New Garden Spot, Maybe time to try Organic only.....

[harleysilo]

So this is only my second year growing tomatoes. I've changed my tomato garden spot to the other side of the yard where I will have about 17 plants in a 55' row. I've dug a whole for each plant, about 2' in diameter and about 1' deep. I mixed in a few bags of mulch (just ground up bark looks like) with the original soil (basically good old georgia clay) and filled the holes back up.
This is the method of soil ammendment I used last year in a different spot of the yard, i was satisfied with my results.
Last year I used Miracle Grow liquid thingy to water my toms occasionally. The rest of my watering was done via 5 gallon jugs with a pee hole drilled in the bottom. Fill it up it drains out in a couple hours. 5 gal. a plant every couple days.
This year I hope to do even better, and my attitude is that I would rather eat something organic especially if it's just as much of a pain as growing with a bunch of chemicals.
Plus this year my daughter will no doubt be all over the yard so using stuff to kill things will be out of the question....
I don't have specific questions as I haven't read up enough, however feel free to offer any suggestions you may have.....Thanks!
oh and no I haven't sent my soil off to have it analyzed....
new garden spot

[harleysilo]

It would be nice if someone who really knows there stuff could just tell me add this stuff to your dirt in these quantities and you will have so many tomatoes you will need to buy that freezer for the garage.....

oh and anyone have cliffs on this stuff you spray on the plants for taste improvement and frost protecting and I'm assuming some nutritional benefit as well...

here's to hoping anyways!

[harleysilo]

Maybe I should go fishing......and just put a fish in each hole?

[Worth1]

Harley,

I would dig the holes and get rid of the clay, you can use it to make a water saucer around the plants about 3feet in diameter.

Then fill in the hole including the water saucer with hardwood equal parts partially decomposed mulch, sandy loam and compost.
You can then fertilize with an organic fertilizer of your choice.

We have a product called ladybug here in Texas that seems to work good.

As for productivity that is going to be up to you to decide.

Many cultivators mentioned here are just not that productive, I don't care where you live.

Sure you will here all of the praises for many kinds but the plants will only put out a small amount of fruit as they don't even put out that many blossoms to begin with.

Don't pay any mind to the blurbs you read in the seed advertisements like, "simply loaded with 2 pound tomatoes".

Be careful what you read on this site as the growing conditions and opinions are many, including mine.

Case in point,

I asked about Ceylon a while back and the answers i got were not good.

I was told that it was a scraggly non blooming plant with few tomatoes produced.

Mine are just loaded with blooms and young tomatoes.
It was grown in my climate and my way of growing so there you see what I mean.

I can tell you that Break O' Day and Zogola have proven to be outstanding in bloom production along with many others.

So far brandywine and stump of the world are losers in my book.(we shall see)

I would suggest you plant a few types and see for yourself what does good for you.

Remember for productivity in a hot climate you cant go wrong with a determinate for lots of good tomatoes.

Then of course there are the small fruited cherry type tomatoes that just keep on keeping on.

Riesintraube is one here that never gets enough attention as far as I am concerned.
It puts out 30 or 40 blossoms on a truss and they have big old time tomato taste.

Ashleigh is doing very good here also, I was told to try it and I'm glad I did it is a much better producer here in the south than brandywine.
We shall see what the tomatoes are like.

Cherokee purple and or Carbon are doing good for me.
As far as I am concerned and a few others there is no difference between the two.
I feel they may be the same or close to it.

With a limited space you need to think about what you are growing and go with what does good in your climate.

Don't get hooked into a plant that has more hype than fruit.

I hope this helped.

Worth

[Granny]

Originally Posted by harleysilo

Maybe I should go fishing......and just put a fish in each hole?

