Planting on the Same Ground, Year After Year

[bower]

Linda, if you cut the stem above ground leaving 5-6 inches to use as a handle. Wait for a few days maybe a week, and you can generally pull out the main roots pretty easily. If it doesn't come easily, wait a few more days. After I pulled the big roots, it's a good idea to water and maybe mulch the mix so worms can be comfortable and eat up the fine roots that are left. That is, if containers are under cover. I let some dry out last winter, no worms and you can still see the roots almost a year later..

[biscuitridge]

I would recommend that you leave the roots in the ground, it adds organic matter and contributes to a better texture soil. It helps other things as well.

[Labradors2]

Thanks Bower. My potting mix doesn't contain any worms

Linda

[biscuitridge]

If your micro biology in soil is good,your roots will disappear in very short order. There won't be a trace left in just a few weeks at the most.

[bower]

Linda, I just finished screening three well aged compost piles in the garden - wow are they ever full of worms. My "new improved" container mix otoh seems to have a lot of centipedes instead. So I think I know what I need to do, to get back to a healthy mix. Garden compost is better than anything you can buy.

[TomatoDon]

What interesting information! Very surprising. We haven't seen much evidence in this thread that planting on the same ground, or even in the same beds, and even more intense, the same pots, has any more down-side than any other way, and in some ways it seems to improve the results.

Bower, I'm using 25 gallon containers on about 400 plants this year and I have been amazed at how fast they need more water. I need to water every day...sometimes twice. I am using a loose organic matter that seems to dry faster than anything else I've used. It's cotton gin trash, and most of the people here don't have access to it, so therefore they don't know much about it. I'm amazed at how fast it needs more water.

What do you recommend to add to my mix next year, and other than trying to add hay or stray on top now, is there anything I can do to stop the rapid evaporation? I use CRW cages on these, so it will be somewhat impracticable trying to properly and amply add hay now. What would you recommend for next year? I didn't want to take away room at the top that I could fill with soil mix by adding hay mulch this year, so only a few containers got any kind of mulch. I tried heavy paper on a few, as a test, and it was OK for a short time, but has now disintegrated.

Thanks for all this good info and the link.
Don

[nathan125]

Family members have placed tomatoes in the same spot for decades with no known issues of disease or vigor. They didnt have much room, so it was a dedicated spot.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by TomatoDon

What interesting information! Very surprising. We haven't seen much evidence in this thread that planting on the same ground, or even in the same beds, and even more intense, the same pots, has any more down-side than any other way, and in some ways it seems to improve the results.

Bower, I'm using 25 gallon containers on about 400 plants this year and I have been amazed at how fast they need more water. I need to water every day...sometimes twice. I am using a loose organic matter that seems to dry faster than anything else I've used. It's cotton gin trash, and most of the people here don't have access to it, so therefore they don't know much about it. I'm amazed at how fast it needs more water.

What do you recommend to add to my mix next year, and other than trying to add hay or stray on top now, is there anything I can do to stop the rapid evaporation? I use CRW cages on these, so it will be somewhat impracticable trying to properly and amply add hay now. What would you recommend for next year? I didn't want to take away room at the top that I could fill with soil mix by adding hay mulch this year, so only a few containers got any kind of mulch. I tried heavy paper on a few, as a test, and it was OK for a short time, but has now disintegrated.

Thanks for all this good info and the link.
Don

I had the same problem for years with mushroom compost. Adding peat and a lot of it will do the trick but you will still need to mulch it well. One of my beds was far too sandy this year and was drying out daily so I removed a couple of wheelbarrows of dirt from it and replaced it with an extra large bale of peat and also a half of a large bale of peat which amounted to at least 3 times as much as I had ever used in a bed before. Moisture retention has improved dramatically and right now that bed needs watering far less than the others. I don't know what will happen if I let it get too dry so I am going to try and avoid that.

