On 1/31/2015 9:45 AM, Terry Coombs wrote:
George Shirley wrote:
On 1/30/2015 5:58 PM, Terry Coombs wrote:
Well , I've got lots of tomato seedlings now ... and two in most
cells . When do y'all thin your seedlings ? I can do it now , but
then if one dies ... or I can do it when they're bigger , and the
dominant one is more apparent . That approach however uses more of
the finite amount of nutrients available , and maybe thinning now
will make one that wouldn't have been dominant actually be stronger
than ... Decisions decisions !

If there were two or more seeds planted in the same cup I just pinch
off all but the sturdiest seedling. Don't have enough space to plant
a lot of tomato plants. The plants themselves need plenty of room
around here and I keep them pruned so that sunshine gets into the
plant.
On occasion I have transplanted extra seedlings from a group and
mostly they succeeded but not as well as the primary. And, like you
said, the secondaries suck up all the energy for the primary.

And this morning I snipped all but the strongest in those that had
multiples . The saved Romas from last year germinated better than expected ,
some cells had up to 4 seedlings ! I'm seeing some action now on the peppers
, my serranos are coming up though none of the rest are yet .

I used to cross hot peppers to get more heat but, as I've aged, the heat
doesn't agree with me anymore. Only grow sweet chiles and a bunch of
those. We like Gypsy, Giant Marconi, Carmen (a poblano type that gets
huge) and the occasional Aji Limon de Peru, a hot yellow that doesn't
bother my innards as much as others. I've been growing the Aji's for
over 20 years, traded with a gentleman in Lima, Peru for the seeds back
before it was banned. Had some nice hot ones from a fellow in Bulgaria,
sort of a hot Longhorn, right tasty. I miss those days sometimes and
then I don't due to worldwide terrorism. Never could eat the really hot
habs though, did not agree with my digestive system and hurt on both
ends. G

Once upon a time on usenet Terry Coombs wrote:
Well , I've got lots of tomato seedlings now ... and two in most
cells . When do y'all thin your seedlings ? I can do it now , but
then if one dies ... or I can do it when they're bigger , and the
dominant one is more apparent . That approach however uses more of
the finite amount of nutrients available , and maybe thinning now
will make one that wouldn't have been dominant actually be stronger
than ... Decisions decisions !

Here's another decision that I haven't got around to experimenting with
yet.....

What if you're actually pulling out the plants that're slower to grow
vegatively but are better at fruiting when you remove the smaller ones?
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)

On 2/2/2015 2:19 AM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet Terry Coombs wrote:
Well , I've got lots of tomato seedlings now ... and two in most
cells . When do y'all thin your seedlings ? I can do it now , but
then if one dies ... or I can do it when they're bigger , and the
dominant one is more apparent . That approach however uses more of
the finite amount of nutrients available , and maybe thinning now
will make one that wouldn't have been dominant actually be stronger
than ... Decisions decisions !

Here's another decision that I haven't got around to experimenting with
yet.....

What if you're actually pulling out the plants that're slower to grow
vegatively but are better at fruiting when you remove the smaller ones?

It's pretty much impossible to know which plants will fruit the most
unless you have ESP with plants. Maybe a Zen experience with tomatoes? G

Gardening, at best, is a hit and miss experience in my opinion. You can
do everything right and the damned plants won't grow properly or the
weather changes to bad, or bugs and birds eat everything you plant, or
the dog digs them up. Basically gardening is a crap shoot but if you do
the best you can most times you are rewarded. Wife and I gardened with
our parents at a very early age and here we are in our mid-seventies
still trysting with the garden gods. Just go for it.

