Hey Fellow Floridians - Year 2

[Zone9b]

The only variety that I’m attempting to grow which would be called large is Black Brandywine. Surprisingly, it is setting tomatoes. 1st pic is a small BB plant in a container setting now 3 tomatoes. 2nd pic is BB in a bed, this plant is quite healthy and over 5’ tall. I believe it has set 4 or 5 tomatoes. BB would appear to be vigorous enough to tolerate significant nematode activity.
The 3rd pic is Brandywine Dark (BCD) and is approx. 3 1/2“ long, which from my experience about as big as they get.
Bush Early Girl has set a large amount of tomatoes with Fourth of July doing very well also.
We are starting to harvest a very few tomatoes, Fourth of July and 1 BCD.
We are harvesting some Castle Dome Broccoli now. We transplanted small plants on 9/16. This first crop of the season has done quite well and has shown no signs of stress from earlier heat.

[Barb_FL]

BEWARE of Moths/Butterflies laying round hard translucent / green eggs on tomato leaves. I've never seen so many; just flying around during the day.
Eggs are very easy to knock off; but ones that I didn't see I'm seeing small holes in leaves and lo and behold, it is a tomato hornworm. Still tiny but with a black horn up top. No damage done and sometimes, I'm just cutting the leaf and throwing the caterpillar for the lizards who gobble them up.

WTG Larry, I have fruit set on some of my big tomatoes but not all.

I haven't even planted out the broccoli yet, but it is huge and healthy in the 606 cells.
It's hot again.


I have the most fruit set on the large tomatoes on the Damsel and Daniels. Some on others and some like Polish have no fruit set. One of my Not Vintage one has some but not the one in the EB.

My cherry tomatoes are going nuts especially the expensive hybrid seeds; but nothing is ripe yet.

So I have 3 variations of SunGold going on:

SunGold
Sun Orange
Golden Cherry

[Zone9b]

For years I had no worm issues at all, but unfortunatly that has changed. Mostly small brown worms that make holes in the fruit. My wife routinely goes through them and picks them off. I'm not good at all at spotting them. Don't see many moths but that doesn't mean they are not there. I'll look for the eggs, I've never done that before.
Thanks, Larry

[Zone9b]

This Brandywine Dark (BCD) tomato(es) is from what appears to be a single blossom but in fact appears to be a fused blossom. BCD seems somewhat predisposed to fused blossoms. But this tomato is interesting to me because it is not a fused tomato but actually two tomatoes. Possibly this is not that unusual but it is the first time in my memory that I have seen it.

[Barb_FL]

Knock on wood; but this could be a great season!

[ginger2778]

Originally Posted by Barb_FL

Knock on wood; but this could be a great season!

Your garden looks amazing! Most of my tomato plants are setting fruit now too.

[Zone9b]

Originally Posted by Barb_FL

Knock on wood; but this could be a great season!

I agree, looks great and I love that picture of your garden. What kind of plastic do you have under your containrs? Stupid me, I never thought of doing that. I have my containers up off the ground but the nematodes manage to get into some of them anyway and the continual need to string trim around them is tiring to say the least.
Getting quite a lot of nice broccoli now and transplanted a 100 plants into a RB on Sunday.
I find it odd how a tomato variety like Bush Early Girl can be the first to set and grow good sized tomatoes quidkly but then take so long for them to ripen. Other varieties that set later and grew to size later continue to produce ripe tomaotes earlier. Go figure!

[Barb_FL]

Thank you both; it is amazing such fruit set, even the big tomatoes since it has been so hot with only a couple of cool nights. A lot of false alarms that the cooler weather is here to stay. Maybe Friday.

Larry - that is weed barrier; water permeable. I'm slowly doing my entire back yard; I'm sick of the weeds!!!. The kind you see on the walkway is the woven kind. I first bought from AMLeonard but the last time I bought Dewitt from Amazon or Ebay. The one from AMLeonard had green stripes and are still green. The Dewitt had yellow stripes which are already faded from me putting down in August.

The woven kind will unravel easily where you cut. A couple of years ago, I used duct tape on the ends but now I just singe it with a lighter. Cheaper and works better. I use this in my raised beds too. I'm going over and singing all my frayed holes from the last 2 years to plant my brocolli.

I also use quite a bit of fabric kind (unwoven) to move around plants. I also put it against the fence so my neighbors weed runners stop coming into my yard.

I've only used Dewitt on this; all from Amazon. Amazon switches prices a lot and right now it is > $10 per 50' roll than I paid in August.

[Zone9b]

One raised bed had a ferocious number of nematodes in it. The first picture shows the results for 3 Brandywine Dark (BD) and 1 Black Brandywine. A Cosmonaut Volkov (Cosmo) did fine. Who would expect an OP tomato from Russia to have that kind of nematode resistance. Another amazing thing is another RB just a few feet away had both BD and Black Brandywine and they were fine, with plants over 6’ tall and lots of tomatoes. I will be interested in looking at the plant roots from this RB. I’m sure there will be some level of nematode activity. Tomande F1 is the real work horse in my RBs. Loads of good tasting tomatoes.
Picture 2 & 3 are of a BD which measures 3 ¾” long, which is the largest this season.
Pictures 4 & 5 are of a Black Brandywine which weighed 7.3 oz. I was interested to see how it compared to BD. It is rounder and darker than BD, but for me about the same size. Given that Brandywine Black is said to be up to 16 oz, I’m guessing that if someone who grew under better conditions or an area friendlier to tomatoes, BD would be quite a bit larger than it grows for me.
We compared the taste of a BD and Black Brandywine and favored BD. I only had one Black Brandywine to taste but it wasn’t particularly special in anyway. Somewhat of a weak tomato taste and lots of seeds. Speaking of seeds, Cosmo has fewer seeds than any other sizable tomato that we grow, really very few.
37 degrees here this morning.
Larry

[Barb_FL]

Larry - In your raised beds, have you ever added Crab Shells? They have chitin. I add them to all my containers now; On the root pouches, I line the bottoms with crab shells and in both the RP and EarthBoxes, I also add them in the mix. When I solarize my EB over the summer (basically until sometime in October when I plant out) I also mix in crab shells.

