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Post Hole Digger And Dry Farming Tomatoes This Season
This year I'll be trying an experiment in a portion of my tomato garden. Instead of double digging the whole patch, I'll simply use a post hole digger and dig down about two and a half foot deep where each plant will be placed. When I replace the soil, it will be nice and lose to this depth. This should allow the roots to deep! I will also give dry farming a try using Early Girl tomatoes which I understand lend themselves very well to this practice. Dry farming is said to cut size and yield a bit but gives the fruit a tremendous flavor as well as texture. I will use 6 -8 plants for this experiment. Has anyone else ever practiced or had any experience with dry farming? Any advice will indeed be helpful :) Rich from PA |
Post Hole Digger And Dry Farming Tomatoes This Season
Hi Brooklyn :) The post hole digger I have will dig to that depth in less than 5 minutes a hole. It also digs an 8" diameter hole. Most of the roots on plants I pulled from past seasons ever exceeded more than about 6" so hopefully they won't become root bound. The reason I call it an experiment is because this test will only be done on a very small portion of my plants as I stated, 6-8 plants. My research also shows that dry farming lends itself extremely well to clay soil which I have. The clay holds moisture and by withholding some water, you force the roots to go deeper and also your not washing nutrients from the soil near as much as normal watering. Rich |
Post Hole Digger And Dry Farming Tomatoes This Season
EVP MAN wrote:
This year I'll be trying an experiment in a portion of my tomato garden. Instead of double digging the whole patch, I'll simply use a post hole digger and dig down about two and a half foot deep where each plant will be placed. When I replace the soil, it will be nice and lose to this depth. This should allow the roots to deep! I will also give dry farming a try using Early Girl tomatoes which I understand lend themselves very well to this practice. Dry farming is said to cut size and yield a bit but gives the fruit a tremendous flavor as well as texture. I will use 6 -8 plants for this experiment. Has anyone else ever practiced or had any experience with dry farming? Any advice will indeed be helpful :) Rich from PA I sometimes grow tall spindly tomato seedlings (when I start them too early and they outgrow my lights) and I just set them really deep -- basically in a 5 or 6 inch post hole deep enough that only to top 2 sets of leaves are above ground. It works pretty well. The plants root all along the submerged stem. Putting the plants sideways in a trench (so the roots aren't so deep) might work better. Bob |
Post Hole Digger And Dry Farming Tomatoes This Season
On Apr 6, 8:40*am, (EVP MAN) wrote:
Hi Brooklyn :) *The post hole digger I have will dig to that depth in less than 5 minutes a hole. *It also digs an 8" diameter hole. *Most of the roots on plants I pulled from past seasons ever exceeded more than about 6" so hopefully they won't become root bound. *The reason I call it an experiment is because this test will only be done on a very small portion of my plants as I stated, 6-8 plants. *My research also shows that dry farming lends itself extremely well to clay soil which I have. The clay holds moisture and by withholding some water, *you force the roots to go deeper and also your not washing nutrients from the soil near as much as normal watering. Rich Looking for more comments on "dry farming". Water is so ****ing expensive here (So Cal coastal) that if I can save a little...! (Of course I do not water heavily after blooms appear; interested in how the "dry farming" concept would apply to my area (which is basically a desert, turned into a megalopolis (sp?) by imported water. HB |
Post Hole Digger And Dry Farming Tomatoes This Season
On 4/6/2011 7:32 PM, Higgs Boson wrote:
On Apr 6, 8:40 am, (EVP MAN) wrote: Hi Brooklyn :) The post hole digger I have will dig to that depth in less than 5 minutes a hole. It also digs an 8" diameter hole. Most of the roots on plants I pulled from past seasons ever exceeded more than about 6" so hopefully they won't become root bound. The reason I call it an experiment is because this test will only be done on a very small portion of my plants as I stated, 6-8 plants. My research also shows that dry farming lends itself extremely well to clay soil which I have. The clay holds moisture and by withholding some water, you force the roots to go deeper and also your not washing nutrients from the soil near as much as normal watering. Rich Looking for more comments on "dry farming". Water is so ****ing expensive here (So Cal coastal) that if I can save a little...! (Of course I do not water heavily after blooms appear; interested in how the "dry farming" concept would apply to my area (which is basically a desert, turned into a megalopolis (sp?) by imported water. HB When I lived in Central Texas, I had the best gardens ever once I figured out drip irrigation. It did take a couple of years for me to get smart.) I bought commercial farm "drip tape" with built-in emitters and i built a manifold for it using rigid plastic conduit (because it is UV stabilized and white PVC pipe is not.) It used very little water, and the water did not get on the foliage. I was even able to grow beets and broccoli and other cool-season crops in the 100+ degree summers. Now I live in Minnesota and have a much smaller garden, and I haven't figured out how to deal with the short growing seasons, marauding rabbits, and herbicide drift from the neighbors. Hot dry weather and bermudagrass were easy. ;-) -Bob |
Post Hole Digger And Dry Farming Tomatoes This Season
Hi Bob :) They figure the average veggie garden needs an inch or so of water each week. 2 1/2 gallons of water per plant is roughly that much needed inch. I put a rain gauge in my garden which helps me calculate how much water to give my plants each week. Last season I used soaker hoses but not again! My crop was great but since I'm on a water meter, my water and sewer bill was very high. This season I will be using an empty gallon milk jug and watering each plant by hand. Since I'm interested in experimenting with dry farming, this will give me much better control as to how much water each plant will get. The section of garden I plan to dry farm, will get less than 1/2 inch of water a week after the fruit sets. But then again mother nature also plays a big role in this. We could get a storm that dumps a huge amount of water on the garden in a very short period of time! Rich |
Not soaker hoses (was: Post Hole Digger And Dry Farming TomatoesThis Season)
On 4/6/2011 9:25 PM, EVP MAN wrote:
