Urban Farms Texas Tomato Food

[MissS]

I have used Texas Tomato Food and Apples and Oranges on my seedlings with good results. I start my seeds in DE with worm castings. I moisten the soil with Urban Farms Ferts applied at 1 teaspoon per gallon when I start the seeds. I will then start feeding them with this blend after 10 days from sprouting. I will then start feeding them regularly with this blend once I have potted them into their 4 inch pots. After they go outside, they get a full dose.

[Father'sDaughter]

I use the Vegetable formula from their first feeding until they start flowering, then I switch to the tomato formula.

[Rockporter]

Sounds good, Farmer's Daughter. I think I am going to get this vegetable blend used up before I buy more, since mine is so old.

I foliar sprayed yesterday on the tomatoes and they seem fine, so this morning I drenched all of them with a regular mixture of 1 TBSP per gallon of water. I did as was recommended, by watering until it some started coming out the bottom to really saturate the roots. Tomorrow I will do the same and again on Sunday. Then I will just water for three days, and start the three day feeding ritual.

It's all or nothing, either my tomatoes are going to love this really old stuff, or they will hate it, and will die. Experimentation is the only way, I could have done just one plant, but it doesn't matter to me. I will know it is the feedings if they all die at the same time, so money lost in plants and time. Or, I have some plants that are loving the treatments and providing me a great harvest, so I opted to just go all out.

[Rockporter]

Update:

Second day in a row of the fertilizer treatment (push portion), tomorrow I will do one more, and then plain water (pull portion) for three days in a row. The tomatoes are looking great, I don't see any issues with them, other than the white fly I sprayed for again today. I am thinking this vegetable solution is perfectly fine.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Rockporter

Update:

Second day in a row of the fertilizer treatment (push portion), tomorrow I will do one more, and then plain water (pull portion) for three days in a row. The tomatoes are looking great, I don't see any issues with them, other than the white fly I sprayed for again today. I am thinking this vegetable solution is perfectly fine.

I would recommend that you only give them the fertilizer at the recommended dose more than once a week only if the plants are looking underfed. I ruined a small bed of tomatoes by feeding them too often for too long and the roots never developed.

If the plants are still very young I would only give them about half strength once a week until they get about two feet tall then go with the full strength but not more often than once a week. If you want to feed them more often then use a more diluted ratio for constant feeding.

I think you should go ahead and order some TTF for when the blooms really start coming on in order to get more fruit set. I just ordered some today and if they ship as fast as they usually do I should have it by early next week. Some of my plants are already blooming and most are only just over a food tall. I will start the TTF at 1 1/2 tsp to the gallon until the plants get a bit bigger and then will move to the recommended 1 Tbs/gal. Once the plants get larger they need constant monitoring to evaluate when and how often to give them fertilizer. In container plants they need it more often than in ground plants; but still I like to go by how they look to determine feeding.

Bill

[Gardeneer]

Have a question:
My soil sample test results came back while ago.
It says P and K level are way higher than normal. And that all I need to add is N. (They recommended 21-0-0 ).
Now the question. How TTF can be of any advantage in my case ?

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by Gardeneer

Have a question:
My soil sample test results came back while ago.
It says P and K level are way higher than normal. And that all I need to add is N. (They recommended 21-0-0 ).
Now the question. How TTF can be of any advantage in my case ?

Get one of their other products like liquid lawn with more nitrogen and less of the other.
Or use fish emulsion.

Worth

[Gardeneer]

Originally Posted by Worth1

Get one of their other products like liquid lawn with more nitrogen and less of the other.
Or use fish emulsion.

Worth

I am using Alaska Fish emulsion ( 5-1-1 ).
I will get a bag of Lilly Miller 21-0-0 too. Very inexpensive.

[Rockporter]

Originally Posted by b54red

I would recommend that you only give them the fertilizer at the recommended dose more than once a week only if the plants are looking underfed. I ruined a small bed of tomatoes by feeding them too often for too long and the roots never developed.

If the plants are still very young I would only give them about half strength once a week until they get about two feet tall then go with the full strength but not more often than once a week. If you want to feed them more often then use a more diluted ratio for constant feeding.

I think you should go ahead and order some TTF for when the blooms really start coming on in order to get more fruit set. I just ordered some today and if they ship as fast as they usually do I should have it by early next week. Some of my plants are already blooming and most are only just over a food tall. I will start the TTF at 1 1/2 tsp to the gallon until the plants get a bit bigger and then will move to the recommended 1 Tbs/gal. Once the plants get larger they need constant monitoring to evaluate when and how often to give them fertilizer. In container plants they need it more often than in ground plants; but still I like to go by how they look to determine feeding.

