City-Slicker Texas Terrace Container Tomatoes

[Dewayne mater]

I love it! Thanks for all the detail. It probably is a combination of factors and boy, you did baby them bringing them inside! Good for them/you. There is a name for those baby tomatoes that you see about the size of a bb, but then they never grow. Can't remember what it is, but if they don't start growing right away, the never will.

More big chill coming tomorrow night. Just when I've got a bunch of blossoms too. Oh well, it also looks like a while longer of good fruit set weather in front of us after that brief cold snap, which is great. We definitely have had years that by May, the fruit set is slowing down dramatically because of the persistent heat. Maybe we'll be blessed with moderate temps for a while. Good luck.

Dewayne

[Vespertino]

Hi Dewayne- I read on one of the other threads that you survived the cold snap and just had a little bit of wind damage- that's good news! I hope that's the last of the crazy weather so our plants can recover.

I'm wondering if I should snip off those teeny tomatoes that aren't growing or if I should wait a while- the weather being crazy as of late- if it warms up I hope they might start to grow (or am I kidding myself?).

But I have some bad news on my sungolds. From what I can tell so far 3 out of the 5 have contracted CMV or herbicide drift. I only have one that seems unscathed along with the little runt. The effected plants are isolated while I try to figure out the problem. My rose plant had a really BAD aphid infestation that I finally got under control, since CMV is spread by aphids I'm wondering if it's just a coincidence or causative.

I posted these pics on the CMV thread, but figured I should re-post them here.






The leaves are green but the edges are curling down and under, the stems curling like little pig-tails, and the texture of the leaves at the edges feels try and tough. I only have black spots on the leaves of one plant and it's only on a couple of stems.

While I brought all the tomatoes indoors for the cold snap last night, I forgot about my thai and genovese basils. They're damaged but some should pull through.

[Dewayne mater]

Hmm, thought I'd had it all, but have not ever seen CMV around here. How are they looking after some sunny warmer days? I don't think those teeny tomatoes that don't grow use much if any energy, so I typically leave them be and they eventually give it up and fall off. I keep wishfully thinking they'll decide to go ahead and grow after all. Not so far.

All cherry types I've tried are wispier plants and can look bad all over more quickly than other types. The good news is they will often recover quickly as well. I'd remove those leaves in the bottom picture as they don't look good and if they have a mold (one thought I had looking at them) then you want them gone before they can spread. I haven't seen plants that look like those in your other pictures.

Dewayne mater

[Vespertino]

Hi Dewayne,

Sadly the two sungolds that were hit by this mystery problem are still looking the same (mostly), although one of the two is growing some new leaves that look healthy and unaffected. Even though I think the plants are strong enough to survive whatever the problem is, I feel bad because it means I can't give them away as I originally planned. The last thing I'd want to do is give away sick plants. I'm still not 100% sure but I'm leaning toward herbicide damage based on photos I've seen. But my rose plant aphid infection was horrible, and it's possible the tomatoes got CMV from those little buggers. CMV and herbicide damage have a lot of visual similarities so I can't tell for certain.

I will take your advice and remove the effected, curled leaves. At least one of them looks like it might recover. Poor babies...

On the bright side all of my basil- both the thai and the genovese- have recovered from the frost damage! woo hoo!

Later on in the week I'll be re-planting and re-organizing the plants on my patio, including putting the 2 healthy sungolds in their earthtainer home. It's long overdue.

[Vespertino]

I did a little more research on the leaf wilt, I'm going to take the leap of faith and call it "herbicide drift", I saw a few pictures of 2,4-D damage on tomatoes and grape leaves and it looks really close:


example tomato leaf damage from 2,4D:





grape leaf damage:





I noticed the vein striations looked similar to the damage on my sungold tomato leaf:


Because of the vein striations and deformities being so so similar to the 2,4-d herbicide damage, I feel this is most likely the problem over cucumber mosaic wilt even though I had an aphid problem on my rose plant.

[Vespertino]

Lots of updates for my humble little garden.


First, someone's been eating my borage and it wasn't me!!!




I found the guilty party (yellow-striped army cutworm), the little creep!!!
Even though he was kinda cute, I'm protective of what little greenspace I have!




Unfortunately, I found some aphids on my borage after I outsted the cutworm. I sprayed them with some insecticidal oil. After what happened to my rose plant with the last aphid attack, I'm not taking any more chances.



For some reason mushrooms have taken a liking to my brandywine earthtainer.
There were a couple more that I removed before they grew larger than a
quarter- but this one appeared overnight,




Since the only two lavender seeds I managed to germinate died on me, I
cheated and bought some from the nursery. I can't wait for these to bloom, I'm
hoping that they bring some pollinators to my tomatoes.