George Shirley wrote:
....
Gardening, at best, is a hit and miss experience in my opinion. You can
do everything right and the damned plants won't grow properly or the
weather changes to bad, or bugs and birds eat everything you plant, or
the dog digs them up. Basically gardening is a crap shoot but if you do
the best you can most times you are rewarded. Wife and I gardened with
our parents at a very early age and here we are in our mid-seventies
still trysting with the garden gods. Just go for it.

learning and trying things are both important, but
i like to also help the overall production from the
gardens by increasing diversity in my patches.

i divide my plantings into smaller plots and then
hope the critters, bugs and diseases don't get them
all. usually they don't.

sometimes things do go wrong, but you can sometimes
cut your losses and replant with something else if
you notice in time.

experimenting with different systems of production
can be good too. like the ways i've been trying the
strawberries in different gardens and seeing how they
do when mixed with other plants. i'm now well past
the point where critters can eat them all -- they may
raid a garden and eat some of the berries but they
can't seem to find them all. i still have plenty when
i go out to pick. if i'd planted them in more formal
rows and there weren't any surrounding plants to
provide some cover i think the critters would also
have it much easier to find the fruits.


songbird

Once upon a time on usenet George Shirley wrote:
On 2/2/2015 2:19 AM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet Terry Coombs wrote:
Well , I've got lots of tomato seedlings now ... and two in most
cells . When do y'all thin your seedlings ? I can do it now , but
then if one dies ... or I can do it when they're bigger , and the
dominant one is more apparent . That approach however uses more of
the finite amount of nutrients available , and maybe thinning now
will make one that wouldn't have been dominant actually be stronger
than ... Decisions decisions !

Here's another decision that I haven't got around to experimenting
with yet.....

What if you're actually pulling out the plants that're slower to grow
vegatively but are better at fruiting when you remove the smaller
ones?
It's pretty much impossible to know which plants will fruit the most
unless you have ESP with plants. Maybe a Zen experience with
tomatoes? G
Gardening, at best, is a hit and miss experience in my opinion. You
can do everything right and the damned plants won't grow properly or
the weather changes to bad, or bugs and birds eat everything you
plant, or the dog digs them up. Basically gardening is a crap shoot
but if you do the best you can most times you are rewarded. Wife and
I gardened with our parents at a very early age and here we are in
our mid-seventies still trysting with the garden gods. Just go for it.

I'm a couple of decades younger than you but have a similar experience.
Actually my parents started cutting back on food gardens when I was young
(both employed so less time coupled with the rise of the supermarkets.) and
so I took over. I've always believed that a person should be part of nature,
not seperated from it by plastic bags and cling film.

My thinking about which tomato plants might yield better not necessarily
being the fastest starters comes from my recent involvement in grafting
dwarf fruit trees. I've been keeping my own tomato seeds for years and, for
the most part it's been a success. However there are always plants that do
so much better than others. Being an invalid and seeing a year-on-year
reduction in mobility recently I've been thinking about how best to grow
less tomato plants but better ones.

As it is for the past few years I've started plants inside very early, put
out maybe six and taken cuttings from them. Then, as they start setting
fruit discarding the cuttings from the worst fruiting plants and only using
cuttings from the best. (They fruit so much faster from cuttings than they
do from seed so it's not like you need to live in the tropics to do this.)
However recently I've started wondering about my selection process for the
starting six, as per my previous post.

I've been playing with LEDs and a couple of planted aquariums over last
winter (I'm in the southern hemisphere) and am thinking of trying to keep
cuttings of the best couple of tomato plants going through the winter, just
enough light and nutrient to keep them alive at first then boost both to
start extra cuttings pre-spring. Select plants for disease resistance and
fruit production this summer and clone them as we've been doing with fruit
trees for hundreds of years.

Alas, as you say above it's a crap shoot at times and this spring / summer
in NZ has been crazy so it's hard to judge which plants will be worth
keeping through winter. Normally at this time of the year I'd be giving
excess tomatoes to neighbours already but this year I've only had one tomato
sandwich and the rest of the fruit is still very green.

This summer I've had success bud grafting peaches, nectarines and several
citrus varieties, mostly on dwarfed trees in pots as I rent and even though
I've been in this house for over a decade I don't see the point in
developing a home orchard in-ground. It's got me thinking... I wish there
was a plant that would serve as a perrenial rootstock for tomatoes, one that
I could graft new scion 'wood' to each spring so I don't loose weeks of
potential fruiting time on growing roots. I love tomatoes but refuse to
buy the fake ones sold in supermarkets.
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)

Once upon a time on usenet ~misfit~ wrote:
[snip]
This summer I've had success bud grafting peaches, nectarines and
several citrus varieties, mostly on dwarfed trees in pots as I rent
and even though I've been in this house for over a decade I don't see
the point in developing a home orchard in-ground. It's got me
thinking... I wish there was a plant that would serve as a perrenial
rootstock for tomatoes, one that I could graft new scion 'wood' to
each spring so I don't loose weeks of potential fruiting time on
growing roots. I love tomatoes but refuse to buy the fake ones
sold in supermarkets.

