† Requires Javascript
Copyright © 1997-2009 Demand Media. All rights reserved.
|
| Page 1 of 4 | 1 |
2 | 3 |  Last |
Well, gardening is lots of hard work but is very rewarding. Lots of weeding today, cutting back suckers on tomatoes, cutting dead zuchinni leaves.
My tomatoes are finally turning colour. I've got at least 5 different varieties so I am anxious to see what I get first. Got more zuchinni and apparently a yellow squash got into the mix of my zuchinni seed because what I thought was a zuchinni plant is growing a baby yellow squash. How interesting.
This has been a good week. Hubby and I did the yard on Thursday night. He used the riding mower and weed wacker, I used the push mower and did around the house and flower beds. Also, under the pines. The kids disappeared for a while..how convenient...Pulled weeds around the flowers and got poison on my arm again...comes and goes... planted a few more freebies from a friend. Watered everything even the veggie garden. The tomato plants are doing better since started watering this week... Then my daughter came out to swim for a while and I sat with a cup of coffee and relaxed for a while. She didn't get out until around 8:30.
Onions are almost big enough to pull. Pulled a few to use with the potatoes we dug up.. Good Eats!!! Our potatoes didn't do so well this year. Not enough sun. We had to remove a few small trees to get more sun to the veggie garden...My oldest helped with that on Wed night...He will use the wood to heat with this winter, so no complete loss....
Then it rained yesterday about 1/2 inch but enough to wet everything. I cleaned house yesterday and got a few things caught up..Decided to work on my baby quilt last evening and I was up until 3 this morning. Time flies when I am sewing...finished the front patches and now need to put the lace on, then the backing...I am using quilted material on the back, not so good with putting the batting in myself...Next project is to make a patch quilted tote bag...My biggest problem is to never finish what I start and have too many projects unfinished. I have a few other crafts to finish and one is for a GG friend. She is waiting, patiently I hope....I am determined to finish the baby quilt before I start anything else... except maybe something in the garden, LOL!!!
Daughter made a great big mess in the kitchen this morning..Something to do with a science project from school this past year...She had water, cornstarch and food coloring...it is in a bowl in the refrigerator. But the floor was powdered and pink..she tried to clean it up and made the most beautiful pink powder all over the kitchen floor and lower cabinet doors...Her punishment was to clean the bathroom..she did a perfect job in there while I cleaned up the pink powder...she is better with a toilet brush than a dish cloth...
Well that is all for now, need to work on that quilt before I come up with a new idea.....
veggie
Out in the garden tonight planting a few saved tomato plants from the local grower. Real cheap (4 packs less than a dollar). Some are Roma and the others are Golden Girl. I now have about 40 tomato plants in the garden.. I definately will be making alot of spaghetti sauce this year. Mixing all the tomatoes together will make the perfect color and flavor. The Roma are best for thickening the sauce. My husband used to buy Prego before I was here and now he won't eat any sauce but mine... The only problem is that I cook to taste and I really can give the recipe to anyone. My mother-in-law doesn't understand how I can cook without recipes... A lot of experience over the years and I guess it is stuck in my head. I cook more home made than she does.....
My daughter helped a little in between her adventures with a planter, seeds and the last of my potting soil. She planted lettuce and parsley. Sat it in the garden so it could get watered with the rest of it. She wants to make a rabbit trap so our bunny can have a friend..Cute!!!!
I had to remove a few branches from the tree behind the garden for the sprinkler to hit all the veggies...It has grown over the garden and next week when I am off work on Tuesday my son is coming out to cut a few branches around the garden so the sun can get in better...We didn't have a good spot that gets sun all day to put our garden in...
Well, then it started to get dark and I had to get her out of the pool and clean up my garden tools. Turned on the sprinkler and now need to remember to turn it off before I go to bed. Everyone have a good night and keep gardening... Veggie
I heard that we got about 6" of rain in that last storm and everything is soggy, soggy, soggy. The grass needs to be mowed and all my plants are really waterlogged. Hubby tried mowing some today; the grass is dry enough, but the ground is just too saturated and he was tearing up the yard. He got about maybe 1/4 of the front yard done, but all of the back. It looks terrible! Thursday is supposed to be HOT and DRY, so maybe I can finish it then.
