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