Dwarfs and the endless procession of blossom drop

[Patrina_Pepperina]

It's quite difficult to tell the length of the stigma in relation to the anther cone (inner yellow part of the flower that comes to a point) in most of those pics because the flowers are past their prime, and the petals (specifically the outer yellow layer that fold backwards when the flowers are bright yellow) have withered and folded over the parts I needed to see

Anyhow, in the 4th pic the lower flower looks OK for setting fruit IF the pollen is not clumped, however, notice that the yellow tips are curled away from the central green tip of the stigma rather than covering it to a tight point? This means that instead of concentrating the pollen to the actual stigma tip, the pollen easily just escapes into the air. This flower still sets fruit some of the time, especially with the electric toothbrush buzzing the flowers. The flowers in pic number 6 look similar.

Most of those flowers in your pics are past setting fruit stage and will probably drop if they haven't alread set, and you won't know for sure until they drop or stay put. The flowers in the last pic look like they "could" be the type that have open ends with curled yellow anther tips, or even too short anthers like in my pics, but it's too hard to tell once the old petals kinda close over the dead blossoms, sorry.

My suggestion for new flowers is to gather some pollen in a shot glass by buzzing the flowers with the electric toothbrush - that will tell you if the pollen is clumped or not - and paint it on the stigmas with a fine brush very very gently so at least you will get some fruit to eat from this lot! Bright yellow flowers are when you should get little clouds of pollen, and if you don't then it would suggest it's too humid in there. I would move Dwarf Mr Snow to an accessible position to do it so you don't miss out on tasting this one.... Might have to negotiate a plan with the owner of the electric toothbrush tho

Dwarf Mr Snow is definitely delicious! Tasted my first real fruit from a volunteer person yesterday. My container plant did too poorly to evaluate regrettably, but most of my container problems are nothing to do with the plants - I hate growing in containers and they rarely do well unless the containers are really BIG!

Patrina

[z_willus_d]

Patrina, I'm sorry about the poor quality of my flower pics. It's the only digital camera I have, on my dirty, dusty phone. I think if I could convey better pictures, you would see that many of my flowers are of the types that you've displayed. I tried to pic a mixture, though there are more of the mutilated style than those that seem normal, such as that in pic4 that you called out. I assume noon or late morning is the best time to exercise the vibration stimulus, but please let me know if other times work just as well or better.

Thank you,
Naysen

[Patrina_Pepperina]

Try various times I reckon - I've noticed that sometimes a flower doesn't give much pollen at one time, but a few hours later it gives quite a lot, or the next morning afterward it delivers a cloud of it.... try over a few days when the flower is bright yellow and the petals curved outward (often layered between the green sepals).

It seems to vary in terms of morning versus evening etc, so just go with the flow of when it suits you best.

Patrina

[dice]

10AM to 2PM is suggested to be best for pollen collection (and thus
probably best for pollenation). Outside, if I wait until afternoon, the
bees have already been at them (tips of anthers are twisted up from
bumblebees clamping onto them to shake them and almost no pollen
comes out when I buzz them).

I suggest going by a dollar store or Target or wherever and getting them
their own electric toothbrush.

I have never tried using pH up on container or garden plants. Anything
hydroponic growers use should be ok for your containers, but I do not
know how long the effect will last per treatment. Maybe a tablespoon or
two of dolomite in the water reservoir might be enough.

One difference between your setup and Ray's: you each have a different
source of water. So many of us grow plants on city water from different
cities without significant differences in results that I do not see how that
would matter, particularly, but that is a difference.

[z_willus_d]

Ok Patrina. I'll just hammer them with my vibrating action when possible, biasing towards the morning before work, as that time tends to work best for me. I think I showed you the best of what flowers remained on my pair of Mr. Snow plants (the 3rd isn't much better), so if most of those blooms looked old and spent, I might have to wait for another flowering. I'm already topping the plants as they've reached the top of the rack where my light source hangs, so they're stretching up past 72". The leaves burn if they touch the LED lights lenses, and probably worse, they're blocking the light at it's source before any dispersion can occur. I'm hoping that new flower bearing shoots will appear and offer a 2nd, no now it's 3rd or 4th chance at setting fruit.