To give you an idea, for planting out this year, I used 3 4lb bags. For solarizing I used 1 new bag and what was left from one opended bag.

The brand I use is Neptunes Harvest - The shells are not granualized at all.

I stopped using dolomite lime completely. I try to find the 4lb bag on sale for <$11 - last time about that at Amazon plus $.99 shipping. I think next season I will just buy the 50 lb bag from Walmart - about $45 + about $22 shipping. It's just a storage thing.

Down to Earth also sells crab shells which you could probably find locally; I can so I'm sure in Orlando you can. D2E is more of a powder so would probably be available to your plants sooner.

I also bought the oyster shells from D2E which is also powder. I use the Oyster shells in my Worm Inn (composting worms) but have used it on the bottom on my Root Pouches when I was out of the crab shells during part of this season.

Here's what they say about chitin:
"Crab Shell is high in Chitin (Kite-en), which promotes the growth of Chitin eating bacteria in the soil. It will help eliminate Ants, Grubs, Fungus and Root Nematodes, because they are all Chitin based in structure. Put around plants, Crab Shell will keep Slugs and snails off."

[Barb_FL]

OK - I splurged on Great Lakes Water Only mix for an Earthbox that will take the spot of my cucumber plants that got beat up by cold weather and huge wind about 3 weeks ago.

This is really nice potting mix but too expensive to use throughout the garden. It is $25 for 1 CU foot; a cyber monday sale for $15 but still just 1 CU foot where the EB needs a minimum of 1.5 CU ft without the loaf and 2 CU ft with the loaf. I went with a lot less loaf on all my EB this year so that saves $ even with the promix. Promix is now close to $50 with tax here now.

Wow! Great looking plants and tomatoes. I’m in Jax but have never seen that soil mix. What’s the composition? And how do you keep from catching anoles on your yellow sticky pads?

[Barb_FL]

Originally Posted by PlainJane

Wow! Great looking plants and tomatoes. I’m in Jax but have never seen that soil mix. What’s the composition? And how do you keep from catching anoles on your yellow sticky pads?

The SeaBright brand of Yellow sticky traps are not that sticky that lizards are ever stuck. Other brands might be cheaper, but they are deathtraps to lizards. These work great. I have a lot of wind, so use clothespins to attach vs the wire they provide.

If growing outside in Florida, Seabright is the only humane brand to use.

---
I got that soil mix from HTG Supply (hydro store). Here's what I found online but since I still have the bag, I will edit this post tomorrow and add what the other ingredients are.

"Great Lakes Water Only is an all-natural start-to-finish soil. From seed or clone until harvest, our patented blend of worm castings, steer manure, and chicken compost, along with our incredible list of high-quality amendments creates plant-available food at each stage of development."

Seabright it is then. I had given up on sticky traps after catching a lizard on one.

I’ve experimented with every brand of soil my local hydro stores carry but nobody has Great Lakes. I’ll be eager to hear what you think of it. Until a year ago I was able to get bulk OMRI listed organic compost delivered in a cubic yard bag for $155. It was wonderful stuff. Unfortunately SuperSod closed the Jacksonville outlet and they won’t deliver from Georgia. I’ve prowled every garden center and hydroponics store in the area but haven’t found a good replacement so I’m scaling up my vermicomposting efforts.

Originally Posted by Barb_FL

Larry - In your raised beds, have you ever added Crab Shells? They have chitin. I add them to all my containers now; On the root pouches, I line the bottoms with crab shells and in both the RP and EarthBoxes, I also add them in the mix. When I solarize my EB over the summer (basically until sometime in October when I plant out) I also mix in crab shells.

To give you an idea, for planting out this year, I used 3 4lb bags. For solarizing I used 1 new bag and what was left from one opended bag.

The brand I use is Neptunes Harvest - The shells are not granualized at all.

I stopped using dolomite lime completely. I try to find the 4lb bag on sale for <$11 - last time about that at Amazon plus $.99 shipping. I think next season I will just buy the 50 lb bag from Walmart - about $45 + about $22 shipping. It's just a storage thing.

Down to Earth also sells crab shells which you could probably find locally; I can so I'm sure in Orlando you can. D2E is more of a powder so would probably be available to your plants sooner.

I also bought the oyster shells from D2E which is also powder. I use the Oyster shells in my Worm Inn (composting worms) but have used it on the bottom on my Root Pouches when I was out of the crab shells during part of this season.

Here's what they say about chitin:
"Crab Shell is high in Chitin (Kite-en), which promotes the growth of Chitin eating bacteria in the soil. It will help eliminate Ants, Grubs, Fungus and Root Nematodes, because they are all Chitin based in structure. Put around plants, Crab Shell will keep Slugs and snails off."

Barb, thanks for the crab shells tip. Between the dang snails, the fire ants and the nematodes somehow getting into the fabric pots I can use all the help I can get. Still better than dealing with deer, turkeys, rabbits and chipmunks though.