Fran Farmer wrote:
On 21/04/2015 8:10 AM, Hypatia Nachshon wrote:
On Sunday, April 19, 2015 at 3:09:32 PM UTC-7, Fran Farmer wrote:
On 19/04/2015 5:52 PM, Hypatia Nachshon wrote:
On Saturday, April 18, 2015 at 7:48:05 PM UTC-7, Fran Farmer wrote:
On 19/04/2015 5:11 AM, wrote:
On Saturday, April 18, 2015 at 10:20:23 AM UTC-5,
wrote:
[...]
Fran, would this work (paper towel) for poppy (flower) seeds? The
instructions are to mix the TINY seeds with sand before planting. I
could go down to the beach & get some sand, but am intrigued
with the "bits of paper towel. Workable?

I don't think so Higgs. The paper towel works with the tomato seeds
because they dry onto the towel after the fermented goo has been
washed off. It's easier to tear up the towel than to try to peel
off the seeds. I think that poppy seeds added to sand and spread
like carrot seed would work if you wanted your poppys in a row but
otherwise I'd just broadcast the seed where you want it to grow.


*&^%$#@$%^&*!

Yet another case of my not thinking outside the +&*^$@#%$* box!

Who, in fact, ever SAID the &%@#%^*&$poppies have to be in a row!

Sigh!

Thanks, Fran.


Glad to be of assistance:-)) Sometimes, for some reason, the bleeding
obvious escapes us all. I had such a moment a few days ago.

I have a strange feeling that you two are replaying a conversation you a
year or two ago.

--
David

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Corporate propaganda is their
protection against democracy

In article
Boron Elgar writes:

I am a devoted composter and have gotten great "volunteers" from the
winter's store-bought tomato leavings that have contained seeds in
what has gotten spread on beds come spring.

The trip through the compost isn't even needed. I get a lot of
volunteers from unnoticed dropped fruit in the garden. I try not
to let those survive long, since I try to move the tomatoes around
year-to-year. It lessens the chances of disease problems.


--
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

On Monday, April 20, 2015 at 4:47:00 PM UTC-7, David Hare-Scott wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:
On 21/04/2015 8:10 AM, Hypatia Nachshon wrote:
On Sunday, April 19, 2015 at 3:09:32 PM UTC-7, Fran Farmer wrote:
On 19/04/2015 5:52 PM, Hypatia Nachshon wrote:
On Saturday, April 18, 2015 at 7:48:05 PM UTC-7, Fran Farmer wrote:
On 19/04/2015 5:11 AM, wrote:
On Saturday, April 18, 2015 at 10:20:23 AM UTC-5,
wrote:
[...]
Fran, would this work (paper towel) for poppy (flower) seeds? The
instructions are to mix the TINY seeds with sand before planting. I
could go down to the beach & get some sand, but am intrigued
with the "bits of paper towel. Workable?

I don't think so Higgs. The paper towel works with the tomato seeds
because they dry onto the towel after the fermented goo has been
washed off. It's easier to tear up the towel than to try to peel
off the seeds. I think that poppy seeds added to sand and spread
like carrot seed would work if you wanted your poppys in a row but
otherwise I'd just broadcast the seed where you want it to grow.


*&^%$#@$%^&*!

Yet another case of my not thinking outside the +&*^$@#%$* box!

Who, in fact, ever SAID the &%@#%^*&$poppies have to be in a row!

Sigh!

Thanks, Fran.


Glad to be of assistance:-)) Sometimes, for some reason, the bleeding
obvious escapes us all. I had such a moment a few days ago.

I have a strange feeling that you two are replaying a conversation you a
year or two ago.

--
David

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Corporate propaganda is their
protection against democracy

You may be right!

Though it was assumed that I am perfect (by whom?) I do have this vulnerability where I go beserk when I realize I've missed the obvious, or have been thinking in established patterns. I, who preach critical thinking on every street corner !!!

Must calm down...tomorrow.

HB

On Wed, 22 Apr 2015 14:38:34 +0000 (UTC), lid (Drew
Lawson) wrote:

In article
Boron Elgar writes:

I am a devoted composter and have gotten great "volunteers" from the
winter's store-bought tomato leavings that have contained seeds in
what has gotten spread on beds come spring.

