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Fresh tomatoes!!

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TrustAndObey

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Relatives have given my family so many great garden vegetables this week, and I'm livin' large....but my own little garden isn't doing so well, so I need to ask the advice of some of you experts on here.

I decided to start easy (or so I thought) with three tomato plants.

They're in very rich dirt (compost pile dirt), I water them every day that it doesn't rain and they're growing really tall. They also get 6 hours of sunshine a day which is what the instructions said they needed.

They're really healthy LOOKING but I have TWO, count 'em TWO, green tomatoes growing out of one plant. The other two are producing nothing and they look just as healthy.

When I bought the plants they were about up to my knees, now they're even with my head.

What's the secret to growing tomatoes?

If I can get the hang of this I plan on having a huge garden next year, with tons of different veggies.
 

honorthesabbath

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WOW--I have no idea whats wrong with those plants.

The problem that I have here is mold. I was told by the nursery that the mold was in the soil so this year I just planted 2 plants in planters, with fresh new siol--and now it looks like mold is invading again--ggrr.

Then to top that off--we got some strong winds yesterday--I looked out and saw both my planters had been blown of the table and were lying on the ground and THREE tomatoes broken off!!!!!! GGRRRRR again.--lol

I would have told you to add organic fertilizer--but since they are in composted ground--I'm at a loss.
 
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djconklin

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I was wondering about their "health" in a different way: that tall and only two tomatoes? Do they glow in the dark?

When I was very young my dad bought some plants--he didn't know how many plants came in a "flat" so he bought a couple of them! So, we drove out to our grandmother's place and planted them out in the cow pasture. Sometime later we had to go back out there to pick all the tomatoes that had grown. For being a buncjh of suburbanites who knew nothing about farming/gardening like that, and not watering theme weekly or so we did quite good--and the cows didn't nibble on the plants either!

On a different thread I'll tell you about the cows. They were something else. My grandma named them!
 
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RC_NewProtestants

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Two problems I can think of.
1. too much fertilizer (mainly nitrogen). If it is really rich soil they will put out a lot of vegetation and little fruit. Stressing the plants can actually cause them to set fruit sooner.
2. the type of tomato plants. In the Northwest I have never had good production of beefsteak type tomatoes. they grow the way you are describing huge plants with hardly any tomatoes.
 
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TrustAndObey

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The soil we used was from years of vegetable scraps, etc and it was VERY rich. I won't be a bit surprised if these plants grow a foot over my head or more.

My dad put wire around the outside of them to keep invisible deer away, even though we have a dog, but I think we're going to have to stake them soon on top of that.

I grew up on a farm, David, so I'm totally familiar with naming farm animals. We had goats, cows, and a couple of horses. I named all of them.
 
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honorthesabbath

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Ahh--it's ALWAYS the soil isn't it.

Just kidding, in natural healing there is a book called "The soil or the seed"--in it the author bashes the 'germ theory'.

Even Jesus made reference to Word falling into different qualities of SOIL! (One could get tempted to believe in predestination on that one--hehe)
 
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Mankin

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TrustAndObey said:
Fried squash is one of the greatest things in the world! Even my 13-year-old was impressed with how good they were.
Click to expand...
Seriously? I'll have to try it. Potatoes and boiled corn on the cob with butter smeared on. Mmmm. Sounds delicious right now.
 
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goodearth

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I am no expert but sounds like to much nitrogen. I am not positive on the fix so do some research but I want to say that pot ash helps balance when nitrogen is to high. Problem is that it takes months to make a difference. For now just let it be and see what happens. We planted about 16 Better Boy Tomato plants and have gotten some of the best tomatoes ever. Better Boy generally are not the best but these were really good. What I did was in the fall before the freeze we tilled up the area we wanted to plant and covered it with Oak leaves. Oak is important as other types of leaves are to acidic. Let that sit all winter then after the last frost we till the leaves into the soil and add a bunch of Horse Manure. Horse being the key here as it has more Nitrogen than Cow. Goat would be even better if you have access to goats. We also added two five gallon buckets of Chicken Manure. We tilled all that in really well and let it rest for a week or two. Then we pull weeds and add Lime in quantities instructed on the bag of lime and till that in and let it rest for about a month. Then we plant our tomato plants. The plants were about a foot high when we put them in the ground. Put our tomato cages around them and put a mulch around the rest of the bed to suppress weed growth. Then you wait and make sure they have water and pull the weeds. You don't want to over water so the soil should dry out some before your next watering. When watering you don't want to wet down the leaves but water directly to the soil. Also tomatoes love new soil so do not plant in the same garden bed every year. Rotate your crops even in a small garden. Again I am not an expert but this is basically what I have read and tried.
 
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