That works admirably for corn and was the way my Grandpa taught me to plant it. I have good New England dirt and I plow up the entire darned hilltop. (Grass spreads by runners, so the farther away you keep it from your tomatoes the happier you will be.) Compost gets tilled into all of the soil. I'll add a nice big shovel full of composted manure to each tomato hole. If I feel like it I might do a soil test up there this year in a couple of spots for a few things that are pickier than most about their pH and I might fling a little lime at it, but that's it.

[harleysilo]

As far as tomato choices I feel very lucky to have received seeds for about 20 varieties. I can't recall exactly the ones I choose to plant from them.... Delicious BTX BTD Amish Paste Cherokee Purple Black Russian Black Cherry
Vinson Watt Large
Paul Robinson
Red Zebra
Amish Paste
Grubs Mystery Green
These I know I have growing.....so It will be one of each at least.... As far as the planting, I could easily do as you suggest and build a little berm using the soil that is there (now 1/2 clay 1/2 partially composted hardwood), however, I don't have anymore compost, all I had got spread in my fenced in garden, and I don't have ready access to any other good dirt (sandy Loam), unless it comes in a bag from HD or Lowe's.....I really would hesitate to add play sand to the mix too....

[Granny]

Originally Posted by harleysilo

As far as tomato choices I feel very lucky to have received seeds for about 20 varieties. I can't recall exactly the ones I choose to plant from them.... Delicious BTX BTD Amish Paste Cherokee Purple Black Russian Black Cherry
Vinson Watt Large
Paul Robinson
Red Zebra
Amish Paste
Grubs Mystery Green
These I know I have growing.....so It will be one of each at least.... As far as the planting, I could easily do as you suggest and build a little berm using the soil that is there (now 1/2 clay 1/2 partially composted hardwood), however, I don't have anymore compost, all I had got spread in my fenced in garden, and I don't have ready access to any other good dirt (sandy Loam), unless it comes in a bag from HD or Lowe's.....I really would hesitate to add play sand to the mix too....

I haven't grown most of those, but I did grow Black Russian last year. It was very prolific in my garden, but not a tomato that I will ever bother with again. It had mushy sort of grainy texture that made it pretty lousy as a slicing or eating raw tomato. (Supermarket tomatoes are better!) The one saving grace is that it is dynamite in sauce - really adds a nice color and depth of flavor. And unfortunately, the bugs loved this one - had a real field day. I think I harvested 1 tomato for every one hundred the miserable bugs got to. (These were the only plants they liked too!)

[feldon30]

I would not bury fish or every cat in the neighborhood will come visit your garden and dig up the plants to get the fish.

Just use lots of compost. The 99 cent bags of compost at Wal-Mart are barely 10% compost. It's 90% sand and garbage. Black Kow is $4.62 a bag and is the good stuff. You can probably use one bag for 3-4 tomato plants.

You can water the plants with fish and seaweed emulsion instead of Miracle Gro liquid fert. There's also Hasta-Gro 6-12-6 liquid fert which I think is organic, check! Plus you can make compost tea if you have an aquarium store nearby to buy 2-3 airstones and a pump.

As for initial planting, I use Earl's method. About 2/3 cup of TomatoTone, 1/2 cup of Epsom Salt, and 1/3 cup of Bone Meal, plus a little bit of dolomitic lime mixed into the soil all around where the roots will be (about 1 cu ft of soil).

Again this is only my 3rd year and I still have a lot to learn about soil building. Each of my beds has a totally different mix of stuff since I seem to add 1 bed per year and use different ingredients each time. It's interesting just how depleted my cucumbers, beans, and strawberries bed got already after just 1 1/2 years. Those strawberry plants really took all they could get!

[jungseed]

Don't know if you want to drop a fish in the hole. I did that many years ago when I planted some tomato plants. Got called away for work for about 10 days. Thought I'd cage the plants when I got back. Well, when I got home, I had tomato plants sprawling 8 feet into my yard!! They produced better then I've ever seen also. I guess if you're smart enough to get them staked or caged right away, I can tell you it really works.

[harleysilo]

Defender of tomatoes in my yard.....

