Wall-O-Waters - looking for advice/comments if you've used them

[NewWestGardener]

Jeannine, I actually like the fact the WOWs help to keep some rain water out. We had rainy weather almost every day, cold and wet for sure. It's hard to collect solar energy when there's little sunshine, but my plants did grow considerally under the water tepees so I think they work well.

My goal is not to try to get an early tomato, but to make sure my tomatoes will have a couple of weeks of head start, so they may ripen ahead of the fall rain, which often leads to late blight in my area.
I hope this helps.
Limei

[Indyartist]

Here are some pictures of my plants a week or so ago, we had one cold night forecast so I put pots on top of the plants to stop them from being frosted. My plants are 3 foot tall, full of flowers and I think there is zero chance for any of my other 8 week old plants to catch up with these fellows and their 14 weeks of growth, my 14 week old "Green Elf" already has green tomatoes on it. Eventually all my plants will reach maturity and you could say they "caught up" with one another but my plants with a 6 week head start will have ripe fruit at least 4 weeks earlier.

[TomatoDon]

If the growing season is only 90 days a year then I'd amp it up seriously and put in a green house and grow in that. Will add much more growing time than a WOW.

And don't mis-understand me; I'm not against the WOW. If they work well for you then that is great, and by all means use them. All I have said is that in my personal experience nothing I've tried has substantially increased my early harvest, other than a few token fruits.

[King Carrot]

I only grow Toms in tunnels and under cover, mainly as we're quite cool here, even in summer and we often get wild hoolies blowing in from the Atlantic during midsummer that rattle and damage less hardy plants, not forgetting the million gallons of horizontal water we get blasted with during these storms, so I’m a big fan of undercover Tomato growing and definitely recommend it to anyone with a short season, don’t scrimp on the ventilation though, especially if you have very hot or very wet summers – I find keeping the plants airy and dry goes someway to delaying the onset of blight.

I'm actually thinking about using the 2lt plastic drinks bottle -home made wall o water for an even earlier start next spring in one of the tunnels. I reckon I can plant 3 -4 weeks earlier, around the start of March here thanks to the Gulf Stream. I’ve been testing the water with earlier and earlier greenhouse planted Tomatoes (I’ve always got loads of backups) and this year planted some at the end of March which now have their first swelling green fruits developing.

I believe it’s fair to say that later plants always catch up and grow as big but their first few trusses are never as early ripening, I expect the taste is not as good as it can be in summer – we’ve not had great summers with a lot of sunshine lately so its hard for me to compare, although all the toms I’ve grown are always an improvement on the shop bought.

[bughunter99]

I've used them but personally don't think they are worth the expense, hassle, risk.

• I've found that the humidity attracts earwigs. I think of wall o waters as little ear wig hotels. The earwigs generally leave the tomato plants alone, but they are gross.
• I live in a very windy area. This I've had plants crushed from fallen wall o waters.
• They definitely do a good job at protecting from frost, but a row cover tossed over the plants is way less work.
• They are rather a hassle to safely get off the plant, when you want to remove them.
• For me any benefit of using them is measured in days rather than weeks. You can plant things out earlier, but until the soil warms up nothing really takes off. Once the soil warms, everything shoots up.
• The lack of wind exposure in the WOW seems to result in weaker stems for me when the WOW is first removed.

[ArcherB]

Bughunter:
I can't speak for the earwigs as they are everywhere in my yard. I think they are the only insect that is able to survive in a hot compost pile in a sealed trashcan in 90+ degree heat. They will be in my garden, WOW's or not.

I also had problems from WOW's falling over. Probably because mine are several years old and the first year I had them I used water from a hose-end sprayer to fill them up. The high pressure blew out the partitions between the tubes, causing them to bulge at the bottom and tip over. I am able to resolve this by placing them over a tomato cage before filling them. 1-2 ft PVC pipe also helps hold them up. They are not pretty this way, but they work well enough to protect my plants from the second half of February in Texas to mid March.

And yes, they are a hassle getting them off the plant, expecially if wrapped around a tomato cage! You have to remove the whole cage to get them off.

I was only able to get minutes benefit from mine. I was able to plant out 21,600 minutes earlier than the rest of the garden. (that's about 15 days)

OK, in all seriousness, 15 days is a lot when it hits 90 degrees in April. If you are not early in Texas, you get shrubs that bloom pretty yellow flowers before falling off. I certainly can not speak for the effectiveness in cooler climates.

[tam91]

I used them last year, and the tomatoes under them did produce much earlier than the ones I planted later.

I stuck stakes inside though, I didn't trust them to not collapse. And there did seem to be more bugs.

To remove them, I squished half the water out first, then they were so hard to lift off the plants.

Overall, it worked out. But I'm not sure it was worth the trouble.

[HoosierDaddy]

This is the second year I have used Kozy Koats. Here in SE Michigan I would normally plant my tomoto plants after May 15th but last year I had them in the ground around April 23rd. I had ripe Brandywine Sudduth's tomatoes weeks earlier than others in my area.

This year was so cold I thought I made a mistake planting April 30th but all plants made it through the cold wet spring, even with the one morning at 29 F.

Just removed the Kozy Koats yesterday.

I've only had one out of 27 collapse and I attribute that to the slope of my garden more than the wind. I moved that water cell cover to another location and regraded at the problem location and had no problems after that.

[WVTomatoMan]

I've used the green ones and the red ones.

1) No disease differences between plants grown in WOWs and those that aren't.

2) The plants get plenty of light and grow well.

BTW, I used short pieces of rebar to keep the WOWs from falling over.

@salix:
I used WOWs for years to get a jump on the season. Since then I've switched to another method that I devised myself. I grow the plants indoors under lights in containers. When it gets warm enough I put containers on a plant cart kind of like what they have in nurseries. I roll the plants out in the day and roll them into the garage at night. My garage doesn't get much below 55 even when it's below freezing outside. That's how I have ripe tomatoes in late April in zone 6. In other words I have ripe tomatoes before the average last frost date for my area. After the danger of frost has passed I leave the plants outside and keep using them until my in ground plants start producing ripe tomatoes in July. I don't know if this helps your situation, but I just thought I'd mention it.


Randy

[jwr6404]

I use them every year and remove them when my tomato plants exceed the height of the WoWs. As a matter of fact I removed the WoWs today. Am going to try a short season watermelons and planted them in WoWs today. Since,here in the PNW, we get cool rains at night I cover the WoWs at night with clear plastic trash bags to retain as much heat as possible.

[simmran1]

Summary

We observed that using the Wall O’ Water® as thermal mass to lower the daily average air temperature range was successful. Using growth as an indicator of the thermal comfort we found that pea plants grew more inside of the thermally protected environment. Therefore plants thrive inside water walls because of the diminished thermal variation in the environment.


The main purpose of Wall O’ Water is to temperature moderate. Think of water filled tubes as insulators during the day and then as the sun goes down heat dissipation is the function- the temp remains more constant as night time temps cool. In other words the water will actually insulate the plants from the burning Texas sun during the day, but not cool rapidly at night.

I did a copy/paste and save of this article I think from Cornell U. for reference.
Beyond using Wall ‘O Waters as season extenders – I use them as plant protectors to shield the tender seedlings. Curious birds, rabbits, gusty winds, etc. I haven’t noticed any difference by using the red ones I got this year, as opposed to the green and nearly clear ones I already had.
We did have some nights in the 30’s with rain and the plants showed no cold damage. Supposedly these will protect down below 20. Like WVtomatoman I also use hefty dowell rods for support as I had one blow over last year from intermittent 40+ mph wind gusts.