My little runty sungold is looking much better these days, even though he's still
small he's growing new leaves and roots are starting to come out of the sides
of the peat pot. I think that means he's developing a strong root system, or I
hope so!




After weeks of delays I finally transplanted my two healthy sungolds to the
second earthtainer. Here they are before, after, and I even had a couple of fruit
set on one of them! Sadly the other 2 are recovering from herbicide drift
damage.






Lavender isn't the only plant I tried to grow from seed, but failed: thyme, mint, chervil, greek oregano, tarragon and shiso were all failures. While I had a good germination rate with most of them, they failed to thrive afterwards- probably my mistake. While I'm trying a second round of germination with some of them (thyme, chervil, mint) I wound up buying a lot of mature herbs so I could use some in the kitchen right away, and a few extras! Here's one of my herb flowerboxes, I have 2 more filled with herb plants. I haven't set them up as a SIP yet but plant to do so before the Texas heat gets out of control.




The only herbs I had beginners luck from seed with were: curly parsley, sage, chives, marjoram, summer savory, borage, and thai basil. My second round of chervil is doing better than the first, same goes for my mint. It's too early to tell how my new thyme sprouts will end up.

Other than a little cat-facing on two of the set fruits on my brandywines (probably due to cold weather that is finally behind me), they're doing really well.

[Vespertino]

I had written an update yesterday but lost power just as I was wrapping it up! So here we go again

My first ripe newbie tomato!



It's on the small side, but considering how cold and blustery this Spring was in Texas I'm lucky to have any tomatoes set fruit at all. I've put this little tomato on my counter since my mom is visiting out of town tomorrow- I'm saving it for then. I hope it tastes good despite being grown in adverse conditions. *crosses fingers*.

I finally got off my behind and converted one of my 3 windowboxes into a SIP for my kitchen herbs. One down, two to go! Sadly I must have abused the greek oregano, they didn't take well to the transplant and I've lost a lot of leaves. I think I may have damaged some roots. Luckily there's new stems shooting up from the soil level.




My sungolds are setting fruit, and have recovered from the old herbicide damage, but to my dismay there is NEW herbicide damage.



Periodically the apartment management sends out workers with herbicide tanks strapped to their backs to spray the concrete parking lot below my patio. I'm pretty sure this is the cause of the damage, and sadly there's nothing I can do about it. My sungolds seem very sensitive to the herbicide while my brandywine red PL's don't seem to be effected.

I'm trying to give away my 2 spare sungolds to people in my apartment complex since they've recovered from herbicide damage but so far no takers

I also made SIPs for my lavender and basil! I decided to buy more basil in addition to what I'd germinated from seed- I already have a heavy tomato appetite and I don't think 4 small plants are enough to keep up with the basil demand.



My mints and parsley are doing really well, once a few more baby herbs mature a little more I'll convert the remaining windowboxes into SIPs. Right now they're just keeping certain herbs from taking up too much floor space.



My second batch of mint from seed is a success, unlike my first try where they wilted in the sun and dampened off.



In another thread I reported a problem with birds attacking my plants. It was quite bad, but I've gotten through it. Small birds were picking leaves off my basil, tomato and sage plants. They completely stripped two of the three sage plants I'd grown from seed and I had to buy replacements. I had a major setback on my Brandywine since the birds were picking off flowers and terminal leaves. My basil plants looked as if someone stabbed it with scissors. I literally checked every leaf to make sure it wasn't insects, but when I saw some house finches flying off my patio as if I were interrupting a bank heist I was sure I'd discovered the culprits. Holographic ribbons and an owl decoy (moved daily) has worked to frighten the birds away and put a stop to the damage. My brandywine has recovered and sprouting new flower buds, and one of the two stripped sage plants is sprouting new leaves.



That's it for now!

[rnewste]

That is a good looking, blemish-free tomato!

Raybo

[Vespertino]

Thanks! The tomato has a date with fresh mozzarella and basil tomorrow for lunchtime

[lycomania]

Your garden is awesome! Thanks for the pictures! I have the same problem with runts. I like to give them a chance lol. You're doing great and I'm happy to see your beautiful ripe tomato!

[Vespertino]

Thank you! I've been giving my teeny-weeny garden my all and I appreciate all the kind words of encouragement from everyone

Out of curiosity, how many runts do you tend to get every year considering total number of seeds? I know that runts happen to everyone, so I'm curious about the frequency. I only germinated 6 sungold seeds and one turned out to be a runt, he's doing much better these days and I might even get a few flowers soon. I should post a pic sometime

[DogsandDirt]

I like your little protective bag. What did you make it out of? I wonder if you could make one to cover the whole plant? Beautiful tomato, too.

[Vespertino]

Originally Posted by DogsandDirt

I like your little protective bag. What did you make it out of? I wonder if you could make one to cover the whole plant? Beautiful tomato, too.

