Bill's summer garden

[b54red]

We have been really busy putting up tomatoes and salsa lately so I haven't posted any new pictures. This thread will be for the rest of the summer and I will start by posting the pics taken on the 12th of July.

[b54red]

These are some shots taken in my garden early on the morning of July 14th. The spider mites have taken a toll by this time and some of my plants are a little lite on foliage due to the damage the mites have inflicted. I am still battling them but they are under control somewhat now.

1. Shows a view from the top corner of the garden.
2. The first bed which was set out April the 8th and has been very productive.
3. The second bed set out on April 25th and it too has been very productive.
4. The latest bed which was set out May 31st and is just now getting a few ripe fruit.
5. Shows that latest bed from the other end.

[b54red]

Here are some more shots taken on the 14th of July.

1. Shows how the main stems are laying on the ground and a piece of foam wire holding up a truss on the left.

2. Two Virginia Sweets nearly sitting on the mulch.

3. Shows the use of J hooks to support tomato trusses.

4. More closeups of J hooks and foam wire in use.

Bill

[JJJessee]

Mites or no mites, looks like a clean operation to me.
I'll interested in your ultimate conclusion on the truss supports for the
tomatoes and peppers. Peppers are giving me fits this year.

[b54red]

Picked a surprise on the afternoon of the 18th. It is one of the two Virginia Sweets that were growing very low that I showed in the past batch of pictures. It weighed in at 35.3 ounces making it the largest tomato I have ever grown. The one on the vine in the same truss weighed 27 ounces. Sorry for the quality of the photo but I took it at night inside right after weighing it and my hands just aren't as steady as they once were.

Bill

[b54red]

Originally Posted by JJJessee

Mites or no mites, looks like a clean operation to me.
I'll interested in your ultimate conclusion on the truss supports for the
tomatoes and peppers. Peppers are giving me fits this year.

For the tomatoes it has been an absolute dream compared to everything else I have tried over the years. I will do a few things different next year though. I will space my plants a little further apart and leave myself some room at one end of each bed so that I can easily lean the plants as they get too tall and have to be lowered. I will also do every plant as a two stem plant as that worked the best. The single stems frequently didn't have enough foliage cover and looked too skimpy and they got too messy trying to allow more growth because it frequently got away from me. The three stems are just too crowded together especially when lowering them. The two stem method worked well with just the right amount of foliage and they were fairly easy to lower especially after the first time.

The peppers seem to be doing the best with three or four strings for support. Out of over 30 peppers I have only had one limb break and that was one I didn't clip to a support line. It is still a little early to say one way or the other for certain with the peppers but I can say it has been a lot less bother. I just have to remember to put on some more clips every week or so before the limbs get too long and cut off some of the extra limbs while small or pinch out some of the extra growing tips. The peppers I have been getting are larger than usual so far; but I didn't set out my peppers til very late so fall will really tell how well this works.

Bill

[JamesL]

That's a big one Bill!

[aclum]

Hi Bill,

Great looking harvest and garden! Looks to me like you've conquered most, if not all, of your "environmental challenges." Glad the lower and lean thing is working out so well for you. It's all looking very well organized.

In contrast, my garden's been sort of insane this year (not in a good way ) and my lower and lean has evolved into "any port in a storm" with the vines going wherever they'd fit so the stems are sort of going every which way as they're lowered . Next year I'm using your method !

Impressive Virginia Sweets! I'm growing them for the first full season this year - can't wait to see how they taste. Any flavor standouts from your harvest so far?

Anne

[b54red]

Anne, I made a few miscalculations with this new system. One of the worst was not accounting for the difference in size of the plants when setting them out. Varieties like Lumpy Red, Atkinson, Druzba, and others with smaller vines are buried under some of the more aggressive growers like Barlow Jap, Limbaugh's Legacy or Donskoi. I couldn't figure a way around it once I realized the mistake I made with arranging the plants at set out time. Next year I will try to put the larger more vigorous growing vines starting at the end where the space will be left to lean them towards and use the smaller vines at the other end of the row. Even though the two stems produced the best in my garden it is a bit more difficult than using single stems but the drawbacks down here with our intense heat and disease pressure are just too great for the single stem to be reliable enough. I have several of my single stem plants doing great but most did not perform as well as the double stems. I have a friend who saw my initial setup and decided to try it also. He kept all his plants to two stems but instead of leaning both the same way he went in opposite directions and it worked good for a while but then he ran into the problem of overlapping vines. The beauty of using the two stems is you can put them very close together if the foliage is light or space them more when lowering them if the foliage is dense.

