Hey Fellow Floridians - Year 2

[Fiishergurl]

Originally Posted by Zone9b

I think you are onto something here. Recently I’ve had a ton of things to do, partially related to the hurricane, and I fell behind trimming my tomatoes. I normally try to keep the large indeterminates down to 3 stems, but many got away from me. For example 3 Jetsetter large indeterminate plants grew into a massive jungle at the top. The interesting thing is that in the Center of the jungle and on the North side there are all but no tomatoes but on the South side where there is plenty of sun there are quite a few nice sized tomatoes. To me appears a simple message. Keep the mass of vegetation under control and let the sun shine through and one might just get a few more tomatoes.
Larry

I'm glad you mentioned the non sun side as I didnt even think of my bushy pepper plants. I rotated the plants and the north sides were much less bushy and less blooms. I will try to remember to rotate them every week.

Ginny

[Fiishergurl]

Originally Posted by elight

My fall plants are humming along. Due to all of the squirrel problems I had in the spring, I made the decision to move my EarthTainer plants to my screened pool deck. As you can see they are doing much better than my raised bed plants.

The Sun Gold in the first photo (left) is already loaded with fruit. There's a few other fruit on the other plants but as expected they won't be as early.













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Awesome. Great weather so far for sure.

Ginny

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[maxjohnson]

In about 2 weeks I can begin transplanting. I thought a whole chipped tree would be enough for my garden. I need more woodchips.

The last photo, I have one raised bed that look great because it's against the fence in the shade most of the time with lots of mulch. The rest are not very good.

[jpop]

Hello all, back from a long hiatus and got another late start this year with work and young kids. Just planted 4 cherry varieties yesterday on seeds started beginning of October, and starting my seeds for the larger varieties this week. Excited to get started although late and looking at thrilled at everyone's beautiful start to the season.

[Barb_FL]

Originally Posted by jpop

Hello all, back from a long hiatus and got another late start this year with work and young kids. Just planted 4 cherry varieties yesterday on seeds started beginning of October, and starting my seeds for the larger varieties this week. Excited to get started although late and looking at thrilled at everyone's beautiful start to the season.

Welcome back. I remember you growing the beautiful NBD last spring. How did they end up doing? I have 2 NBD plants now but no fruit. These plants were late too but look really good.

What large varieties are you growing?

---
Max - Your seedlings look great.

Elight - Good looking plants. Is that bungee cords on top of your round buckets? I did bungee cords one year but the sun beat them up after a season so went to clips. Marsha posted a link where you can stuff the cover inside the cage.

[ginger2778]

Elight- I noticed that your yellow sticky traps aren't opened up and inverted so the sticky stuff isn't exposed. Please tell why, because I am giving myself a head injury trying to think of a reason, or how that would work.

Max-Looking great !

[ginger2778]

Originally Posted by Zone9b

The one in the picture below is producing and still setting tomatoes, which is pretty good for a plant that gets at the most 3 hours of direct sun per day. Even at that the tomatoes are larger than what I got from Sun Gold and I like the taste better. However, I am a poor judge of flavor on Cherry Tomatoes, given many are a bit sweeter than I like, but I still eat them. I have a couple of others plants but with the sun is so far south they don't get any direct sun at all.
The link is to a post where several are discussing yellow tomatoes and Esterina is one of them. There are some heavy hitter tomato people in the discussion.
http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...t=42877&page=2

Larry- this picture is blowing me away. Wow!

[jpop]

Originally Posted by Barb_FL

Welcome back. I remember you growing the beautiful NBD last spring. How did they end up doing? I have 2 NBD plants now but no fruit. These plants were late too but look really good.

What large varieties are you growing?

---
Max - Your seedlings look great.

Elight - Good looking plants. Is that bungee cords on top of your round buckets? I did bungee cords one year but the sun beat them up after a season so went to clips. Marsha posted a link where you can stuff the cover inside the cage.

Thank you for the welcome Barb, your plants look great. The biggest reasons for my success last year was the information I received from Marsha and the fact my plants went in the containers the 1st week of January after the 6 week rain deluge and unseasonably high temperatures that most whom planted early dealt with. Also, if you recall I accidentally added 3 cups of calcium nitrate to the EB's when it was supposed to be fertilizer. The plants that ended up with the abundance of the CN, had much more vigorous growth compared to those that did not.

