General discussion regarding the techniques and methods used to successfully grow tomato plants in containers.
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#1 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Santa Clara CA
Posts: 1,125
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I once recieved this advise from someone on the container forum over at GW. Never did it in years past. Got me thinking that maybe its a good idea considering all that sh*t we put in them. Salt build up, smelly stinky water etc. A freind of mine who is the 'california indoor hydro business' if ya know what I mean was visiting the other day and strongly suggested that I flush them at least once mid season aswell. So yesterday I took my garden hose and flooded/flushed out each individual swc of mine. I did it both ways, started with over filling the reservoir and at the same time pluging one of the drain holes for about two minutes. I then flushed them from the top by running the shower setting on my hose end sprayer for about another 4 minutes. I'm letting them sit for a day or two and then plan to give them a dose of liquid fertilizer via the filler tube.
Damon |
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#2 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Campbell, CA
Posts: 4,064
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Damon,
You could also use a wet/dry Shop-Vac to just suck all of the old water out of the container - - then refill it with fresh. A whole lot less work, and you are not flushing the fertilizer and Lime out of the grow media in the process. I bought a bottle of Clearex from Botanicare last year, but didn't see any "clear" results one way or the other. As I try to run my water reservoirs pretty low anyway on the AWS, the FIFO method of constantly churning the residual water in the reservoir seems to work fine. My challenge this Season is Psyllids, more than any other problem. I've just pulled 4 more plants today, and have rooted a dozen cuttings that I want to replant as quickly as possible. ![]() Raybo |
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#3 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Illinois
Posts: 180
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I guess my tomatoes drink so much water everyday that I never thought about it - I always figured the churn from adding new was enough. Plus, I figure there is some amount of my fertilizer that has run off into the water, so I sort of don't want to rinse that away. And I have a much shorter growing season here than you do, so maybe it's not as important here. Not sure. This is only my second season with SWCs, but season number one went great without a flush.
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#4 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Campbell, CA
Posts: 4,064
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Hey Chucker, how are you doing? Any photos of your SWCs that you could post?
A person named "calistoga" on another site posted that he has been measuring water uptake in his EarthTainers, and reports now in the warm Season, each 'Tainer is consuming 1.5 gallons per day. As most SWCs hold from 3 to 6 gallons of water, that then equates to a 2 to 4 day "turn". So unless there are some salts floating on the surface that are not being wicked up, my conclusion is that it should not be such a problem with tomatoes. Now, as to the water consumption in Damon's friend's "Indoor" system where his plants (whatever they may be) most likely don't consume anywhere near 1.5 gallons per day, so periodic flushing in his personal application probably makes sense. Raybo p.s. I am working on a design for a leak-proof indoor SWC container to over-winter my Pepper plants, and it has a rotating hose port so that you can "drain your main vein", to periodically flush the system. Stay tuned.... |
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#5 |
Tomatoville® Moderator
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Posts: 4,386
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The hydro indoor growers often do what Ray suggest: using an wet/dry vac to take the water out. I am growing Jericho lettuce indoors because it's too hot here now to grow outdoors and that's what they told me to do
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Michael |
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#6 | |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Illinois
Posts: 180
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Also, looking forward to your indoor plans as I'm thinking of experimenting with a dwarf or two inside this winter. |
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#7 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Santa Clara CA
Posts: 1,125
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Ray- I dont believe the 'flushing the lime out theory' here. I'll explain why. I have several tomatoes planted in traditional pots that got a one time liming at a tbsp per gallon of mix. Every time I water and or feed those pots I make sure water runs out the bottom and the reason for that is personal preference as I want to flush out the old nutrients to avoid nutrient/salt accumilation which I believe is not good for any plant. No signs of BER nor did I see any CA deficiencies so I think the loss of lime/CA is very very minimal. I took a light approach on fertilizing my swc's this year weather it was a time release or liquid and I love my results very much. And I'm not trying to say that this will work and that wont, its just that this is what I have observed this year. My biggest mistake this year was not filling my swc's that my cukes n peppers are in to the top with mix, I only filled them maybe 2/3 full, sigh. Oh and then there's the double layer of landscape fabric, I wish I did that in all my swc's this year but I didn't, another sigh. And I may not see any difference from the flushing, who knows, but it was piece of mind for me and no trouble at all.
Damon |
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#8 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: PNW
Posts: 4,743
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Calcium is mobile in the soil, but not nearly as mobile as
nitrogen or potassium. Almost all of the calcium sources that we use are slow-release, too, basically forms of finely ground rock, so you can flush the container all that you want and there is still going to be calcium there. As long as the soil is moist, there will be soluble calcium that can be taken up by the roots if the container mix has had lime, dolomite lime, or gypsum added. Rock phosphate, bone meal, eggshells, oyster shell, and shrimp shell and crab shell meals are all slow release calcium sources, too.
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