We've had two new calves born next door in the last few days and another one due any minute. Having never lived in the country before this is all very interesting to me. I love the little calves, they frolic around like little lambs, kicking up their heels and head butting their mothers like little goats. So doggone cute.
My next door neighbor is putting in a vegetable garden in a fenced off area of the cow pasture. I've never done a vegie garden, but most everyone here seems to grow one. And it seems like just everyone I know is doing one of those topsy turvey tomato thingees. I do love tomatoes - maybe I will try one of those. My grandfather was a farmer - he was a German from Russia and farmed his whole life - seems like I'd know a little about growing veggies, but I don't.
This past Sunday I planted up all the veggie beds! I learned a lot from last year's garden. The main thing I learned was that we could not get enough of certain crops. So, instead of planting a lot of different things, we decided to plant more of our favorites. Also, I am still using the companion planting system - primarily with marigolds, onions and nastursiums. I had to go to 4 different stores to find all the varieties. While at Lowe's, I found a Fireworks Clematis (Clematis Fuegos Artficiales) for $5 that I could not pass up, it looks to be purple and red striped and I planted it by some knockouts in the front window seat bed. I also picked up 2 annual potato vines. One went in the back sun bed in progress to act as a ground cover and the other one went in a container by the front steps.
So, I planted 10 tomatoes:
5 Eggplants:
Various Basils:
And, one token Mammoth Giant Jalepeno ( I love to make stuffed jalepenos)
I spread this all out between 3 beds and in the center of each bed I planted Mammoth Sunflowers and then planted a variety of items to grow up the sun flowers: sugar snap peas, Yard Long Asparagus Beans, Burpee's Tenderpod Garden Bean, Peas, Sequoia Purple Bean and Golden Wax Bean. I also sprinkled around marigold (crackerjack) and nastursium seeds (alaska mix).
In one bed I also started Emerald Green Artichokes. I interplanted them with Oriental Poppies and Lady Bird Poppies. Since these are perennial/self seeding items, this bed will be a permanent planting.
In my asparagus and strawberry bed, I stuck in someStuttgarter Onion Bulbs.
One of the three beds that got the tomatoes still have kale, lettuce and parsley that we have been enjoying since spring. I think they will die back as the tomatoes are ready to take over.
It was a fun day in the garden for all the ladies!
We are excited for our veggies!
Thanks to those of you who helped with my seedling crisis! I'm happy to say, the transplanted seedlings looked very happy this morning, so I transplanted the rest. I think they are going to be okay. Next time I'll know they need to go out in the greenhouse much sooner!
I ended up with 62 plants. I'll be giving them away, because even with expanding the garden area, there won't be room for all of them.
Some of the seedlings inside are poking through the soil. In a few days I'll be putting those out in the gh.
GL
I went to the greenhouse to check on my little ones, and was sad to find a few of them had perished!
According to package directions, the seedlings shouldn't be moved from the propagation trays until they have "two sets" of leaves. These only have one, but they've gotten so tall, they've begun to fall over, and the stems are breaking. I repotted half, and left half in the trays in an attempt to see which do better.
This is my first year to grow tomatoes from seed. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears! I don't want to lose any more!
Gay Lynn
Well, our results have been dismall! BER is still dominating both tub plants. The physical set-up has worked well, but we believe we have some serious nutriant block. The plants are not doing well and they are not growing out of it. Here is a shot of the netting and plant weave that has worked well. The tomatoes are hanging below the net is a perfect fashion. Just like my favorite move, " the Worlds Fastest Indian" there are some horrible failures along the way to pushing the envelope. Look at our unfortinate red tomatoes in this pic.
Yo
u can clearly see the big roma hybrids failing at a small size, but hanging nicely below the net. The overall plants are not hat much better.
The peppers has a serious Beastie infestation but I have my first bell pepper showing up.
p>
The spinach and basil are OK and i have a few seedlings for a friend that wants to start plants early in some Wall of Waters.
That's about it for now, maybe some better results as the weeks progress.
