The EarthTainer "Farm" in Northern California - April 1

[rnewste]

Well, just about everything is in the ground for the upcoming Season. Tomatoes have been in for a month now, and are doing fine:



Cukes have been in for 3 weeks:





Snow Peas on the left; Sugar Snap Peas on the right:



The Big Bertha and Colossal Peppers went in yesterday:



A bit of color in the garden:



I call these my "Mother-in-law" flowers - for obvious reason! Dear Wife did not think highly of this.

Raybo

[mdvpc]

Ray

Looking great! Keep us updated. I am pretty much only growing dwarves this summer-all are in but one. Already have a couple fruit set.

[habitat_gardener]

Wow! I'm not that far away, but it's still too early here to start my cucumbers. Someone at the community garden mentioned that we got a freeze in mid-April last year. All I've planted so far is peas.

[JamesL]

Raybo,

Fantastic as always!

[Deborah]

He just likes to make me drool with envy !

[dfollett]

Impressive!

[Rockporter]

Raybo, those Birds of Paradise flowers are gorgeous and the rest of the garden looks great too. I miss the Birds of Paradise being everywhere like in California. I think I am going to plant some here, they should do well in the tropical climate.

[Virtex]

Hey Raybo looking good!

Most of my earth tainers are a month old as well, but 4 of my plants are wilting. I think they are goners. The second tomato plant in each is doing fine. Do I pull out the dead ones and start over? The mix is new this year.

Have you had this issue before? Any tips on a plan of action to replace them? Do I need to use a wilt resistant in its place?

- Virtex

[GnomeGrown]

Awesome job so far, Raybo.

[efisakov]

Great looking, Ray.
How tall do you predict your tomatoes are going to be? I can see from the pictures that the metal rods are reaching the pergola.

[rnewste]

Virtex,

I think you still have time to pull any plants that look like they won't make it and replace. But I would want to do a "failure analysis" first on why these plants didn't do well. Are you using the 3:2:1 mix ratio (and nothing more) or have you added new ingredients?

efisakov,

When the plants reach 7 feet tall, I top them as I need to install the Sun shade for July / August protection from sunscald.

Raybo

[z_willus_d]

Hi Ray, I'm already enjoying your threads this season. Nice pics!

BTW, I noticed you fit in only 2 peppers per Tainer. I'm trying three slightly offset in the row. Have you done 3 or 4 before? If so, any major drawbacks?

-naysen

[rnewste]

Naysen,

It depends on the size of Peppers I am growing. These are Big Bertha and Colossal plants, so I want to give them a lot of room. In the past I found that size and yield were proportional to the elbow-room each plant had. If I were growing hot Peppers, etc. then tighter spacing would work fine.

BTW, all tomatoes have now produced multiple flower blooms - but can't see any fruitset yet...

Raybo

[Mark0820]

Everything is looking good as usual.

[Virtex]

Thanks raybo, you mentioned the mix, have you seen this issue before? Last year I had one plant do this same thing.

Replanted 3 out of 4 of my wilting plants. The roots were brown and broke very easy. Is this a sign of rotting?

I removed some of the soil and replaced it with some new mix. I am hoping it is just localized to one side of my box and that replacing some soil will solve it.

So glad I planted early, better to have issues now than in July.

Thanks for your input