[Worth1]

Its too bad you don't have a nursery near by to get good compost.

I haul 3 yards at a time in my truck for $39 a yard.

I can get sandy loam compost mix for $38 a yard.

Its nice to have a big old truck.

A cheap way to make your own Wall Mart compost is to mix sand and pine bark and then go out in your yard and get a Do Do pile left behind from your dog and you have Wall Mart compost.

Their manure is the same thing.
It says right on the bag NO LESS THAN 10% manure and I can guarantee you it is no more than 10%.

Years ago they sold pretty good stuff but not anymore.

I used to get bags of pure sheep manure from them.

[bryanccfshr]

All of these are good suggestions. How to grow organic?
Organic gardening is a cultural practice. The key is building the soil by adding organic amendments and rock powders for minerals and texture and to minimize damage to soil organisms, encourage beneficial insects by growing attractive plants nearby and not spraying toxic pesticides )even organic ones) unless you recognize a problem) .

A good spray to use regularly on your tomatoes to encourage good vigor, add micronutrients and through health and vigor help them resist insect damage is te following that I use.. a modification of garret juice.
to 1 gallon of water add 1 Tbsps maxicrop liquid seaweed, 4 tbsp of horticultural molasses, 1 tbsp of apple cider vineger. Spray this once a week to the top and bottom of the leaves when the temps are below 80 and the sun is obscured.
This year I am expirimenting with Neem oil in that spray for additional disease protection.
For additional nutrition add a little fish emulsion now and then.

For good soil buuilding you need to stick to "do no harm" by not adding harsh high salt fertilizers and growing a crop and mulching you are building up the health of the soil, by adding addtional organic matter you are building fertility.

Keep sod grass a good distance from you plantigs to prevent insects such as leafhoppers and thrips from having an easy time reaching the tom plants and reporoducing.

Read alot on organic practices. I recomend you google, Malcolm Beck, Howard Garret (aka the dirt doctor) and a unique library out of australia that has free E-books such as "the plowmans folly" and a nice book about earthworms by Darwin. I can't recall the title at this website (it is on my thumb drive that I lost) but a quick google search for these topics should lead you there. Worth the search becasue there are maybe a hundred or more free E books available.

[amideutch]

Harleysilo, Before adding any amendments to your new growing area test your soil and see what the soil has in it already and check the PH. If the new growing area has been fallow with nothing grown on it you probably won't need to add anything. Two things I have found invaluable for the organic gardener is Micorrhiza for plant growth and Actinovate for disease resistance and prevention. Run a search here at TVille on either one and you will get some hits with useful information and do a google as well. Any questions just ask. Ami
Check my sticky at the top of the forum and check out the websites Fungi.com and
Tandjenterprises.com for Micorrhiza and Naturalindutries.com for Actinovate

[harleysilo]

Originally Posted by Worth1

Harley,

I would dig the holes and get rid of the clay, you can use it to make a water saucer around the plants about 3feet in diameter.

Then fill in the hole including the water saucer with hardwood equal parts partially decomposed mulch, sandy loam and compost.
You can then fertilize with an organic fertilizer of your choice.

Worth

Okay so I took your advice. I do have a trailer (another one not the one in the picture below...) that I can haul a load of mulch in, and there is a place nearby, I've never been there so i don't know if they have partially decomposed hardwood mulch. I know what I am doing this weekend......

[Worth1]

I hope it works out for you and you don't hate me at the end of the summer.

My garden spots are only about 6 inches of compost and sandy loam with red clay underneath .

In my experience it is more important to have plenty of room for the roots at the 6 inch and up level than down deep.

So the wider you can make that top layer the better off you will be.

You can even cut back on the wood mulch and add more compost and loam if you want.

I have also noticed that every now and then I have a plant the wilts when all of the other plants around it seem to do ok.

I would water the plant and it comes out of it, the only thing I can think of is some kind of critter has eaten some of the roots, ' like a grub worm.

Worth