Dice, you're correct that our water sources are different. I had started off with distilled water, but I read some information that seemed to suggest that Roseville water wasn't heavy in minerals. I should contact them and get the full skinny. I have a ton of rain water accumulating outside in open Rugged or are they Tough Totes, but I'm fearful of using water that's been setting out in the great outdoors. Who knows what baddies it might contain from beyond.

Thanks,
Naysen

[cornbreadlouie]

Any luck getting new fruits to set?!!!?!?

If not you should use this opportunity to maybe make some crosses!!!

[z_willus_d]

Louie, I actually ran out of blossoms on 8 of the 12 dwarfs. My four Rosella Purple plants are doing OK and have actually added a couple fruit to each of them in the past 2 weeks. That said, they were always ahead of the others in blossom count and fruit set. I'm going to wait a while long and see if I can get any new blossoms to form on the upper levels of my Mr. Snow, Smt Grn/Gld, Tas Choc., and Beryl Beauty. I might try throwing them outside, now that the weather has been so nice.

I actually have one ripening Rosella on vine, and I'm excited to see what a two-thousand dollar tomato tastes like. (It better make one smashing BLT.). I'll probably limit myself to the RP plants from this set in future years, should I try this again. The others have been complete bombs to the point I'm not even sure I'd try growing them outdoors, which I'd intended on doing to compare notes with the inside produce (of which I have none, nor prospects of any).

Crosses? Well, that takes pollen and stamens and things like that. I don't have any now. I had probably two or three-hundred of them drop though. Can those be brought back in some kind of FrankenTom experiment? I'll let you know.

--naysen

[lakelady]

Naysen, I noticed at my house also that some varieties did pretty well, and others did not, for indoor growing in my conditions at least. Next winter the ones that did best are what I'll be growing too. But it was interesting to watch them all and make notes on which did what. I think some will just be better for indoor purposes than others.

[z_willus_d]

Antoniette, you've got it right. I'll definitely take a cue from this experience when deciding what to grow next year. I'm really waiting to see what Ray and others using his InnTainer system experience as I should be able to draw closely from their wins and losses too. All my plants that didn't produce any fruit have reached past the LED light and up above the cage. So, they're well over five maybe six feet now. Some dwarfs! It's like a wall of green with no yellow flowers or fruit. While it certainly doesn't feel like Winter, it still is. Nonetheless, I think I might toss those tall, unproductive tainers out on the backyard "tarmac," see what comes.
--naysen

[dice]

excessively tall plants == not enough light and/or high nitrogen (usually)

Figure that they are mostly if not all indeterminates, though. When the
weather gets past last frost, you can top them, and they should just keep
on truckin' through the summer from side branches. (Glenn50 once
mentioned someone keeping a Russian Red alive and producing for 3
years in a greenhouse. That is a tree-type dwarf variety that pre-dates
the dwarf project by about half a century.)

[z_willus_d]

Dice, I don't buy it any more. Everyone keeps suggesting I've over-fertilized, and I have not. I'm done over correcting for that worry. I haven't fed the plants anything for months now (or close too), and back before I was giving them at most half (more likely quarter) strength Tiger bloom (and only three doses in total). Other than that, the plants saw one dose of a 1/2 tsp of Calcium Nitrate, and the tomato tone proscribed in the build guide for the Inn Tainer. So, I'm no longer buying it that I've somehow over-fertilized these plants. I just haven't.

Light wise, I spared no expense, but they've been growing for, what, near on five months now, so it's reasonable to expect they might ultimately reach past the light sources 4-5' above soil baseline.

Anyway, I threw three of them outside in the backyard today. They're going to have to survive through this Spring of a Winter, or else wither away and die to make room for something that will. I'm hoping the dryer climate out there and true sunlight will help with the fungus issues I believe have beset the plants.

Thanks as always for your thoughts.
--naysen

[rnewste]

Naysen,

I think Dice was just offering an observation that tomato plants which show a lot of foliage growth - but not much fruit are likely being provided with too much Nitrogen. I have seen that occur in my outdoor garden as well.