Hi Bob :) They figure the average veggie garden needs an inch or so of water each week. 2 1/2 gallons of water per plant is roughly that much needed inch. I put a rain gauge in my garden which helps me calculate how much water to give my plants each week. Last season I used soaker hoses but not again! My crop was great but since I'm on a water meter, my water and sewer bill was very high. This season I will be using an empty gallon milk jug and watering each plant by hand. Since I'm interested in experimenting with dry farming, this will give me much better control as to how much water each plant will get. The section of garden I plan to dry farm, will get less than 1/2 inch of water a week after the fruit sets. But then again mother nature also plays a big role in this. We could get a storm that dumps a huge amount of water on the garden in a very short period of time! Rich I think this might be the same brand drip hose that I used (but probably not the same company I ordered from) http://www.wateryourlandscape.com/dripirrigation/products/driptape I ran about eight or ten 100' lengths in parallel all at the same time easily from a water faucet -- and that's with a 15 psi pressure regulator followed by a valve to adjust the flow rate and give a working pressure of about 8 psi. It uses much less water than soaker hoses, and it delivers about the same amount of water from one end of the row to the other. Soaker hoses dump most of the water at the head end of the row, and the far end gets starved. -Bob |
Post Hole Digger And Dry Farming Tomatoes This Season
Higgs Boson wrote:
On Apr 6, 8:40 am, (EVP MAN) wrote: Hi Brooklyn :) The post hole digger I have will dig to that depth in less than 5 minutes a hole. It also digs an 8" diameter hole. Most of the roots on plants I pulled from past seasons ever exceeded more than about 6" so hopefully they won't become root bound. The reason I call it an experiment is because this test will only be done on a very small portion of my plants as I stated, 6-8 plants. My research also shows that dry farming lends itself extremely well to clay soil which I have. The clay holds moisture and by withholding some water, you force the roots to go deeper and also your not washing nutrients from the soil near as much as normal watering. Rich Looking for more comments on "dry farming". Water is so ****ing expensive here (So Cal coastal) that if I can save a little...! (Of course I do not water heavily after blooms appear; interested in how the "dry farming" concept would apply to my area (which is basically a desert, turned into a megalopolis (sp?) by imported water. HB What would be your average annual rainfall? Is it very seasonal or spread throughout the year? David |
Post Hole Digger And Dry Farming Tomatoes This Season
Here in my area of PA, we get an average of 41" a year. I have read that dry farming lends itself well to any area that gets 20" or more precipitation yearly. Rich |
Post Hole Digger And Dry Farming Tomatoes This Season
In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote: Higgs Boson wrote: On Apr 6, 8:40 am, (EVP MAN) wrote: Hi Brooklyn :) The post hole digger I have will dig to that depth in less than 5 minutes a hole. It also digs an 8" diameter hole. Most of the roots on plants I pulled from past seasons ever exceeded more than about 6" so hopefully they won't become root bound. The reason I call it an experiment is because this test will only be done on a very small portion of my plants as I stated, 6-8 plants. My research also shows that dry farming lends itself extremely well to clay soil which I have. The clay holds moisture and by withholding some water, you force the roots to go deeper and also your not washing nutrients from the soil near as much as normal watering. Rich Looking for more comments on "dry farming". Water is so ****ing expensive here (So Cal coastal) that if I can save a little...! (Of course I do not water heavily after blooms appear; interested in how the "dry farming" concept would apply to my area (which is basically a desert, turned into a megalopolis (sp?) by imported water. HB What would be your average annual rainfall? Is it very seasonal or spread throughout the year? David 15" and very seasonal. Used to be you could tell when it was spring, because the tumble weeds would be in bloom. Semi-arid is the descriptor. Without desicating Ownes Valley (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Valley and the movie China Town), and the Colorado River there would be a very much smaller Los Angeles. Presently, sufficient water is being diverted from the Sacramento River to degrade the environment so that people in simi-arid southern California can grow lawns, fill swimming pools, and hose-off their sidewalks. "The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow." - Anon -- - Billy Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. - Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953 http://wn.com/black_panther_party http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vN0--mHug |
Post Hole Digger And Dry Farming Tomatoes This Season
EVP MAN wrote:
Here in my area of PA, we get an average of 41" a year. I have read that dry farming lends itself well to any area that gets 20" or more precipitation yearly. Rich That rainfall seems rather on the high side of dry land farming, I would expect that if you can save water for dry spells and mulch heavily in summer you wouldn't have to take any special measures. My rainfall is not much more than that (about 46" PA) and the district was used for dairying and I can run very high stocking rates for horses. Why are you going to this trouble? David |
Post Hole Digger And Dry Farming Tomatoes This Season
Hi David, Dry farming or withholding water is said to give you a tomato with much better texture and superior flavor. It won't be any trouble at all for me as it's only an experiment I'm going to try using 6-8 plants. The rest of my patch will be watered as normal :) Rich |
Post Hole Digger And Dry Farming Tomatoes This Season
EVP MAN wrote:
Hi David, Dry farming or withholding water is said to give you a tomato with much better texture and superior flavor. It won't be any trouble at all for me as it's only an experiment I'm going to try using 6-8 plants. The rest of my patch will be watered as normal :) Rich I suspect that is from growing them with limited water and the hole is not important. D |
I think this is a good idea. Tomatoes give off arial roots just above the soil. If after planting the tomatoe plant and letting it establish, you then fill in so that the arial roots are covered then this is said to produce heavier crops
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