Plant management

[AKmark]

Charley, I use a shallow well jet pump, and have 275 gallon tanks plumbed together

[Salsacharley]

Thanks for the info, Mark.....

[Sunflowerhill]

Your plants are gorgeous!

[PureHarvest]

[QUOTE=

PH, your plants look great, it looks like your mix is spot on.[/QUOTE]

Thanks Mark.

On your later post about 275 gallon tanks,
I thought you were injecting from concentrate tanks?

[Nematode]

Interested in injection?
Have a look.
http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...412#post565412

[AKmark]

PH, I pull fresh water from tanks where I heat my water. The dosatrons inject the fertilizer at 1-100 ratio. The first stock tank holds fertilizer, MgSO4, and KNO3, the second does CaNO3.
I have 2-3 rows on each station which is opened by a solenoid, and is distributed by netafim spray stakes.

[PureHarvest]

Nice setups nematode and Mark.
Plumbing and wiring, my two old nemisises.
I get better at them all the time but usually need a mentor present. Then they just end up doing it for me and I lose out on some of the learning by screwing it up and having to do it twice. Or 3 times lol.
I'm finally getting electric out to my field and setup this month! So I will be able to power my well that is already there and not have to haul 275 gallon tanks up to my plot..
With that I would be able to pump water from my pressure tank right to a injection set up like you have mark. I think I will need to to save time on hand mixing 250 gallons worth evey other day or so. Plus adding a greenhouse this summer for fall/winter production.

[Ricky Shaw]

Lovin' it.

PureHarvest, How how many plants on how many gallons per day?

And....How much more do you anticipate to use with warming weather and fruiting?

[mashermike]

Mark, how do you get consistent pollination?

[PureHarvest]

Originally Posted by Ricky Shaw

Lovin' it.

PureHarvest, How how many plants on how many gallons per day?

And....How much more do you anticipate to use with warming weather and fruiting?

Last year I used about 100 ounces per day when the plants were full grown,

During a couple of hot weeks I added a feeding at 6 am and one at 6 pm, so that added another 24 ounces.

Right now I am just manually running the pumps about every 2 or 3 days for about 15 minutes.

So for me, 15 minutes puts out 90 ounces (6 ounces per minute)

As they get bigger, I will set the timer to run the pumps every day for at least 15 minutes, probably more depending on heat.

Keep in mind I have 2 plant per bag in most cases, so I double the hydrofarm rec of 40-50 ounces per day used by a mature plant.
That is also an indoor rec, so outside with wind and heat it could easily be 60.
Basically I want to see a little fluid running out and wetting the ground below the bag after running the system.

I have 92 total bags. 36 of them are dwarfs, which are on a different pump and mainline than the full-size plants.
So you figure 92 x 100 (using the 50 ounces per plant rate) ounces is 9,200 ounces, which is about 72 gallons used per day. Granted the dwarfs wont get 100 ounces, but I sense the full-size will be higher than 100 soon enough.
I also recently bought small rolls of white plastic pallet wrap to wrap around the blag bags I started with the reflect the sun and keep the bags from baking. About half of my bags were white to start.

[Nematode]

http://www.cityofwasilla.com/departm...uality-testing

Lots of Calcium in Wasilla water, up to 78ppm. Ca and Mg uptake are antagonistic. either way you got it fixed..


muni water here has 30ppm calcium purposefully put in to prevent pipe corrosion.
I also get some MG deficiency in older leaves. i should re-formulate to take that into consideration.

[AKmark]

MasherMike, I keep my humidity low, the pollen just falls out. If it is raining for periods of time, I may shake the trusses, vibrate them, flick them with my fingers too.

[AKmark]

In the past I have had some trouble with the maintenance with determinates, cages seem to choke them, my rope tee pee's always collapse. This time I built a cradle out of 2x4's and let the plant grow up and drape over the top. I also put a few screws in the top to tie off some branches for when the tomatoes are loaded up. I also cleaned out the leaves underneath to keep air flowing in there, that really helped. The variety is Mountain Fresh, they are loaded and they do taste very good.
Anyway, I am liking this support system so far. In the pic you can see a 5 gallon bucket, and can tell how big these plants really are.

[Nematode]

Originally Posted by Ricky Shaw

I was wondering that too, if it factors the:

Calcium Nitrate - NPK 15-0-0


And... is that 18 cents a gallon Nema?

so I put in nutrient costs and calculator says its $0.022 / gallon
estimate my garden takes about 1-2k gallons/season.

[Ricky Shaw]

.0264 cents per gallon is mine.

Shipping costs would be the difference, but yep that's right there with my calculations on the ChemGrow 4-18-38, adding Cal and Mag

Thank you Nema