ContainerGardening: July 2016

Below is an email thread, a conversation amongst myself and two people I consider to be Master Organic Farmers. They were responding to my last post here, "Progress Report", and to my comments. I think you'll find the discussion valuable in relation to gardening in general. [I suppose it makes sense to start at the bottom of the thread, but either way, you'll get it.]
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Thanks, Dixie, for your thoughtful reply...as usual, a treasure trove of info. You and my friend, Alex (in CA), are Master Organic Farmers in my eyes.

My plants (not just tomatoes) definitely are not under-watered; however, your guess about being "babied" is right on the mark. [Blog readers: "babied" here means grown indoors.] The tomatoes have not been properly hardened...that's a big part of the problem. Although, in my various experiments, it's not really a problem.

[Blog readers: for those who may not know--- "hardened" or "hardening" of plants is explained at the end of this post.]

As to container size, a couple of those you saw in the photo (coffee can & small cup) are not the final homes for those plants. Also, on a few plants, I'm going to see if the plants will produce any fruit when they are basically rootbound. As I mentioned to Alex, I don't really care if my 'maters produce poorly...not even if it's only 1 - 3 fruits per plant. The ones in the dog food bags and small buckets are in their final containers...just to see how they do. I have only one in a 5-gal bucket...it was the first one to fruit. I consider that the minimum size container for a tomato plant. But the challenge for me is to find some combination of sun (indoors), organic fertilizer that's homemade, and watering schedule---all in a smaller container---that will produce a modest amt of fruit. For me, that's the fun part of indoor gardening. Essentially, I'm trying to discover a new way to raise tomatoes on a very small scale.

As to winter, you're right...that will be a challenge beyond all challenges. Although, in the 3 winters I've been here, there was a lot of sun in my one "sun room". We'll see what happens. If it can't be done yr-round, I'm betting it can be done at least 3/4ths of the yr.

Thanks again for taking time from your busy schedule to reply.

p.s. Kudos to your Hubby for building a greenhouse. Am trying to convince my son in CA to do that. We had one in the State of WA; that's definitely the way to have a small garden.

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Hi Scott,

The sun is probably hard on your tomatoes because they are in containers and using up their water faster than you can water them. Looking at your pics, your containers are pretty darn small for tomatoes.Tomatoes are thirsty plants! When you think that a healthy tomato plant’s roots can go down 4 feet deep in the right soil, then your tomatoes are going to be limited by how far their roots can reach. Tomatoes like uninterrupted growth. When their roots hit the pot that contains them, they stop or slow down growth; the roots have to go down for the stems to go up. When I am starting tomatoes in the greenhouse in spring, I will transplant into bigger pots as soon as I see the roots have hit the bottom of the pot. Having too small of a pot will limit how much water they can drink and of course they will wilt in the sun.

I grow everything under the sun! Literally! A half acre of veggies all in the direct sun at 7600’. I do put shade cloth on things right after they are transplanted to prevent shock and some cool weather lovers( lettuce, kale) enjoy shade beyond that time, but tomatoes are certainly not shade-lovers! They need all that intense sun to do their thing. Hours and hours of it. The high elevation sun has never been a problem for my tomatoes, but then I have not often grown in containers. I would never use shade cloth on tomatoes.

The problem here is more the cool nights, especially after the monsoons set in. It’s hard for them to set fruit when the temps are in the 40’s. So I have gone to indoor growing for my ‘maters. They grow 8 feet tall and put on loads of fruit in the little greenhouse that Sunny built. I’ve got about 75 plants in there , determinate and indeterminate, cherries and paste and huge heirlooms. I do also have some outside, in direct sun for 10 hours, but they do not do as well as the indoor ones by far. But my “indoors” gets about 10 hours of sun right now.

If your tomatoes are wilting in the sun, then they either have not enough water or they are being too babied and havent been hardened off enough to take the sun. Anything that spent most of its life in the shade would wilt when exposed to the high elevation sun here.