I'm thinking that a tamarillo plant might serve the purpose of a perrenial
tomato rootstock. I used to grow them but gave up due to mobility issues and
space constraints, gave the plants to goodwill. I never thought of grafting
tomatoes onto them then. Now I see a neighbour has one growing, I might have
to wander over and ask if I can take a cutting of it.
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)

In article
"Terry Coombs" writes:
Well , I've got lots of tomato seedlings now ... and two in most cells .
When do y'all thin your seedlings ? I can do it now , but then if one dies
... or I can do it when they're bigger , and the dominant one is more
apparent .

Reading the thread, I seem to be an outlier.

I typically start tomatoes in 4" pots (2" for everything else) with
about 3 seeds per pot (4 if the seed is extra old). I thin (by
cutting) down to 2 plants sometime after 2-3 sets of true leaves.
I leave them as 2 plants until after I set them out.

Once I see what has survived the great outdoors (and any freak cold
spell), I thin to one plant.

Last year's yield was pretty good despite leaf spot. Now that I
know how many ways I brought that on myself, I hope for a less
stressful season this year.

I should have planted the tomato seeds by now, but haven't. Hopefully
this weekend.

--
Drew Lawson | What you own is your own kingdom
| What you do is your own glory
| What you love is your own power
| What you live is your own story

@drew
Last year's yield was pretty good despite leaf spot. Now that I
know how many ways I brought that on myself,

how did you bring that on?
Love the signature btw.

@misfit your experience with tomatoes from cuttings is interesting. It seems like this may only be possible in temperate, long season climates. Every winter I envy my NZ friends, one buddy sends me photos with surfboards and santa hats every christmas. I know what you mean about fake tomatoes at the grocery, I shed a little tear every time I pay money for a mater.

In article
Michael Evangelista writes:
@drew
Last year's yield was pretty good despite leaf spot. Now that I
know how many ways I brought that on myself,

how did you bring that on?

I did the opposite of just about every "how to prevent leaf spot"
list you can find.

While I've been gardening for decades, I also moved around a lot.
So this is the first garden I've had in the same place for over 3-4
years. Sloppy habits caught up with me. The relevant one is that
I've been lazy about fall cleanup. I'd leave debris on the plant
cages and let winter weather strip it off. That made a great refuge
for spores.

Also, while I mulched the bulk of the garden early, I left the space
right around the tomatoes bare until they got some height. So
infection from the soil was easier.

I wanted the tomatoes to have the best chance, so the prior year's
compost pile went where I was planning to plant them. And the pile
wasn't fully finished when I spread it in.

I also probably had the cages closer together than I should have,
so plant-to-plant spreading was easy. (This was definitely part
of the mildew problem on the cucumbers.)

On top of all that, I mistook the leaf spot for sun scald. So I
didn't start treating it until it was established for weeks.


This time I cleared the cages in the fall, and gave them a pass
with the propane wand for good measure. I will probably flame them
again in the spring, just for paranoia. And I intend on having a
load of mulch on hand when I set the plants out, so spores in the
soil don't get splashed.


--
Drew Lawson And I know there's more to the story
I know I need to see more
I need to see s'more, hear s'more
feel s'more. I gotta be s'more

Once upon a time on usenet Michael Evangelista wrote:
@misfit your experience with tomatoes from cuttings is interesting.
It seems like this may only be possible in temperate, long season
climates. Every winter I envy my NZ friends, one buddy sends me
photos with surfboards and santa hats every christmas. I know what
you mean about fake tomatoes at the grocery, I shed a little tear
every time I pay money for a mater.