Larry
Just an introduction to start-- I am a midwest girl that grew up as an only child. Now I am a mom of seven children trying to figure out how to feed my family in an affordable way, and at the same time provide nourishment and goofy memories. So far... not so good. Well, I have certainly created enough goofy gardening memories for my seven, but have yet to yield a garden that feeds us. My first year was...well...my first year. I planted too much and had no idea what I was doing. I got in over my head by starting garden in a yard that wasn't ready. I had just moved in the winter before and the house had been bought on auction, having set for a very long time empty, not mowed, etc. I was very excited about gardening however, and so I pressed on. Imagine my horror to find an over-load of toads and frogs! I nearly retreated and gave up---but still, pressed on. Our corn was in 6 rows and I thought I had planted it right. But noticed it grew fine until one day it all decided to point North. Why? I still never figured that out. But our neighbor said his did the same thing. The following year (last year) I did better, but ended up with blight taking over my entire garden except for my herbs. I know that I planted things too close, and watered over head. But this year, I plan to above ground garden, and hopefully get some kind of a soaker system in. It all depends on my creativity in this area as well as my pocket book :)
I also home school so as I grow these plants, I hope to teach my children a few gardening lessons as well as patience. They will each have a section to nurture. With the exception of my oldest. She's 17 and absolutely hates to be outside. She has offered to remain in and wash and put away veggies as well as help with the major work of canning, which I have yet to try.
Where I live right now, we are having a few warm days, then snow, then warm, usual for Indiana. What I hope to do is start some seeds indoors and get a good start on my tomato plants. I am hoping for advice on when to start these seeds. I have purchased Burpee Organic Beefsteak. I thought about starting right away in my laundry room...but it gets warm and I am wondering if it gets too warm. the windows however seem perfect. They face the east and can plenty of light after the sun clears the top of our pines in our back yard. If anyone has any advice, I'd love to hear about when to start these seeds!
Nice to be here, to find a place to collect my "growing" thoughts!
The count at the moment for toamtoes is 11 on the Big Momma plant after removing three with BER. The iguana ate them and seemed pretty happy about it. The Big boy plant in the tub has three tomatoes, but the flowering sites are very prolific. 6-8 blossoms per site. That palnt was always about a week behind, but the slightly sloer growth and the non-roma variety may save us. The big boy in the regular pat has three toamtoes as well and is really cruising along nicely. Lot's of aphids on peppers and spinach, but some soap spray seems to be knocking down their numbers. The pepper plants are all blooming very well, with lot's of sites. I can't wait to see some of those flowers opening. Lot's of activity and good growth. I am startinf a feww early plants for a friend at work, but a few cuttings in the cloner are not producing roots very fast. They seem to wilt long before they root, even with rooting hormone on them. I may try misting them and keep the heater from blowing across the leaves. Picked up another orphan Orchid off the discount rack at Lowes. The spike with floer loactions was brocken off, but the plant it'sself looked great. $3 could not pass it up. I have a friend at work that says I will get totally consumed with orchids and will have 200 next year. Since I can not eat them and they don't make tomatoes, i am not sure I agree with his prediction. Happy Gardening.
Larry
I spent a tough week at my parents house last week as my father passed away. He has been ill and at 92 he had decided he was done. All 6 kids got to see him over the holidays and my kids got to spend some time. It is still always hard.
Got home after a week and found lots ( 15 tomatoes) and the plants looked pretty good. Then I saw BER ( Blossom End Rot ) I have only read about it on forums, never saw it on any of my patio or outdoor plants. Here is the sad picture.
There are 2-3 that look like they are affected on the Big Momma roma plant. Ther eare lots of reasons on the various forums, but fast growing plants are especially prone to this problem. We also might have overdone our potasium level with the corn cob ash. That is one of the listed triggers. Most plant swill grow out of it so we are hoping for the best. A foliar spray with epsom salts is a potential help to improve the calcium levels and distribution in the plant. The big boy so far does not seem affected. We will keep our fingers crossed. Here is an overall shot of both plants in the screen.
The spinach is really going wild.
We also had a real aphid infestation upon our return as well. They are covering the peppers that really look good and are starting to bloom. speaking of blooms, our orchid has three now and is looking very nice!.
Very sad week, some real set- backs in the indoor garden and a great loss for me and my family. We will get through this and continue on. Happy gardening everyone.