If I did not have that heavy mulch down under my plants I would have been in a real mess when I lowered the plants because a good number of tomatoes had to just lay on the ground until they started ripening. If I had not had that thick layer of cypress mulch I think insects would have gotten a lot of them. I found that you can't really wait to lower the vines or you risk the top breaking if it gets too far above the bar or you risk breaking it when trying to lower the plant if it is too far above the bar.

I did have one bad accident when lowering a double stem plant. I was loosening the line to lower one of the two stems and the line slipped too far down suddenly being pulled by the weight of the fruit and it caused the stem to split where the two stems joined. You have to be careful especially the first time or two you lower the plants that you don't stress the joint too much. I found it was a good idea to lower each side a little at a time the first time or two until the stems got tougher and adapted to the bending caused by lowering them. Sometimes the plants take a little coaxing to go where you want them to and sometimes they just go where they want and there isn't much that can be done about it. After a while the plants seem to adapt to the lowering and it gets easier each time and took less time as I became more experienced in moving them. Another thing I will not do next season is wrap so much extra line on the bar initially. I needed all of it on most of them and have added line to many of the drop lines. It is actually easier to just add about 5 ft of extra line when I run out than to unwrap so much line each time I need to lower the plants. I would love to have those line dispensers like they use in greenhouses but with a height limit of only 7 feet they are not practical for my use. If I was younger and in good health I would build a support bar about 10 ft high and use a line dispenser and a step ladder but that is just more than I could handle. It would allow you to not have to lower fruit down onto the ground and you would not need to lower the plants as often as you could lower them much more at a time.

Another change I will make is using more tomato clips per stem. I started out putting them about 18 inches apart and sometimes further apart but found when lowering them that sometimes the stem would kink between clips. I started putting them 10 to 12 inches apart and that stopped that problem. I am amazed at how many clips I have used. They are reusable but they are harder to take off than to put on and with arthritis doubly so. The clips can be bought in very large quantities fairly cheaply and that might be easier than trying to remove all of them and bleach them so they could be used again next year.

One thing that is probably the most difficult task to keep up with is pruning all the foliage below the lowest fruits so that the plants will lower better. This also removes a lot of diseased foliage and helps keep foliage disease problems to a minimum. It also looks much neater. After I lower a plant I take my clippers and remove any leaves that are touching the ground that I can and any lower foliage that is not shading fruit. I also try to remove suckers and extra growth all along the stems. I try to use the Missouri pruning on any sucker that looks like it will offer some shade for fruit when it gets larger. This heavy pruning has not affected the size or quality of the tomatoes so it obviously isn't necessary for good production. I have grown the largest tomatoes I have ever grown this year and my average size of the tomatoes is larger than ever also.

At the end of the season and before I start ordering any rootstock seed I will post the results I have had with different graft combinations and the combos that worked for others I gave grafted plants to. I have found some that seem to be excellent and will certainly use them again next year if I can. I have also found some that don't work well together and will be avoiding them in the future. I'm hoping to cut my number of plants that I set out by half next year. I know that is probably wishful thinking but I am really narrowing down the varieties that my family enjoys eating so it is no great loss to not plant a variety that we rarely eat except in sauce. I'm hoping all of the Tomatovillians who are experimenting with grafting will also try to post their results.

Bill

[Dewayne mater]

Bill - Just awesome! How has your overall production and production per plant been with this new management method? My plants have never been more out of control than this year. I planted fewer plants hoping to increase yield and basically got enormous plants and slightly better production. They have pretty much bent and broken my Texas tomato cages and are all at the stage of having topped, flopped, hit the ground and grown at least half way back up the cages again and running in every direction. Crazy! I have to find a way to manage better next year and if your production is as good as your prior methods or better, then, I'm in for next year.

I hope maybe in the winter you can compile some of your experience into a single thread. I'd like to know things like exactly how far apart you planted in every direction, How high your top lines are, how you handle plants that reach the top with plenty more growing season to go, and I still need to understand your clipping system better. Is it just clipping stem to the line to train it up?