The trip through the compost isn't even needed. I get a lot of
volunteers from unnoticed dropped fruit in the garden. I try not
to let those survive long, since I try to move the tomatoes around
year-to-year. It lessens the chances of disease problems.


Actually, I allow the volunteers that come up in one of my usual
tomato plots (tulips in the spring, tomatoes in summer). In fact, I
see many volunteers already up among the tulips.

I have found that such volunteers are extremely hardy and quite
disease-resistant. Survival of the fittest.

That tomato plot is atypical in many ways. I rarely put in
transplants, but past-frost sow from seeds once I pull up the tulips
in that bed. I consider these tulips as annuals.

I pop a few seeds into each of the many holes I make with as I move
along the bed. The tomatoes are grown quite close together with the
foliage getting extremely dense as the season progresses.

Never had a disease problem up there, always had great success with
the kind of planting that all my gardener instincts tell me is wrong.

Here are a few pickings of late season grabs from that bed last year.

http://i60.tinypic.com/1juddi.jpg

http://i58.tinypic.com/10nghl1.jpg

http://i60.tinypic.com/28vzl1e.jpg

I always dry my seeds on paper towels or paper napkins. However I'm very careful when selecting tomato seeds. I prefer heirloom varieties that produce seeds true to the parent. Hybrid varieties have different properties if compared to their parent. So if you plant seeds from store-bought cherry tomatoes, most likely you will get plants with poor taste quality.

In article
Boron Elgar writes:

Never had a disease problem up there, always had great success with
the kind of planting that all my gardener instincts tell me is wrong.

I hope that continues for you.

I never had a disease problem, until I did (last year).
Now I'm over-sensitized to the potential.


As for tomatoes, I'm itching to get them into the ground. I've had
to raise the grow lights twice in the last week. Last weekend was
in the 70sF and I was hoping to plant this coming weekend. But
this morning was a mild freeze. I guess they have a couple more
weeks in the basement.

--
Drew Lawson | Radioactive cats have
| 18 half-lives
|

Boron Elgar wrote:
....
I am a devoted composter and have gotten great "volunteers" from the
winter's store-bought tomato leavings that have contained seeds in
what has gotten spread on beds come spring.

what kind of season do you have? it seems
that ours is too short for most volunteers to
do much.

if i were going to grow a lot of different
OP and heirloom varieties i think that would
be more interesting and have a better chance
of getting decent results, but i've been banned
from trying other varieties now. we have too
many tomatoes in storage ATM so it is likely
we're skipping a major planting of tomatoes
this year and will just put in a few cherry
tomato plants.

as for diseases, our location seems to favor
certain types of late season blight, but if we
can get a crop through the mid-summer it doesn't
matter what the blight does. it doesn't ruin
the fruit. last season was unusual for us in
that the disease took 90% of the crop just in
the last few weeks of ripening. greenhouse
people said it was last seen in this area 80
years ago. likely weather and growing medium
related, but hard to prove without a lab to do
the work and ways to trace things...


songbird

On Thu, 23 Apr 2015 11:45:50 -0400, songbird
wrote:

Boron Elgar wrote:
...
I am a devoted composter and have gotten great "volunteers" from the
winter's store-bought tomato leavings that have contained seeds in
what has gotten spread on beds come spring.

what kind of season do you have? it seems
that ours is too short for most volunteers to
do much.

Northern NJ. Spring has just sprung the past couple of weeks. But I
also direct sow tomato seeds every year, though, and that makes them
later than volunteers, too. I can usually harvest well into October.

if i were going to grow a lot of different
OP and heirloom varieties i think that would
be more interesting and have a better chance
of getting decent results, but i've been banned
from trying other varieties now. we have too
many tomatoes in storage ATM so it is likely
we're skipping a major planting of tomatoes
this year and will just put in a few cherry
tomato plants.

I do not can tomatoes. I consider them edible seasonally and
delightful at that.

As I have mentioned, I have my tomato plants very, very close together
in the plot. The thing is so dense it is difficult to harvest at
times. I have to lift plants out of the way to see ripe fruits at any
real depth.

as for diseases, our location seems to favor
certain types of late season blight, but if we
can get a crop through the mid-summer it doesn't
matter what the blight does. it doesn't ruin
the fruit. last season was unusual for us in
that the disease took 90% of the crop just in
the last few weeks of ripening. greenhouse
people said it was last seen in this area 80
years ago. likely weather and growing medium
related, but hard to prove without a lab to do
the work and ways to trace things...