Bill

Thanks Bill, I was told by ED (I think that was his name) at the company to do the push/pull method. Push it three days in a row, and pull it with plain water three days in a row. I didn't do it today because we had 30% chance of rain, and tomorrow it will rain for sure. My plants are a couple feet tall and have lots of new growth with multiple fruit set and many more blooms than each already had. That's all of my tomato plants, since starting the vegetable solution. I don't really want to order the TTF, because my vegetable solution is already 3.5 years old. It seems to be very alive and working, so I would like to get it used up before it is no longer effective. I'll order both the vegetable and TTF in the fall for that seasons planting. This is the perfect experiment for the old stuff, lol.

I also wanted to say, I have been reading all about what you do on the coast because I am on the coast. I am container gardening, it's all raised beds with bottoms, so no touching the soil below. That may be why Ed said to do the push/pull method on mine. I will definitely pay attention to how the tomatoes look for sure, but I am also interested in seeing what happens if I do the push/pull method that Ed explained to me. So far, so good. I don't think I'll do it forever more, but just to see how well they do. Another thing I wanted to do this year was to make sure I was feeding to give the plants the boost they need to handle all the bad things that come along better. At least I hope it will help. Thanks for all of your help in the forum, it is indeed well taken.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Rockporter

Thanks Bill, I was told by ED (I think that was his name) at the company to do the push/pull method. Push it three days in a row, and pull it with plain water three days in a row. I didn't do it today because we had 30% chance of rain, and tomorrow it will rain for sure. My plants are a couple feet tall and have lots of new growth with multiple fruit set and many more blooms than each already had. That's all of my tomato plants, since starting the vegetable solution. I don't really want to order the TTF, because my vegetable solution is already 3.5 years old. It seems to be very alive and working, so I would like to get it used up before it is no longer effective. I'll order both the vegetable and TTF in the fall for that seasons planting. This is the perfect experiment for the old stuff, lol.

I also wanted to say, I have been reading all about what you do on the coast because I am on the coast. I am container gardening, it's all raised beds with bottoms, so no touching the soil below. That may be why Ed said to do the push/pull method on mine. I will definitely pay attention to how the tomatoes look for sure, but I am also interested in seeing what happens if I do the push/pull method that Ed explained to me. So far, so good. I don't think I'll do it forever more, but just to see how well they do. Another thing I wanted to do this year was to make sure I was feeding to give the plants the boost they need to handle all the bad things that come along better. At least I hope it will help. Thanks for all of your help in the forum, it is indeed well taken.

You are welcome. I just pass along what I learn the hard way because I always wish every time I find something useful that someone had given me a heads up on it years ago. I started grafting due to the good advice and encouragement from someone on this forum and will forever be grateful to her for the wonderful advice. I grow in nothing but raised beds and have for years but mine have no bottom and I battled fusarium wilt from the time I started gardening here 40 years ago. As the years passed the problem became more difficult to manage and eventually would kill almost every tomato except some of those hybrids with resistance to all three races of fusarium. I tried container gardening but with our intense heat it was more work than it was worth and even some of my containers would get fusarium in them before the season was over. As a result I finally tried grafting and hopefully root stock will remain available that are resistant enough to keep me able to produce these wonderful heirlooms in my sickly soil.

I think if you build a raised bed without a bottom and filled it with good organic material and till it all in building up a good soil and use tomatoes grafted onto a very good root stock like RST-04-106-T you would find container gardening less inviting. Every year I till in some good compost, cottonseed meal, alfalfa meal and a bit of chicken manure a few weeks before planting then water it well and mulch heavily with cypress mulch. The heavy layer of cypress mulch keeps the soil moisture level fairly constant requiring less watering and it also keeps the soil cooler which is important for producing tomatoes during the long hot months of summer. I plant staggered plantings of tomatoes from March thru July and as a result I usually am able to have fresh tomatoes ripe off the vines from May right up til nearly Christmas most years. I won't say it is easy to produce fruit during the harshest months of late summer and early fall but it sure is rewarding. I learned of this because of my constant replanting of tomatoes all during the time before I started grafting and found that certain varieties would still produce good fruit during those months if they were planted later than the traditional starting time for setting out tomatoes. I guess one good thing did come from fighting fusarium wilt all those years.