Great Job! Been doing this a while and find that every year, there are still so many ways I could do it better. Your gardens are an inspiration, especially since you have tough growing conditions like many of us in the southern US.

Dewayne Mater

[Urbanfarmer]

Impressive stuff, Bill. Sounds like you didn't get hit hard with the diseases this year.

Tomato cages: what has suited us is making supports out of cattle panels, either bending them into cyclinders or running them vertically above the rows.

In each case we suspend them about 2.5' above the ground on 1/2" electric conduit driven in the ground. Since the cattle panels are 5' wide, this ends up giving us rock solid support up to 7.5'. The big holes allow access for pruning and picking.

[JJJessee]

Bill, I'm too am becoming a die-hard fan of the trellis clip on drop lines using Persig hitch knot at the top for maneuverability. I probably won't use the 48# hemp twine again. As they age, a thunderstorm seems to break one about once a week. It's very much easier than any synthetic I've used to work with, but it's starting to weather-out here just as the season gets heavy. I'm considering 1 mm paracord or heavier hemp if available next year.

I'm looking forward to your grafting notes as well.

[b54red]

Dewayne, my production per plant has been all over the map. Some have done fantastic and others have not done very well. Fruit size per plant has been larger overall than ever before for me and fruit quality has been top notch. I think most of the differences in productivity can be attributed to two factors. One is the rootstock affect on the plants. The other is the amount of shade. I now am faced with a shrinking area of sunlight due to the trees surrounding three sides of my garden. Only about 1/3 of my garden gets sunlight most of the day and nearly 2/3 of my production is coming from that section getting more sunlight.

I love this method of support. It is like always having 6 to 8 ft tall plants. Every time they get more than a foot above the bar I lower them. It sure makes spraying easier and I love not having to deal with tying plants up really high and trying to manage that mess of vines that always occurs later in the season. Keeping them limited to the strings for support forces me to keep them pruned so they don't get out of hand. Of course if I let up for more than a few days the sucker growth will explode.

Some of my plants are getting that tired look and a few are having persistent disease issues. I am starting to take out a few of the plants but I am shocked at how good the plants look this late in the season. I am also liking this method of support for my bell peppers although it isn't perfect it is better than anything else I have tried on peppers.

This is without a doubt the best method of supporting tomatoes and I think my search for the perfect system is over now. I know it isn't perfect but for me it is as close as I think is possible in my garden and for my growing conditions.

Bill

[b54red]

Originally Posted by JJJessee

Bill, I'm too am becoming a die-hard fan of the trellis clip on drop lines using Persig hitch knot at the top for maneuverability. I probably won't use the 48# hemp twine again. As they age, a thunderstorm seems to break one about once a week. It's very much easier than any synthetic I've used to work with, but it's starting to weather-out here just as the season gets heavy. I'm considering 1 mm paracord or heavier hemp if available next year.

I'm looking forward to your grafting notes as well.

I have had great results with the square bale twine for my drop lines. It is the perfect size for the clips to grab well and it is heavy enough to make tying and untying easy. It also shows no signs of weathering and could probably be used again next year except for the trouble of trying to store all those pieces of line. It is cheap enough since I get two bundles of it for around 30 dollars. I tried the lighter round bale twine but it is too light to work with easily.

Bill

[b54red]

These were the last pics in my phone. They were taken on the 21st. I had my most abundant pickings of the year on the 18th and 21st and this is the main ripening table holding most of those tomatoes but not all. The big Virginia Sweet is on the right side of the horizontal picture at the front of the table. Since then the size of fruit and amount has dropped off. I did pick a large Couilles de Teaureau this morning that is over a pound and a half but most of the fruit I am picking now is much smaller than it was a week ago.

My newest bed is starting to produce a few tomatoes and many of the older plants are still setting some fruit but they are very far from the base of the plant now. Many of my older vines are exceeding 15 feet in length and I am running out of bed to keep lowering them. I need to just pull some of them out to make more room but I have a hard time pulling up plants with green fruit on them even though I don't need them. We have given away hundreds of tomatoes the past few weeks. I couldn't have asked for a better season than this one and don't expect to ever see another like it. I couldn't have done this without the knowledge I got from reading Tomatoville and trading seed with so many members. Almost every one of my favorite tomato varieties I got initially through trades thanks to this site.

Bill