Larry
Yes this REALLY snuck up on me! I posted blossom pictures Sat and I found this tiny guy today.
I am completely stunned. We are only 6 weeks from germination. Now hold your breath that we do not get BER or something and the little guy falls off. Sorry for the rant, I am pretty excited.
Larry <
/p>
I got the camera card so we have pictures now. Let's start with blossom shots becauae that is what it is all about anyway. We moved our air pump supplying the air to the bubbler tubs to try a pseudo bumble bee trick on the flowers. This pump vibrates a lot and if it sits on the floor it will often move across to rest against a table leg and make an awfull racket. Holding it in my hand feeling the vibration we got an idea. Put it on the wire screen and vibrate the plants to polinate the flowers. It vibrates the whole screen slightly and you can see the tips of some leaves shaking at a high pitch. isn't bumble bee vibrations or electric tooth brush simulation supposed to work? It is a lot quieter too.
p>
Zach and I have both noticed the plants in the poultry sreen are pretty ugly. A lot of leaf curl spots and the leaves and generally not as pretty as the control big boy plant in the regular pot. We attribute this appearance and general stress to how hard we are pushing the plants. Now don't get me wrong, they are still growing like some form of mutant banshee, but they are ugly. A shot of phosphorus today and bloom set spray will only continue the mad dash. We are speculating that once the tomatoes start fruiting it may slow the aggressive growth a bit, which is a good thing. We do not want to fill the screen next month. Now the plants need to concentrate on fruiting.
The control plant is absolutely awesome. It is about a foot tall, super stocky and a real nice looking plant. We are supercropping it vigorously, even the suckers that we choose to keep.
A Stem shot with our good old # 2 pencil.
The rest of the plants are doing great as well. The spinach is awesome but it has developed a really weird problem. Every once in a while entire mature leaves are just gone. For no reason and part of the leaf stem is still there. We are not sure what the affliction could possibly be. Take alook at the pic and notice the empty leaf stems. Any ideas out there?
It is real weird. Oh just a minute, I believe we have isolated the problem.
If you can not tell he is smiling, I believe we have solved the mystery.
One of the other real succeses has been our Bougainvillia. It had 5% of it's leaves left right after I brought it inside from the patio. It has come back with a huge vengence.
We had the same problem with our Lantana Tree. These are annuals usually used for boarders etc. They can be trained and pruned to simulate a dwarf tree. Here is the flower and one of the overall plants. We may clone some of these over the next few months and use them for a border area in the yard. Build a cloner, I am sure we can squeeze that in this week-end.
Our basil and bell pepper starts are doing great too. The peppers have been super cropped and seem to do well with it.
p>
Basil
>
Sorry for the long update, but I did not want to leave anyone out and hurt their feelings. Enjoy and happy gardening.
Larry
Blooms are open today!
Is that a thing of beauty or what? 24 degrees theis AM, 11 below 0 this week and below 0 almost all day. The tomatoes are happy .
Larry
Larry
A big day today with the discovery of our first flowers. Upon closer inspection, all the crowns and suckers have flowers on them. Even the regular big boy in the typical pot has flowers starting. Now on to polination and maybe our first tomato. Wow!
Tomorrows agenda is a nice corn cob ash tea to really kick off the flowering cycle. Next week end Superbloom and the flowering hormone. This is pretty fun.
As an added benafit Orchids are blooming in the tomato room. Pretty nice
<
/p>
Larry
^first pinch the stem adjacent to the wire where the shoot has come up similar to the supercropping process. However, do not pinch and rotate and do not pinch from multimple directions as usual. You want to flatten the stem slightly so that it easily beds over the adjacent wire so that it looks like this:
^Obse
rve the flatness just above my left thumb. Next you will bend the plant over the adjacent wire as shown below. It should give quite easily due to the flattening process, if it doesn't, re-pinch and start again.