Bill

[bower]

Don, I don't have any expertise with the "soil-less" mix approach, which also uses strictly liquid ferts iirc. My mix contains some peat but is mainly compost, and I use mainly solid ferts like bone meal, chicken manure pellets, and chopped up kelp. The kelp does help with water retention but it also breaks down over the course of the season and the soil volume shrinks. Pretty sure if you added some good compost to your mix it will cause the cotton gin waste to break down and you'd be left with a shrinking media issue unless you plan to top up. I suspect that my garden compost is superior for water retention (cw the commercial product I also buy) because a small amount of our native clay gets into it along with the weeds or sods that get tossed in roots and all. bjbebs has a similar container approach using compost and lots of composted horse manure, which iirc he mentioned as being helpful for water retention too.
That being said, the water demand of container plants is a fact, I cannot expect to get away without watering once a day in hot weather, and can't say the organic compost-based container is better than the soilless/liquid fert approach which I haven't tried. But I do think that twice a day for your 25 gallon container is a problem. I've never had to water twice daily for anything larger than 5 gallons (even a five gal is rarely watered twice, and it does get plenty hot in the greenhouse - even to temperatures too hot for tomatoes to set).
Mulch should help some - have you considered a light colored plastic mulch? That really doesn't allow anything to evaporate except what is being transpired by the plant. One thing I have used is clear plastic juice bottles filled with water and laid on the soil surface - not covering completely. That does double duty of moderating the temperature of the soil and partly acting as mulch to reduce surface evaporation. A light colored canvas over straw might be an alternative cover that would last longer than plastic and still allow the soil to breathe a bit while maximizing moisture retention.
If the seasonal goal is to break down that cgw into an organic soil, you could top with compost and then straw - I bet that would keep the moisture in but your volume may shrink pretty quickly if it's loose.



Ultimately though, I think the economic solution for a large operation in containers has to involve drip irrigation. See for example the setups used by AKMark and PureHarvest. If you decide to go for drip irrigation that takes care of your ferts as well in the soilless/liquid fert approach, and you can reduce container size quite a bit while still having top production yields.

[Labradors2]

Bower, that is MOST interesting that you grow in mostly compost! I can now do that (or at least use a mix with my current Pro-mix-for-veggies). I have some lovely aged chicken manure compost left over!!!!!

WRT watering, my pots are only the 3-gallon size and I water twice a day. I put wood chips on top of the pots as a mulch.

Linda

[Goodloe]

Interesting thread, Don. I'm on my 4th year in the same spot. Last year, I acquired a nematode infestation. The only varieties to survive were my Big Beef and Chef's Choice Pink. The only thing that I did different last year was use pine straw mulch...from Lowe's...it comes from Florida. I hear bad things about Florida and nematodes. Maybe I infected my Patch with this pine straw...? I bounced this idea off a couple of other growers; they seemed skeptical...so I sent an email to the extension service folks...

Here is his response:



"Pine straw is not the issue. Not in any way at all. Issue is that you have grown tomatoes in same spot for 4 years.

We recommend to never plant a tomato crop in the same spot for even 2 years. Find another location in your garden and plant them there.

If you go back in same spot you will have same issue. If you move to new spot and grow them correctly they will produce just fine."

I felt that I'd better not respond to that, so I didn't. I know quite a few gardeners that have been growing tomatoes in the same spot for more than 15-20 yrs, and none of them have ever noticed the presence of nematodes...

My Patch is the very best spot on my property for growing tomatoes; I won't be moving it. I added in a good bit of organic matter, including crab meal and alfalfa, and am growing mostly nematode resistant varieties...but also a few that are not, and some which are described as "nematode tolerant"; we'll see....

[wildcat62]

Originally Posted by JRinPA

I don't think it hurts too much up here in PA. We just seem to get early blight and septoria for the most part, lots of it, and from what I have experienced the last few years, planting on black mulch doesn't help that, rotating doesn't help that, and trimming bottom leaves doesn't help that. It just comes from the air, as soon as it gets hot and humid or really wet, and it won't matter if you rotate. I have put tomatoes into fresh spots and pre-pruned the last few years and the leaf spots are the same.

The things I read about in warmer climates, nematodes and viruses, that would worry me. Bad things that overwinter in the ground because it doesn't get cold enough.


EDIT best producing tomato plants I've had are CRW cages with unpruned tomatoes trench planted right over double dug rows filled with fish and lime during the previous fall. Tremendous output done that way. And that garden always had tomatoes in it every year for as long as I can remember.

We are in the same boat. Can't shake that EB year after year.

[bigpinks]

same deal here in SC Ohio along the stream the Shawnees called Beautiful River. Early Blight unavoidable and an early death for tomatoes every single yr.