Thanks! It's just a little organza "tomato condom" I stitched together to keep birds from attacking the fruits in case they became tempted. It would certainly be possible to make one big enough to cover the whole plant, be specially if you have a sewing machine to help the project along. Fabric glue didn't work with the organza material when I tried to make the tomato bags so I had to stitch them by hand. Organza is $2 a yard at Joanne's fabric, not too bad! I like how it's translucent enough to see through but keep the bugs and birds out.

[Vespertino]

I just started a new job which has kept me too busy to post but I wanted to pop-in for an update

The radiant heat island effect has devastated my patio/balcony/terrace (whatever you'd like to call it), the temps hover around 110 daily. This has killed most of my herbs (mint, parsley, tarragon, chives, chervil) and crippled my brandywine (causing root stress, BER and severely stunted fruit). Sunshades don't help because the heat radiates from all directions.

On the bright side my Sungolds are happy and I'm having trouble keeping them contained. they're giving me delicious orange spheres of delight, albeit a couple handfuls of tomatoes per week as I only have a few plants. My little runt is still hanging in there, bit I need to transplant him to a bigger pot.

All but one of my SCP and BBB fall seedlings were killed by the heat, and I lost the labels so I'm not sure what variety the sole survivor is. It seems stunted but it's hanging in there, I hope it makes it through.

No pics yet (issues with my iphone) but when I have time I'll fix that.

[Vespertino]

Wow what a year!

It didn't end well for me but I learned lots.

Bird attacks were the first challenge, at first I thought birds were cute. But once I realize they were plucking off my tomato flowers and snipping off terminal leaves the honeymoon was over.

Lesson learned: I found that for a small patio, a combination of holographic ribbons (I used the cheap silvery holograph gift-wrap ribbons, nothing expensive or specialty) and an owl decoy moved every day kept the birds away.

My terrace garden started out strong, but ended in disaster. The brandywines had a good start due to pampering, but quickly petered out when the cold spring turned into scorching summer within 2 weeks.

Lesson learned: Brandywines don't like 21 gallon containers in 100+ heat. Even with sun-shades the soil temp was in the high 90's. No matter what I did I had stunted growth and BER. The sun beating down on the terrace concrete was so bad that there was no solution to the root temperature problem.

While my sungolds thrived in the heat, my parking-lot facing patio was constandly under chemical assault from herbicide drift. Every month the apartment management company would hire a landscaping company to spray the parking lots to keep them free of weeds. Despite repeat damage from herbicide drift, 100+ heat from the radiant heat island effect, they produced lots of wonderfully sweet tomatoes.

Lesson learned: sungolds ROCK! They are tough ★★★★★★★s and it will be an honor to grow them again next year. Although if you have a choice, don't pick an apartment with a parking-lot-facing terrace otherwise you are doomed to get herbicide drift damage every month. Some plants just can't survive that kind of damage.

With 100 degree heat turned into 109 degree heat thanks to the radiant heat island effect, nothing thrived on my patio except for sungolds, rosemary, sage, thai basil, genovese basil and french lavender.

Lesson learned: Basils do EXTREMELY well in the high heat if they have a SIP. I made tons of pesto, caprese salad, and thai curries thanks to the bountiful supply of basil which I credit to the SIPs.

And finally... Dun dun duuuunnn.

I got a love letter from the apartment management, I had to clear ALL plants off my terrace because they were going to be painting the outside of all buildings (including the patios and terraces) in 1 week. Luckily I had wheels on my earthainers, so inside they went. Along with all my other herbs.

A week turned into a couple of months. I was about to say "the heck with it!!" and put my plants outside, which were badly withered at this point due to a lack of sun when I got a SECOND love letter from the management saying they were going to paint in a week (for real this time). Three months later, my poor sungolds having dropped dead and the basil barely clinging to life, they finally finished painting.

Lesson learned: Apartments SUCK.

My basils looked horrible, the french lavender starting to brown, and my other herbs looking depressed I finally put them back on the patio. They recovered after a couple of weeks, although the basil needed some extensive pruning for dead branches.

As the weather cooled my basils eventually died but this was expected. Then the ice storm hit encasing everything with ice. My rosemary- which had thived- is now burnt-black on every needle, everything else is dead... Except for one, poor, little sage plant...

Lesson learned: Cover plants before an ice storm even with a covered terrace... I was an idiot and thought my covered terrace would protect them, but the angle of the rain was just so that it coated everything with ice.

So that's my first year of learning. Unfortunately there are perils of apartment gardening that are beyond one's control (herbicide drift, radiant heat island issues, and painters) that would make me think twice before starting a terrace garden next year But I no longer have to worry about that because I moved into a house two days ago!!!!!

Next spring: no more apartment gardening, I'll have a real yard!!! Woo hoo!