Hi Michael. I think that it's likely worth trying growing toms from cuttings
removed from your earliest plants even with a shorter growing season.
Nothing to lose but a bit of time and potting soil. (Or with my current
method Jiffy peat pellets.)

Tomato plants have two distinct growing phases dictated mainly by the age of
plant. The first is the vegatitive phase; The new plant grows leaves and
gets up to about a foot and a half or more over a month to six weeks before
entering the fruiting phase. The beauty of using laterals from a plant
that's already in the fruiting phase for cuttings is that the plants will
start fruiting right from ground level when planted - they don't go through
a vegatitive stage so you save a month or more compared with growing from
seed.

If your growing season is shorter than mine you don't need to wait to select
cuttings from the best plants if you have good seed. Just take the first
lateral from above the first flower cluster as soon as it's at least three
inches long. Using the peat pellets I use cutting three or four inches long,
strip any leaves from the bottom half then trim leaves on the upper half so
that I'm cutting the larger leaves back by half. Then I just leave the
cutting in it's peat pellet sitting in a quarter-inch of water out of direct
sunlight.

You can do the same using a small pot and a bit of seed raising mix. However
I like the peat pellets as you just plant the whole thing in the ground
which maximises growing time by eliminating transplant shock. If I'm not
using peat pellets then I go with a bigger cutting, up to six inches. I've
seen people use even bigger cuttings but they tend to go through a wilting
stage and, unless you're growing them in a 'humidity dome' are no faster
than the smaller ones as the take longer to be ready to plant out.

Often by the time the donor plant's first fruit is filling out the cutting
is in the ground, producing it's first flower bunch and is six to eight
inches tall. That should work for all but the very shortest growing season
and I find it easier than growing more plants from seed. I have a 99.9%
success rate with the cuttings 'taking'. Tomatoes are so vigourous they
don't need much coaxing at all to grow from cuttings.

As I was telling my friend the other day; Supermarket tomatoes varieties are
chosen for several things. Mainly resistance to bruising and 'holding' well
between picking and reaching the shelves. Secondly most important thing is
appearance - shoppers buy with their eyes. Lastly if they can sit on the
shelves for a few days without going soft or rotting then they're deemed to
be a good tomato. Nowhere in that equation is taste or nutritional value.

The last few times I've been silly enough to buy some over the last couple
of years I've thrown them out after trying one. All of which explains why,
when I had a good crop last year and gave kilos of them away to neighbours
(I only grow slicing tomatoes these days) they all came back to me saying
how delicious they were and asking my 'secret'. It seems that a lot of
non-gardening people have forgotten what a tomato should taste like.

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)

Absolutely. I hated tomatoes as a kid. Then I realized i wasn't actually eating tomatoes all that time : )

Thanks for the info about the cuttings, right now my tomatoes are about 1" tall so i have a while to read and learn. I've had great success in our backyard garden with tomatoes and peppers every year, but haven't paid much attention to the plants, more of a set and forget mentality. Now I'm getting more into different ways of trellising, cutting the plants, determinate vs. indeterminate, so much more to learn!

Once upon a time on usenet Michael Evangelista wrote:
Absolutely. I hated tomatoes as a kid. Then I realized i wasn't
actually eating tomatoes all that time : )

Thanks for the info about the cuttings, right now my tomatoes are
about 1" tall so i have a while to read and learn. I've had great
success in our backyard garden with tomatoes and peppers every year,
but haven't paid much attention to the plants, more of a set and
forget mentality. Now I'm getting more into different ways of
trellising, cutting the plants, determinate vs. indeterminate, so
much more to learn!

Do youself a favour - remove a lateral from a tomato plant and stick it into
moist.... anything really! Seedraising mix is good but potting mix will do,
a container of ~200ml size is enough to start a cutting. Just make sure it's
not in direct sunlight but gets reasonable diffuse light and trim back any
large leaves so it doesn't demand water that the nonexistant roots can
supply. Before very long roots will form to fill that need for water and
nutrients and you'll have a new plant.

You can do the same with the peppers, they grow well from cuttings too. Not
as well as the tomatoes so maybe try those first?

Best of luck with your gardening endeavours.
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)