^bending^
Now that you have gotten the stem at a 90-ish degree angle along the "boarder" wire that separates the hole in the screen the shoot grew up through from the adjacent hole you are aiming for you can begin to pull it through like this:
^pulling^
Be careful during this step and bunch up the leaves so that they don't tear on the way through. If you did it right the hard part is over and the plant should now look like this: 
^neatly tucked beneath the screen^
Note how I've managed the leaves, pulling them through adjacent holes and letting them come to rest on top, the opposite of what is done to the plants that this technique was developed for. Now all that is left to do is poke the top of the crown through the next hole over, the third one involved in this process: 
^the completed weave^
Jobs a good'un. You may want to sort out the smaller leaves near the top of the crown and get them laying on top of the screen where they belong. Also, once the crown is in its final position I like to supercrop all of the horizontal stem section except for the very top node to lock the vine into place and toughen up the stem to avoid any abrasive effect that the wire might have on the skin. Now the crown will soon resume growth and turn upwards towards the light. Once it has gotten 3 or 4 inches tall we will repeat the process and the cycle will continue indefinitely. I hope this has been informative, good luck and happy gardening!
-Zach
1-5 Update
Holidays are over and it is back to work. The tomatoes are growing well and are starting to go through our screen. The supercropping and high light levels are still keeping the plants very stocky. This helps in our overall strategy as well. Short internodal gaps create several suckers below the screen and close to the root system which is favorable for good nutrient flow. The plan is to have the crown and 3 suckers per plant weaving in the poultry netting. All other suckers will be removed. Both plants already have 3 suckers and the main vine, so everything else is removed as it develops. Here are a couple of pictures showing the height above the netting and overall plant size.
^Can you believe the leaf on the big boy lower right it has to be a foot long^
We have such good vegitative growth, we will add a HPS light to our mix and start pushing the plants to flower. That is a combination of HPS light, flowering hormone and potasium and potash in our fertilizer. We will see if we can get a few of the yellow gems to show up over the next few weeks.
Larry
^ I added a week five picture above in comparison to week 4 just below. Gives a good perspective of growth in 6 days^
Well, here we are at week 4 and what a change. That is 4 weeks from germination! Wow! So far Big Boy and Fat Momma have been growing at a fairly even rate, slowly, methodically, biding their time until I wasn't looking. They've packed on more above-ground plant mass over this past week then they've generated during their first 3 weeks, really getting into their stride now. They where slightly dehydrated when we got back, it wasn't bad, they where just a little wilty which shows in the pictures. 
Yea 
Fat Momma has gone nuts, what where tiny little sucker starts when we left are now massive out-of-control shoots that have stretched well past the height of the main stem and begun to penetrate the screen. A little supercropping has halted the taller one in its tracks and it should assume a slower, stockier growth rate from here on out. Still, I am impressed with how thick it is without any help from me. This is the "learning" I have been alluding to, although it obviously hasn't helped the internodal gaps any, they're HUGE. 
^Momma's little suckers before we left^ 
^Momma's suckers today, holy crap!^
As impressive as this growth is, it has come at a price. Big boy's suckers haven't shown nearly the development of these and there is a reason for that: 
This is a shot of the stem leading up to Fat Momma's crown. Before we left I got a little over-zealous with the supercropping in a bid to make sure she didn't get too out of control whilst we where gone. As a result her main stem has made almost no progress other than packing on extra leaves and general girth. Happily it has scabbed over quite well and looks to have recently resumed development, so all is well. Because of the super-streachy suckers Momma has already penetrated the screen level and I have been able to pull a couple of leaves through as seen below: 
This is the very beginning of her training regiment, though it will still be a little while before the stems have grown long enough to go into their first step of the "weave"
Big boy on the other hand has stuck much more closely to what we're traditionally looking for. 
Big, bushy and with massive leaves, look at this thing! 
His stem has also caught up to Momma's quite nicely, even surpassing hers in some places: 
He was bigger than his twin brother last week, but now he's really pulling away! 
^A perfectly healthy plant, just fine by all standards, but absolutely puny compared to his twin brother.
Well, thats about it, I'm sure this update was more fun, more pictures and fewer boring explanations. Tune in next week to see new pictures and track their progress, though at the rate they're growing I may sneak in a few pictures before then. We'll have additional updates related to this grow soon including DIY remote ballast HPS lamps and the all-important potassium-rich corn-sob ash tutorial. See you then and happy gardening!
-Zach
The rest of the pants are doing very well also, our very sad basil has really made a come-back after a long stagnent period.