My guess is that indoor growing is very sensitive to additives - - much more so than plants in outdoor soil, where the nutrients can disperse into the ground. In a SWC, they are virtually all retained in the Grow Media, so even small amounts will have a significant impact. This is "good news" in that you don't have to add a lot, thus you conserve the expense versus usage for outdoor growing.

Next Season, I would eliminate the Calcium Nitrate all-together, and when flowering, apply one dose of the Tiger Bloom at that time.

Have you done any research on the light spectrum your bulbs are putting out? There was a link to a site which sells lighting fixtures posted here a while back (which I can't locate at the moment) which gave a pretty good tutorial of light spectrum and its effect on plants. As I recall, bulbs at one emission would produce a lot of foliage versus bulbs at a different spectrum.

It might be worthwhile to mix a variety of bulbs in your lighting fixture next Season to see if that makes any difference in the plant's productivity.

Just some thoughts....

Raybo

[z_willus_d]

Ray Dice, if my tone seemed defensive and harsh, I apologize. After a long day of chopping up and carting around wholly unproductive dwarf tomato plants (well, ok a couple of them have had small green tomatoes for over two months), I was a little bit exasperated last night. I know that Dice's input is true in general, and I too have certainly over-fertilized (via too much uncomposted manure) my garden plants. I've seen the blossom drop that can ensue from that condition. But based on my observations, I honestly do not believe that was the source of my problems in the garage this year. It's not one reason I have for believing this but many and myriad.

Like I said, my lights are the best money can buy for their type. The LED is a top-of-the-tops Penetrator model, specifically tailored for hitting fruiting/flowering plants with all the right spectrums. Certainly, the plants never wanted for producing blossoms. I must have had 50-100 blossoms per plant drop off. The second fluorescent lamp, was a Quantum "badboy" with eight blubs, half grow (6500K) and half flowering (2700K). I did a bit of research before choosing with that rig, and there are several grow-outs documented (not all ganja), some on this site.

More ponderous, is the fact that Rosella Purple plants have really taken off since I improved my temperature conditions. I have four of those plants and they've set numerous fruit and I've even harvested a few (will update in the Winter growing thread soon). So, why would it be that while conditions were for the most part equivalent across numerous factors, these four RP plants produced while the other varieties did not. One explanation could be that the other plants have malformed flowers and are not likely to naturally pollinate even under the best of conditions, which my conditions are not. This is what Patrina put forth, and I think her theory matches well with the evidence. It may be that it doesn't explain everything, but I can't deny the vast majority of flowers on the Mr. Snow and Summertime Gold/Green were malformed, and I wasn't aiding with "the toothbrush" during the majority of time when the blossoms were dropping.

Whatever the case, next year I'm going to stick with Rosella Purple and I'll be looking to your and other's results to aid in my selection process for any additions. I'm also going to limit to 1 or 2 main trunks next year given the problems with fungus/mildew. The branches of the plants in close proximity all get jumbled together, and I think make it easier for disease, fungus, mildew, etc. to develop and pass along. Limiting the suckers-to-trunks, will certainly help with this.

Half of my dwarfs got the boot to the backyard yesterday, and I just checked their low temperature for the night. The poor guys got down to 33F, one degree off freezing. I don't think they're going to make it with those temps, aquarium heater or no.

There are a few small lessons to draw from this indoor season. What to grow. Yes, limit additives. (Although several folks believe I may have a phosphorous deficiency on the RP plants now, as they're showing purplish veins and fruiting...) Limit off-shoots to 1 or 2 stems at most. Don't let nighttime temps get below 56-60F. Don't let humidity spike beyond 60-70%. Use a vibrating toothbrush to aid in pollination, especially on varieties that are prone to malformed blossoms where thwacking, fan blowing, and cage rattling just isn't enough. And there are probably a few more, though I haven't finished cataloging.

Thanks Ray/Dice for always chiming in with your thoughts.
-naysen

[kurt]

One more thought regarding no pollinators in a grow room?

[z_willus_d]

Yes? I mean and the thought was...