I have gotten blight or other fungal problems with tomatoes at times.
I gave up on rotation planting, as that did not seem to solve the
problem. I think weather is a big contributing factor with my
disorders, none of them too serious. I also grow in large tubs on the
deck, where there is no crowding. That doesn't eliminate the problems,
either, but I have never had huge losses.

Boron

Boron Elgar wrote:
songbird wrote:

as for diseases, our location seems to favor
certain types of late season blight, but if we
can get a crop through the mid-summer it doesn't
matter what the blight does. it doesn't ruin
the fruit. last season was unusual for us in
that the disease took 90% of the crop just in
the last few weeks of ripening. greenhouse
people said it was last seen in this area 80
years ago. likely weather and growing medium
related, but hard to prove without a lab to do
the work and ways to trace things...

I have gotten blight or other fungal problems with tomatoes at times.
I gave up on rotation planting, as that did not seem to solve the
problem. I think weather is a big contributing factor with my
disorders, none of them too serious. I also grow in large tubs on the
deck, where there is no crowding. That doesn't eliminate the problems,
either, but I have never had huge losses.

Fungus with nightshades is a result of wet leaves over night. When
needed water in the AM and not the plant, water the ground only...
tomatoes are best watered with buried soaker hoses, never overhead
watering. Tomatoes also benefit from good aeration, do not crowd. I'm
fortunate in that my vegetable garden is situated alongside a small
natural spring, I plant tomatoes closest to the spring, I never need
to water as that ground is always ideally moist.

Brooklyn1 wrote:
....
Fungus with nightshades is a result of wet leaves over night. When
needed water in the AM and not the plant, water the ground only...
tomatoes are best watered with buried soaker hoses, never overhead
watering. Tomatoes also benefit from good aeration, do not crowd. I'm
fortunate in that my vegetable garden is situated alongside a small
natural spring, I plant tomatoes closest to the spring, I never need
to water as that ground is always ideally moist.

can't keep the fog/dew off the plants here.
overhead watering happens only very rarely
(when it's really hot and the plants stop
setting fruit) and usually they are dry again
pretty quickly.

last year was wet consistently enough that i
don't recall ever spraying the tomatoes at all
or even doing much watering (maybe twice the
whole summer).


songbird

On Thu, 23 Apr 2015 17:13:31 -0400, Brooklyn1
wrote:

Boron Elgar wrote:
songbird wrote:

as for diseases, our location seems to favor
certain types of late season blight, but if we
can get a crop through the mid-summer it doesn't
matter what the blight does. it doesn't ruin
the fruit. last season was unusual for us in
that the disease took 90% of the crop just in
the last few weeks of ripening. greenhouse
people said it was last seen in this area 80
years ago. likely weather and growing medium
related, but hard to prove without a lab to do
the work and ways to trace things...

I have gotten blight or other fungal problems with tomatoes at times.
I gave up on rotation planting, as that did not seem to solve the
problem. I think weather is a big contributing factor with my
disorders, none of them too serious. I also grow in large tubs on the
deck, where there is no crowding. That doesn't eliminate the problems,
either, but I have never had huge losses.

Fungus with nightshades is a result of wet leaves over night. When
needed water in the AM and not the plant, water the ground only...
tomatoes are best watered with buried soaker hoses, never overhead
watering. Tomatoes also benefit from good aeration, do not crowd. I'm
fortunate in that my vegetable garden is situated alongside a small
natural spring, I plant tomatoes closest to the spring, I never need
to water as that ground is always ideally moist.


Just as over in RFC, you are a cut and paste idiot here, too.

No one controls the rain or the dew.

Tomatoes *can* be grown quite successfully in VERY crowded conditions
as my photos show. This is only mid July, too. You should see the bed
a month later. And this bed is rarely watered. The shelter of the
plantings keeps the soil shaded and moist and also keeps the weeds
down.

http://i58.tinypic.com/23sujag.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/1jrt5y.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/2n171qo.jpg

A lot of kitchen gardening can be done intensively, if one puts a mind
to it.

http://i58.tinypic.com/v5ljza.jpg

Now, back in the bozo bin, where you have spent virtually all of the
past 14 years.

