cut off at 18", fashion an Aeration Bench from the drum's lid. use a coffee can to make the wicking basket, a piece of bamboo for the filler tube - and BAM, you've got an EarthTainer "Peace Corps style".

In fact, this morning I sent 10 wicking baskets by FedEx to a Church group of 8 people who are flying to Haiti on Friday to make 10 improvised EarthTainers (they are checking in the 22 gallon containers as luggage to get them on their flights). Apparently, the school they support had its crops (and soil) wiped out by the 2 recent hurricanes, and they are desperate for food production to prevent starvation.

The group will be sending me photos of their local construction of the 'Tainers when they return and I will post a few here on Tomatoville. Kind of makes the EarthTainer design experience all worth while now, whether I ever grow another tomato again for myself, or not.

Ray

[bigbubbacain]

Your Earth Tainers look terriffic! Tell me, have you had to do anything special for such large plants to be growing so close to each other? Are you pruning suckers or just letting them grow? I'd love to think I could do this many so close together in the ground.

[rnewste]

Hey bigbubba,

With tillable space being at such a premium in Silicon Valley, I need to maximize the use of "vertical space" (until our Governator starts Taxing it). Yes, the plants do crowd together, but I do the Noah's Ark thing of planting two of the same variety per container.

I do prune pretty extensively to keep the things from spreading over into the next 'Tainer, and this 2009 Season, I will separate the 'Tainers even more than is shown in the photos above.

BTW, I am following your misting hydro experiment and it looks like you are getting impressive plant growth. Keep us updated with photos along the way.

Ray

[bigbubbacain]

Thanks Ray!

I'll definitely be making my future updates more frequent and more detailed.

I just had to ask you re: pruning. I'm curious because your photos show that you've got a ton of fruit on each plant!

[hasshoes]

WOW! What an awesome endeavor! Kudos to you for your thoughtful earthbox project.

Thank your for sharing all the knowledge, it will definitely go to good use!

Those are some seriously loaded plants. How long is your growing season? I'm totally jealous!!!

I wish I could say I had a long memory, but I just popped back into TV after being away from gardening for a year in a big city with a waitlist for garden plots. But I'm out in the burbs now and already planning for next year!

Heather

[rnewste]

heather,

It was really people like Earl and Ami among others, whom I learned AWS container techniques from, then I just combined them with a few additions to develop the EarthTainer.

Our Season here in the San Jose area is pretty good (I grew up in the Buffalo area).
I planted out on March 22 this year, began picking Stupice on May 27, and had my first crop peak in July. Started my second crop from cuttings in August, and have been picking Purple Haze, Brandywine X NAR, Celebrity, and others since middle September. All of these below came from cuttings from my earlier crop:



We usually don't get a hard freeze until mid January, so I typically have garden grown tomatoes with our turkey dinner on Christmas Day. Last year I started my seeds indoors on December 26, and put them out in cold frames on February 14. We had a very mild Winter so hopefully, I can repeat the dates again for the 2009 Season.

Ray

[Woodchuck]

Very cool Ray.
I'm anxious to try the Tomato-Tone next year.
I've used Espoma products in the past with good results.
Thanks for taking the time to take all the pics and post.

~Marty

[newatthiskat]

I am hoping my husband will help me build 4 Earth Tainers this winter to try them out. The soil here is not good at all. Very sandy. Have tried to amend it the past couple of years but getting impatient. Will continue to work on soil but then I can have good results with at least 8 plants . HMM now which ones should I put in them next year?
Kat

[Earl]

Great job, Ray! Thanks for sharing some of the glory. :-) But you're the MAN. Are you doing any 30 gallon containers yet?

[rnewste]

Hey Earl,

Thanks, but it was others on Tomatoville (like yourself) who helped me address several design obstacles. Your approach of keeping the side walls of the container and Aeration Bench snug led me to the toggle bolt solution, which eliminated the need for the messy styrofoam packing peanuts around the perimeter.

Well, the group departed for Port Au Prince, Haiti today, packing medicine, food, fertilizer (American Airlines reportedly said: "they didn't want to know what was in it"), and the wicking baskets that I fixed them up with, all loaded in the containers. They had flown the 10 Potting Mix bags in with a private charter freight service out of Miami earlier in the week.

So I guess this is the "acid test", to see if the EarthTainer design will work in a challenging hot and very humid climate. It will be interesting to see what local vegetables they choose to grow. Will post photos when they return to Chicago.

Ray

p.s. I am only using Rubbermaid 31 gallon 'Tainers, as they have a good surface area to work with, vs. the deeper 18 gallon ones.

[dice]

I will note that I got 3 good-sized containers (18 gallons and up),
without lids, and a big window screen for screening used
container mix for $5 at St. Vincent de Paul. (There were lots
more sitting around there, full of this and that, but I was on a
tight schedule.)

[jwr6404]

Dice OT
Are you referring to the St Vincent de Paul on 56th St in Tacoma. I'm close to there and will check it out.
Jim