The new big dwarf (NBD) were exceptional until the tomato russet mites took hold. They took out 2 of my 3 plants but were the hands down winner with regards to flavor. 2nd was a tie between Tasmanian chocolate and surprisingly golden queen, in fact, golden queen was favored by most that I passed around although they did not have a chance to get any NBD as I could not part w/ them.

My grow for this year is as follows:

Black Cherry
Sungold
Reisentraube
Stupice
Akers West Virginia
Alex Popovich Yugoslavian
Cuostralee
German Johnson-Benson strain
Girls Girl Weird Thing
Iraqi Heart
Neves Azoren Red
New Big Dwarf
Noir de Crimee
Palmira's Northern Italian
Rebel Yell
Sakharnyi Pudovichok
Stump of the world
Wes
Crème de Noir

[Zone9b]

Originally Posted by elight

My fall plants are humming along. Due to all of the squirrel problems I had in the spring, I made the decision to move my EarthTainer plants to my screened pool deck. As you can see they are doing much better than my raised bed plants.
The Sun Gold in the first photo (left) is already loaded with fruit. There's a few other fruit on the other plants but as expected they won't be as early.


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Elight,
Looking at your raised beds a couple of things come to mind. First your beds appear a bit on the shallow side. I’m guessing that you are using 2x4s or 2x6s and I’m not sure that is actually deep enough. The beds I use for tomatoes are made from 2x12s and are 5’ wide and up to 16’ long and admittedly it takes a huge amount of compost to fill one. The other thing is a question of what varieties of tomatoes you have in you RBs. If you are growing Open Pollinating varieties with no known resistance to nematodes, that could be a problem. Here in Central Florida, especially in the fall, the nematodes are often troublesome. Of course there are numerous hybrid varieties with known resistance to nematodes but even here if their roots extend primarily into the native soil (mostly sand) I’m not sure they’re going to perform very well. If the management of huge amounts of compost or other soil media is prohibitive one could try using containers only. I have quite a lot of tomato plants in 10 gallon plastic pots and some in 6 gallons. Normally the plants I grow in RBs do significantly better than the ones in containers, but for whatever reason this season the plants in containers are doing quite well and in some cases the same variety is doing better in a container than a RB. I’m guessing that just maybe the container plants are getting more water this season, given that for a first time, I’m normally not the one watering.
If you do grow in containers it is important that one keeps a barrier between the container and the ground or it is possible the nematodes will make a home in the container and one is back to some of the same issues of growing in RBs or native soil.
I hope this doesn’t come across like I’m telling you what to do, for I’m just an amateur myself and I’m only trying to be helpful.
Larry

[Fiishergurl]

Maybe they are cut in half.

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[elight]

Originally Posted by ginger2778

Elight- I noticed that your yellow sticky traps aren't opened up and inverted so the sticky stuff isn't exposed. Please tell why, because I am giving myself a head injury trying to think of a reason, or how that would work.

Max-Looking great !

They are cut it half - you must be seeing the back side. =)

Disturbing how many bugs are still caught inside the screened pool!

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[elight]

Originally Posted by Zone9b

Elight,
Looking at your raised beds a couple of things come to mind. First your beds appear a bit on the shallow side. I’m guessing that you are using 2x4s or 2x6s and I’m not sure that is actually deep enough. The beds I use for tomatoes are made from 2x12s and are 5’ wide and up to 16’ long and admittedly it takes a huge amount of compost to fill one. The other thing is a question of what varieties of tomatoes you have in you RBs. If you are growing Open Pollinating varieties with no known resistance to nematodes, that could be a problem. Here in Central Florida, especially in the fall, the nematodes are often troublesome. Of course there are numerous hybrid varieties with known resistance to nematodes but even here if their roots extend primarily into the native soil (mostly sand) I’m not sure they’re going to perform very well. If the management of huge amounts of compost or other soil media is prohibitive one could try using containers only. I have quite a lot of tomato plants in 10 gallon plastic pots and some in 6 gallons. Normally the plants I grow in RBs do significantly better than the ones in containers, but for whatever reason this season the plants in containers are doing quite well and in some cases the same variety is doing better in a container than a RB. I’m guessing that just maybe the container plants are getting more water this season, given that for a first time, I’m normally not the one watering.
If you do grow in containers it is important that one keeps a barrier between the container and the ground or it is possible the nematodes will make a home in the container and one is back to some of the same issues of growing in RBs or native soil.
I hope this doesn’t come across like I’m telling you what to do, for I’m just an amateur myself and I’m only trying to be helpful.
Larry

Thanks for the feedback, Larry!