If you want to try growing late summer tomatoes there is a thread on here where I outline the things I do in order to be successful at this daunting task. I grew up thinking tomatoes were to be set out as early as possible and usually be dead by mid July. Thanks to fighting fusarium wilt I learned that isn't necessarily true with many varieties. It isn't as hard as you would think but it isn't easy either. I don't know if my techniques would work with containers but they might if the containers were large enough and the contents could be kept a bit cooler than normal.

Good luck with your season this year.

Bill

[Rockporter]

Originally Posted by b54red

You are welcome. I just pass along what I learn the hard way because I always wish every time I find something useful that someone had given me a heads up on it years ago. I started grafting due to the good advice and encouragement from someone on this forum and will forever be grateful to her for the wonderful advice. I grow in nothing but raised beds and have for years but mine have no bottom and I battled fusarium wilt from the time I started gardening here 40 years ago. As the years passed the problem became more difficult to manage and eventually would kill almost every tomato except some of those hybrids with resistance to all three races of fusarium. I tried container gardening but with our intense heat it was more work than it was worth and even some of my containers would get fusarium in them before the season was over. As a result I finally tried grafting and hopefully root stock will remain available that are resistant enough to keep me able to produce these wonderful heirlooms in my sickly soil.

I think if you build a raised bed without a bottom and filled it with good organic material and till it all in building up a good soil and use tomatoes grafted onto a very good root stock like RST-04-106-T you would find container gardening less inviting. Every year I till in some good compost, cottonseed meal, alfalfa meal and a bit of chicken manure a few weeks before planting then water it well and mulch heavily with cypress mulch. The heavy layer of cypress mulch keeps the soil moisture level fairly constant requiring less watering and it also keeps the soil cooler which is important for producing tomatoes during the long hot months of summer. I plant staggered plantings of tomatoes from March thru July and as a result I usually am able to have fresh tomatoes ripe off the vines from May right up til nearly Christmas most years. I won't say it is easy to produce fruit during the harshest months of late summer and early fall but it sure is rewarding. I learned of this because of my constant replanting of tomatoes all during the time before I started grafting and found that certain varieties would still produce good fruit during those months if they were planted later than the traditional starting time for setting out tomatoes. I guess one good thing did come from fighting fusarium wilt all those years.

If you want to try growing late summer tomatoes there is a thread on here where I outline the things I do in order to be successful at this daunting task. I grew up thinking tomatoes were to be set out as early as possible and usually be dead by mid July. Thanks to fighting fusarium wilt I learned that isn't necessarily true with many varieties. It isn't as hard as you would think but it isn't easy either. I don't know if my techniques would work with containers but they might if the containers were large enough and the contents could be kept a bit cooler than normal.

Good luck with your season this year.

Bill

Hi Bill, yes, I have read about your battles, it's been heartbreaking reading it. I did learn from you and many others here it is important to make sure your plants get the best start possible, and to feed during growth. So, this year, I am taking that even stronger to heart.

The bed pictures attached are about 28" deep or so and 3' x 8', each are lined with cedar fence planks and have pressure treated frame and bottom support. They should last quite a while, and I wish they were deep enough to grow corn, but don't want to damage the bottoms with deep roots, lol. The other beds I have are about 13" deep, one is 4' x 4' and the other is about 4' x 3', both are up on a cinder block platform to hold them high for me. The last one hubby built back in 2003 is about 3' x 2', also about 13" deep and it is on legs to make it taller. I am now using two 45 gallon oblong black feed troughs I bought at tractor supply for some tomatoes. I have 11 earth boxes that I am now using like a regular planter, I have lots of onions, leeks and chives in them, and they are doing very well. I just don't have the physical ability to remake those boxes anymore, but I find the boxes to hold up well to the elements, making the cost of them to be very reasonable in the long run. I have various other size pots for flowers and herbs. I lined each bed and pot with landscape cloth to hold the soil in before I filled them, and it seems to be working very well.

Sadly I don't have a lot of different composts available to me out here, so I did my best with what I could get and will see how things go. I was looking for mulch threads today and came upon yours a few minutes ago regarding the cypress mulch. Is there any specific brand you like best?

Also, I'm with the tomatoes, the heat is terrible, lol. I don't know that I could actually handle growing out here then. I have no shade, too much wind, and it's going to be way to expensive to get something to protect the crops built, that will stay put in the wind. I've been pondering all that since I started gardening out here.

Thanks again, for all your help here on the forum.