^Very Sad Basil Recovering^
The pepper plants that just had their first leaves are now in to a second and third pair. We are not sure if supercropping will work on them, but we have 3 per pot so we will guinee pig at leaste one to see how it does. We have both bell and jalapeno varieties.
^Jalapeno Starts^
The spinich looks so good the iguana is eying it already. He is only 4-5 feet away, so he probably wonders about the jungle growing around him. We watered when we got home and I was happy to see the humidity above 60%.
^ Spinach^
One other really impressive thing about our well lighted grow room is the plants that are just supposed to be wintering over.are going absolutely nuts! I was hoping not to kill them off and they look 100% better then when I brought them inside. One in particular I had given up for dead after it dropped 90% of it's leaves. Maybe somebody out there knows the name of this plant as I do not know and there is not a tag anymore. Besides the destinctive flower shown below, it has dark green waxy leaves and nice long pointy thorns. Any input from the experts out there?
^ The first person to ID wins the big Prize^
That is about all for now. Enjoy Larry
12-30 Update:
No ID on the plant yet
1-5 Update
Holidays are over and it is back to work. The tomatoes are growing well and are starting to go through our screen. The supercropping and high light levels are still keeping the plants very stocky. This helps in our overall strategy as well. Short internodal gaps create several suckers below the screen and close to the root system which is favorable for good nutrient flow. The plan is to have the crown and 3 suckers per plant weaving in the poultry netting. All other suckers will be removed. Both plants already have 3 suckers and the main vine, so everything else is removed as it develops. Here are a couple of pictures showing the height above the netting and overall plant size.
Since
We have such good vegitative growth, we will add a HPS light to our mix and start pushing the plants to flower. That is a combination of HPS light, flowering hormone and potasium and potash in our fertilizer. We will see if we can get a few of the yellow gems to show up over the next few weeks.
Larry
Greetings garden lovers! After much searching I believe I have found a community that will take some interest in our gardening exploits. I have been deeply disappointed by places like the gardenweb forums, which are quite large and have many members, but seriously lack long-term interest, pictures and grow diaries. They do have many expert growers over there, but they are all terribly entrenched in traditional convention and are not only unwilling to experiment themselves, but also reluctant to discuss experimental ideas. I have started this grow diary once already over there and am now officially moving it to GardenGuides. Along with being a lover of gardening I am quite a potography enthusiast and will be posting regular updates with lots of pictures, I hope many of you enjoy them. There are two people whom will be using the hautions11 username; myself, Zach, and my father Larry. We will specify who posts what for the sake of clarity. Now, on to the good stuff!
(the following was origionally posted by Zach on the Garden Web Forums on Sun, Dec 21, 08)
I do not see a lot of specific techniques or experiences documented on too many forums. I often see some interim pictures but rarely a complete grow. Please excuse me if this has been covered, but I have not been able to find good info up to this point. So let's get to the basics..... I have struggled even outside to grow good tomatoes in my very well shaded and heavily tree infested yard. Lots of attempts and a few minor successes. So fall came and went cold weather is upon ( 3 degrees F tonight in mid Indiana )us and I have the gardening itch. I have seen a variety of attempts with both florescent and HID lighting to grow tomatoes. I see some random pictures of very leggy 6'-7' tall plants with few (5-10) tomatoes on them.
Here is my set-up... a 3 season porch with lots of single pane glass. left to it's own devices low 20's or teens in cold weather. I often try to winter over patio plants to save the $100-$200 dollar annual investment. Perfectly south facing window that gets an honest 6-7 hours of direct sun. First problem is heat and then the light issue. Some cheap Lowes window shrink plastic covers and 3" air gaps solved the basic insulation problems. A small 500w heater keeps the room at appropriate 60 night to 70 daytime temps. Here is an overall shot of my set-up with a 400w metal halide light in place.
As you can see there are quite a few plants gathered around my single light source. With most of them I'm not looking for an aggressive growing situation, just some minor bushing and an increase in overall vigor so that they're ready to really take off when they go back outside in the spring. You may be wondering about the big weird-looking screen suspended above the rear plants. Its made out of poultry net mounted in a 3 by 6 foot PVC pipe frame. This would yield an 18 square foot growing area, but due to the 11 inch deep curve in it you end up closer to 23 feet. I will explain the exact function and methodology of this screen and its use at a later date when I've actually started to use it. The main attraction here is these guys.