My raised beds were made out of 2x8 lumber... Probably look a little shallower due to the mulch around them. I'm sure in hindsight I could benefit from a few more inches. I always fill them to the top (using Mel's Mix recipe) and over time they get compressed down. I'm getting tired of mixing additional media every season.

As you may be able to see, I have major squirrel issues in the RBs... Both eating the plants/fruit and digging up the soil. Possibly they are causing root damage that is stunting them. Also the plants tend to lag behind as they eat off the young growth after plant-out.

The varieties in the RBs are Fireworks, Bundaberg Rumball, Kimberley, Cosmonaut Volkov and Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye (not pictured, but doing the best of the bunch).

The other thing I've found is that it's hard to keep the RBs fertilized. Especially in the spring season when the rain constantly washes everything out. I tried a cheap fertilizer injector but need a more expensive and effective system. Not really excited about spending any money given the squirrel problem.

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[Zone9b]

Originally Posted by elight

Thanks for the feedback, Larry!

My raised beds were made out of 2x8 lumber... Probably look a little shallower due to the mulch around them. I'm sure in hindsight I could benefit from a few more inches. I always fill them to the top (using Mel's Mix recipe) and over time they get compressed down. I'm getting tired of mixing additional media every season.
As you may be able to see, I have major squirrel issues in the RBs... Both eating the plants/fruit and digging up the soil. Possibly they are causing root damage that is stunting them. Also the plants tend to lag behind as they eat off the young growth after plant-out.
The varieties in the RBs are Fireworks, Bundaberg Rumball, Kimberley, Cosmonaut Volkov and Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye (not pictured, but doing the best of the bunch).
The other thing I've found is that it's hard to keep the RBs fertilized. Especially in the spring season when the rain constantly washes everything out. I tried a cheap fertilizer injector but need a more expensive and effective system. Not really excited about spending any money given the squirrel problem.
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I would think 8” would be adequate. I have a 10” deep bed in which I grow Broccoli and Bush Snap Beans and it works as well as my 12” for this purpose. The only variety on your tomato grow list that I have grown is Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye, which worked fairly well for me in a raised bed last fall. PBTD seemed to a bit more resistant to Early Blight than many of the varieties I have grown. I know squirrels can be a big problem here in Orlando, given the huge amount of big Oak trees. I don’t have big trees very close to me so I only had problems with a couple of squirrels which I trapped and moved to another location.
This season I had my first outbreak of Tomato Horn Worms. I was amazed at how much damage the little monsters can do. We’ve picked off and destroyed a few worms and are hoping that will do the job. If not I will have to go to phase II.
Lots of luck,
Larry

[elight]

Thankfully haven't spotted any tomato hornworms yet.

Had a horrible breakout of leafminers in the spring, which I was eventually unable to control with spinosid (specifically, Captain Jack's Dead Bug Brew). Then the squirrels came. Finally, the whiteflies came but by that point in the season I had given up on the plants since the squirrels were stealing every single fruit.

Battled the whiteflies again a few weeks ago and think I was able to control them with neem oil.

Thankfully this fall there has been so little rain that disease hasn't been an issue (knock on wood). Hoping we maintain these perfect fruiting and ripening temps for a few more weeks.

Where in Orlando are you located? I'm in the Dr. Phillips area. Would love to have an Orlando tomato meetup sometime - I never see good tomatoes outside of my own house, not even at the farmer's markets.

[Zone9b]

Originally Posted by elight

Thankfully haven't spotted any tomato hornworms yet.
Had a horrible breakout of leafminers in the spring, which I was eventually unable to control with spinosid (specifically, Captain Jack's Dead Bug Brew). Then the squirrels came. Finally, the whiteflies came but by that point in the season I had given up on the plants since the squirrels were stealing every single fruit.
Battled the whiteflies again a few weeks ago and think I was able to control them with neem oil.
Thankfully this fall there has been so little rain that disease hasn't been an issue (knock on wood). Hoping we maintain these perfect fruiting and ripening temps for a few more weeks.
Where in Orlando are you located? I'm in the Dr. Phillips area. Would love to have an Orlando tomato meetup sometime - I never see good tomatoes outside of my own house, not even at the farmer's markets.

You make an interesting point. That being, the lack of rain this fall. Maybe that explains why my tomatoes are doing much better than in the last couple of fall seasons. I live in the North edge of Conway not far from Conway Gardens Rd. I would like very much to meet another gardener in the Orlando area.
If you like, PM me and we can exchange email addresses.
Larry