[Rockporter]

Bill, is there a thread you speak about the virtues of cypress mulch in the veggie garden? I looked for one, but except for the occasional mention of it, I don't see a specific thread. I don't want to derail this thread to talk about mulching. I bought the cypress mulch mix, which I am not sure what the "Mix" means, but I could swear I smelled cedar in it. I put this around my tomatoes, but now am a bit unsure of what it is I just did and whether it really benefits me, or becomes an issue in my garden. Please direct me to a good thread on this topic, thanks in advance!

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Rockporter

Bill, is there a thread you speak about the virtues of cypress mulch in the veggie garden? I looked for one, but except for the occasional mention of it, I don't see a specific thread. I don't want to derail this thread to talk about mulching. I bought the cypress mulch mix, which I am not sure what the "Mix" means, but I could swear I smelled cedar in it. I put this around my tomatoes, but now am a bit unsure of what it is I just did and whether it really benefits me, or becomes an issue in my garden. Please direct me to a good thread on this topic, thanks in advance!

I just go to Lowe's and get the plain cypress mulch. The stuff that is a mix can have just about any kind of wood mixed in so if I can I avoid it. One year it was all I could get so I used it but it didn't hold up as well and tended to rot fast whereas the cypress mulch lasts for quite a few years.

I can't believe you went to that much trouble to build your beds. Wow! That looks like more labor than all eight of my beds combined and I built them 35 years ago when I was in a little better shape. I can barely keep them held together anymore; but I am too old to build them again so I just keep muddling along trying to use them as long as possible. Mine are just large rough cut 2x8s that were treated long ago when they still used arsenic in the compound they treated wood with back then. They have held up rather well but warped beyond belief with all the swelling and shrinking over 35 years in constant contact with the soil. My garden area is a triangle so my beds are all different lengths from about 8 feet to 40 feet in length and all approximately 4 feet wide. Of course over the years they have really shifted and instead of the straight even beds they once were they are now more like snakes of different widths.

Bill

[Rockporter]

Originally Posted by b54red

I can't believe you went to that much trouble to build your beds. Wow! That looks like more labor than all eight of my beds combined and I built them 35 years ago when I was in a little better shape. I can barely keep them held together anymore; but I am too old to build them again so I just keep muddling along trying to use them as long as possible. Mine are just large rough cut 2x8s that were treated long ago when they still used arsenic in the compound they treated wood with back then. They have held up rather well but warped beyond belief with all the swelling and shrinking over 35 years in constant contact with the soil. My garden area is a triangle so my beds are all different lengths from about 8 feet to 40 feet in length and all approximately 4 feet wide. Of course over the years they have really shifted and instead of the straight even beds they once were they are now more like snakes of different widths.

Bill

LOL, you have to understand who my husband is. If it isn't done well, my husband won't do it, screws and all! Sometimes it drives me nuts, a one day job becomes a full week, lol. Did you notice the handle like structure all around the big beds? I can put my garden tools in those, and the bed while empty could be moved with those handles. He thinks of everything, lol.

But I tell you my friend has her beds he built in 2000, and she said they haven't changed one bit in structure. They are just the usual grey that all wood gets with age, lol. Much like the one he built me on legs back in 2003. One of the legs rotted so he replaced two of them to bring it back to the height he originally made it. I let him know he could just cut the legs down all around, his response, "no, I built that tall for you, so you don't have to bend with your arthritis".
What a great guy he is.

Regarding the mulch from Lowe's. Unfortunately, the only cypress mulch they have is the mix. Nobody else around here has plain cypress mulch either. I can't find much of anything worth using around here. So you don't think the mulch will be a problem for the plants? It won't lock up the nutrients or anything? I have been reading so much online saying cypress is terrible for the vegetable garden, and that it doesn't let enough water through to truly feed the plant roots. They are saying it holds water in the mulch, but that doesn't seem to be what you are experiencing with it? And no thread to direct me to?


Bill. I started a new thread here regarding mulching. I don't want to derail this one. Let's get back to TTF here!

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Gardeneer

Have a question:
My soil sample test results came back while ago.
It says P and K level are way higher than normal. And that all I need to add is N. (They recommended 21-0-0 ).
Now the question. How TTF can be of any advantage in my case ?

Despite the soil sample I believe you will have better tomato results using the TTF. I have extremely high levels of P and still use the TTF every 7 to 10 days once the plants hit the blooming stage. I have tried using just a high N and K formula and the results were nothing like with TTF. Just try it on a few if you don't believe me and by the end of June I think you will be a convert.

Bill