If your plants are not getting enough light in the middle of summer, I wonder how you will grow through the winter???? We grow tomatoes in a greenhouse in winter but it’s a stretch. You would definitely need grow lights and even then......questionable.

Enjoy your experiment!

Dixie

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I hear you, Pard, & mostly agree; however...

1. I don't care if they produce much. I have about 30 tomato plants (only a small portion were in the photos), with more seedlings popping up every week or so. Am shooting for almost yr-round tomatoes. No weeds, insects, birds, or wind indoors...except for a tiny black fly that's on the soil surface in most of my containers. Am killing that with much-diluted white vinegar.

2. Most of mine are vine, not bush 'maters; they're kinda spindly anyway. [As I said before, when I planted mostly Cherry tomatoes, I had no clue that Cherries mostly were indeterminate...or that "vine" tomatoes even existed:]

3. The closest thing I have to a control are the 'maters on the covered back porch...about 4 hrs of direct sun per day. So far, they're doing about the same as the indoor ones. Although, at this altitude (7600 ft), the sun is so intense that it plays hell with them...not beyond the wilting point, but right at it. I have to shade them as best I can, usually by moving them farther back, closer to the wall of the house. Even then, they need gobs of water to prevent wilting. When in direct sun outdoors, they get limp as a wet noodle...even with max water (but never over-watered). I don't know how my friend, Dixie, can have tomatoes in the sun for 8 hrs here...even if she has a shade cloth (or whatever they're called). Compared to say, 5,000 or 6,000 ft, the sun here blisters (not literally) plants like crazy.

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Healthy tomatoes require adequate light.I'm sorry to harsh your mellow, but the tomatoes are spindly,and will not produce much.If they were outside, in a window box, they could do so much better.Your nutrient sources are adequate for the low demands of low light plants, in a real world test, things could get interesting;)

We just canned 11 gallons of juice for my 12 Oz daily glass of mater juice.We can 50 gallons of juice made with a Victoria juicer powered by a 1/2" variable drill.The quality of the Roma tomatoes this year is like paste. It just piled up on the collector under the strainer.Very little juice, just solids.Making sauce will be easy this year:)

I wish you had an outside test for a control, for quality, size, and flavor.

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For anyone reading this Blog who may not know:
1. The "control" in an experiment is the NORMAL situation; and,
2. "Hardening" of plants simply is gradually acclimating them to a new habitat or situation. [So, for example, when moving seedlings outdoors, the first day leave them out for perhaps only an hour or two, the next day a bit longer, the day after that even longer, and so on.]

Happy Trails, and Be Well

In a previous post, I mentioned the use of a dog food bag (a small one) as a garden plant container; the bag should have a mylar lining, some other waterproof lining, or be made entirely of a waterproof substance. I now can report that such a bag (3.5 to 5.0 pounds of food, or so) works very well, especially for garlic or tomatoes. Punch holes in the bottom for drainage, fill the bag to about 2 inches from the top with potting soil & a little mulch, and place it in the bottom half of a gallon milk jug for secondary containment (to catch excess drainage). The 3.5 pound size fits perfectly into the bottom half of a milk jug. For larger bags, you'll have to find some other secondary containment. That setup gives you some nice container depth for a transplanted seedling. For garlic, I think it may work as the final container...am running a test to see if that might be true for tomatoes as well.
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IMPORTANT note regarding this particular blog---
We've been up & running here for about a month and a half. This is the seventeenth post, and thus far, there has been very little interest. Consequently, I'm forced to cut way back on posting here...just don't have the time for something that appears to be going nowhere. I'll still do it now & again, and I thank all of you from North America and Europe (primarily) who have been visiting.
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Within a week or so, I'll be posting a video on my YouTube Channel showing more plant containers (& their residents:)...including a few dog food or dog biscuit bags. Will let you know with a link.

Happy Trails, and Be Well

ContainerGardening

Monday, July 25, 2016

"PART 3: Container Gardening"

Friday, July 22, 2016

Loaded With Gardening Information

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Progress Report

Saturday, July 2, 2016

The Dog Food Small Bag & a Note Regarding This Blog