To the left we have a Burpee Big Boy hybrid, which is a large Beefsteak type tomato. The the right is Burpee's Big Momma hybrid, which is a large Roma type. Both plants are just finishing their 3rd week of life in the tubs, 4 weeks from seed. You may note the somwhat unusual looking containers in which they are planted, especially if you noticed the blue aquarium air hose snaking out of the left one. Let me explain:
Inside the tubs is a unique growing medium consisting of coconut moss, vermiculite, pearlite and compost resting on a 4 inch bed of lava rock. The rock is completely submerged in a water bath. The depth of the bath is maintained by a side overflow drain which sits at exactly 4 inches from the bottom of the tub. This allows me to water them with a can the traditional way but maintains the water level and makes sure the medium above never gets "soupy". At the bottom of the bath rests a 12 inch aquarium bubbler wand that constantly injects the bath and the medium above it with air. This oxygenates the entire medium, encouraging the growth of beneficial aerobic bacteria and killing off pesky anaerobic bacteria; technically making it a hydroponic system. However, unlike most hydroponic rigs it is mostly compromised of organic matirial and is thusly capable of supporting a full-fledged Mycorrhizae fungal colony which lives in a symbiotic relationship with the tomato roots. The fungus chelates all of the minerals for the plants, prevents dehydration, balances the PH and acts as a secondary immune system to fight off unwanted intruders. All of this makes for furiously aggressive growth from the tomatoes, it is an optimum environment for nutrient uptake, water retention and oxygenation. I feel that it has advantages over both traditional soil growing and hydroponic setups; the best of both worlds. It is much lower maintenance than most common hydroponic setups as most of the nutrients are loaded into the medium up front. I use organic nutes almost exclusively: Blood meal, coffee grounds, wood ash, garden sulfur, fast-acting lime and an organic mix called Bio-tone starter plus (contains feather meal, grab meal, guano, greensand and bone meal). The medium contains two special additives: Soil Moist granules to help it retain moisture (very important due to the light spongy nature of the medium) and Hydro Organics' Mycorrhizae Super Pack (a form of dry fungus spores). Over the course of their lives the tomatoes will receive fish emulsion for a nitrogen boost, corn-cob ash for potassium (very important) and bloom burst (my only salt fertilizer, just one teaspoon per season) for phosphorous. Other than the dry mycorrhizae spores (which aren't completely necessary because the Bio-Tone mix comes pre-loaded with a small variety of beneficial spores) all of these materials are readily available to anyone from a variety of local sources. I have gotten everything from Lowes, Ace Hardware and my local pet store.
Aside from my fancy bubbler tubs and the screen I use one other special technique I have yet to see others use in tomato gardening: Supercropping.
This is a shot of Big Momma's stem, which is far bigger around than the #2 pencil I forgot to include in the shot for scale. It is positively monstrous for a 4 inch tall plant, bigger than stems I have seen on 12 inch plants from my local nursery. This is achieved through the technique I referred to as supercropping. Its a simple practice though it intimidates many growers who are frightened of the potential harm it could do. It takes a little practice but let me make this clear before I even explain it. Supercropping will not kill your plants. It won't, really, honest, I promise. All you do is once the sprouts have become established in their final grow medium, around the one week mark usually, take the stem section between your thumb and forefinger and squeeze gently while making a slight alternating twisting motion. There will be a tiny crushing sound and you will feel the phloem (the veins that carry things downstream towards the roots) give way and be crushed slightly. The plant will droop and look very sad and you will feel horrible, which makes it all the more difficult to continue doing this all up and down the main stem section. However, if you didn't wuss out, when you come back the next day the plant will have righted itself and the stem will have grown noticeably thicker. You must continue this practice as the plant grows new stem sections. If you are diligent this is the result:
You will note that the distances between each leaf (the internodal gaps) are very short, always less than an inch and in some places as little as a quarter of an inch. This is somewhat attributed to the metal halide lamp I'm using, but the extreeme degree to which it occurs is all down to the supercropping. You can see in the main stem section right above the two suckers where it tapers down significantly. This is a spot that I had not crushed yet so as to illustrate the difference in diameter between pinched and non-pinched stem sections. You will also note that where I hadn't crushed it is far and away the largest internodal gap on the plant. Diligent supercropping results in more vigorous plants that do a better job of holding themselves up and most importantly don't get to an out-of-control height in the limited space of indoor growing.