On Thu, 23 Apr 2015 17:43:18 -0400, songbird
wrote:

Brooklyn1 wrote:
...
Fungus with nightshades is a result of wet leaves over night. When
needed water in the AM and not the plant, water the ground only...
tomatoes are best watered with buried soaker hoses, never overhead
watering. Tomatoes also benefit from good aeration, do not crowd. I'm
fortunate in that my vegetable garden is situated alongside a small
natural spring, I plant tomatoes closest to the spring, I never need
to water as that ground is always ideally moist.

can't keep the fog/dew off the plants here.
overhead watering happens only very rarely
(when it's really hot and the plants stop
setting fruit) and usually they are dry again
pretty quickly.

last year was wet consistently enough that i
don't recall ever spraying the tomatoes at all
or even doing much watering (maybe twice the
whole summer).


songbird

Thought you, and, perhaps others here, might find this interesting. I
am not sure how well it works with all tomato varieties and climates,
but it intrigues me.

http://www.veggiegardener.com/reduce...ming-tomatoes/

Boron Elgar wrote:
....
Thought you, and, perhaps others here, might find this interesting. I
am not sure how well it works with all tomato varieties and climates,
but it intrigues me.

http://www.veggiegardener.com/reduce...ming-tomatoes/

there's nothing wrong with trying something out
to see how it goes. i do know that when i've watered
the tomatoes too much they do taste watered down.

a normal tomato crop here is 20-40lbs per plant
for the beefsteaks and probably 10-20lbs of cherry
tomatoes per plant.


songbird

On Fri, 24 Apr 2015 14:10:13 -0400, songbird
wrote:

Boron Elgar wrote:
...
Thought you, and, perhaps others here, might find this interesting. I
am not sure how well it works with all tomato varieties and climates,
but it intrigues me.

http://www.veggiegardener.com/reduce...ming-tomatoes/

there's nothing wrong with trying something out
to see how it goes. i do know that when i've watered
the tomatoes too much they do taste watered down.

a normal tomato crop here is 20-40lbs per plant
for the beefsteaks and probably 10-20lbs of cherry
tomatoes per plant.

Just how many acres of tomatoes do you grow that you can average your
yield accurately in a 50 percentile range, or do you just have a
couple three plants... I'm serious... I put in about fifty plants of
various types and often plants right next to each other have a very
different yield. However with ~fifty plants I always harvest way WAY
more than I can use, I give plenty away, feed those bitten by rodents
and bugs to deer, and at end of season I harvest many more green
tomatoes than I feel like frying/pickling... deer eat green tomatoes
too. I long ago gave up canning tomatoes, salad tomatoes are too wet
and besides I can buy canned romas by the case at the big box stores
and use those to make sauce for a whole lot less money, time, and
labor. The only time I may weigh/photograph is when I happen to find
an exceptionally large/unique specimen. I've actually never bothered
to weigh/count any of my crops, there's always more than I can
possibly use... in fact a few years ago I decided to donate a third of
my 2,500 sq ft garden to growing blueberry bushes.

On Fri, 24 Apr 2015 14:10:13 -0400, songbird
wrote:

Boron Elgar wrote:
...
Thought you, and, perhaps others here, might find this interesting. I
am not sure how well it works with all tomato varieties and climates,
but it intrigues me.

http://www.veggiegardener.com/reduce...ming-tomatoes/

there's nothing wrong with trying something out
to see how it goes. i do know that when i've watered
the tomatoes too much they do taste watered down.

a normal tomato crop here is 20-40lbs per plant
for the beefsteaks and probably 10-20lbs of cherry
tomatoes per plant.


songbird


I find a measure of unpredictability and variability, even when I have
grown the same varieties over several seasons.

I see this in many of the kitchen garden crops, though. It is not
unique to tomatoes. Some year I get a lot more of a particular bean
variety, or huge broccoli, or more cukes than I can shake a stick at
and another year even a tried and true favorite may do poorly.

Obviously, one can only "control" for so much in these observations,
as my garden is outdoors and subject to the elements, but I still love
to try to outsmart the critters, the bugs, the weather and the rain
each season.