The lamp currently in place is a 400 watt Metal Halide high bay acquired from a local business currently in the process of replacing all of their HID lamps with more efficient T5 florescents. In a few weeks it will be swapped with a pair of 400 watt high pressure sodium lamps. I will write more on the lighting in the coming weeks as it becomes more pertinent. And now, some additional pictures:
^Fat Momma^
^Big Boy^
^Wide shot^
Dad was skeptical that my bubbler tubs would make an appreciable difference over a traditional pot, so I conducted an experiment. This is Big Boy in the foreground and in the background is a tomato plant that is identical to him in almost every way. It came from the same bag of seeds and was sprouted on the same day. They have been given the same nutrients, bathed under the same quality of light, treated with the same Mycorrhizae spores and even have roughly the same growing medium. The only difference between the rear plant and Big Boy is that Big boy lives in one of my bubbler tubs and the other lives in a traditional pot, yet the size difference between the two of them is huge.
Well, thats about it, I've covered most of the general things that I feel sets my grow apart from others and/or may interest you guys. Feel free to ask any questions about specifics, comment, criticize or congratulate at your digression. I'd be happy to answer any questions about construction or the acquiring of materials to anyone who would be interested in employing some of these techniques themselves, or to anyone interested in why exactly I think this way is better.
(UPDATE for December 25th 2008 by Larry)
I am a complete incurable scrounge and I freely admit it. When I was driving home for C-mass, I stopped along the way to pick up an Ebay treasure. It was a 400w digital HPS ballast and reflector($31). I looked it up and it is of German manufacture. After taking it apart this afternoon it appears very well made and has seen very limited if any use. I took the opportunity to use some lamp cord, a Lowes electrical box, a little solder and some shrink tubing to convert this to a remote ballast set-up. $4 later and an hour of work I was done. Don't give up on HID due to cost. With a little ingenuity you can avoid the $300 system.
Below is the top view of the reflector. This unit had nice rubber gaskets to seal all the joints for potential moisture in the grow area. The reflector unit, bulb and electrical box does not weigh more then 2-3 lbs, which makes it easy to hang. I will install a simple bracket as a hanger.
(UPDATE for December 27th 2008 by Zach)
Just for fun here are some shots of the other plants which are benefitting from scatter light off of the powerful HID lamp being used on the tomatoes:
^Furious Cat Nip!^
^Spinach for my brother Max's iguana Chuck^
The very saddest basil in the world :( We took too long getting it transplanted from the sprouting medium (which contains barely any nutrients) into the grow medium and as a result they turned yellow and stopped growing. You can now see them returning to life as the areas around the veins begin to green back up and the chlorophyll fills back in.
That's all for now, we'll have a nice photo update of the plants for you guys on monday when we get back from our holiday.
Dad update 12-28
I had to add another picture of some real stretchy basil that I found at my sisters house. Talking about internodal gaps between leaf sets, these gaps are 2 to 4". Now this plant has just gotten filtered light on a window sill, so it's condition is understandable. Good light REALLY helps.
Yes, it is that time again. How I love those first few and last few tomatoes. Fried.
That is MY way of fixin them :D
Either way, that has been something I have NOT had in some time as I no longer have space for tomato plants. I gave that space up to a smoker grill, lol. That is headed to storage here in about a week when our firepit gets here! FIREPIT! WOO!
I thought about asking around the farmers market, then got distracted, then I thought, hey...I COULD make room. And got distracted. Maybe I really did not want any? haha. Not so much. I did zucchini instead. I make them the same way as I do in that recipe and they were SO yummy. Guess maybe I should write that out. And Okra. I do my Jalapenos different, though. I can get okra, no problem, from the store around the corner (Heck, I can get White Truffel there!). Maybe what it is...is I just love FRIED stuff :D
† Requires Javascript
Copyright © 1997-2009 Demand Media. All rights reserved.
