2017 tomatoes failed

Arborist Forum

Help Support Arborist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Have you seen any of the watering tricks using plastic bottles. My wife is trying a few in some of her potted plants. There are quite a few utube vid's on the subject. What the wife is doing is taking plastic soda bottles and poking a small hole in the bottom. She then fills with water and screws the cap back on the bottle and then sits the bottle in the pot. The water leaks slowy out of the bottle and keeps the plant watered. Sort of a poormans drip irrigation. I think this will work alright for a potted plant, Jury is still out on this one. I think something similar could be done with a 5gal bucket. Fill bucket with water and poke a small hole in the bottom. Take a lot of buckets to cover a whole garden, but might work ok on a raised bed.

My garden is made on about 60ft of fill dirt. Mostly rocks. For the last few years, I have been mulching between the rows with wood chips. and horse manure I get from my brothers barns. Using fresh manure creates problems. I usually let it compost for a year before using. The power company provides all the wood chips I can use. I'll let them dump large amounts and then turn the pile with the tractor. Once it breaks down to something less than chips, I spread it in the garden as mulch and then till in the fall. By next planting season, its dirt. The chips from clearing right of ways are a good source of ramial wood chips. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramial_chipped_wood. It adds a lot of carbon and other nutrients to the soil. I dont like using green chips as it robs nitrogen from the soil, and your plants, as it breaks down. I dont know if you can tell in my pics of the tater patch, but After I hilled the taters twice, and side dressed with fertilizer, I hauled a bunch of of the ramial chips between the rows as a mulch. Chips are almost to the top of the tater hills. I have done this in the past and the taters will grow out of the hills and into the chips. The spot my taters are in now was once 10ft deep in ramial chips and over the years, I have used them all in my garden. I have another big pile of chips I am adding to the tater patch.

This is my first year planting in this spot. Its full of rocks. I have hualed out several tons of rocks, some pretty big ones, after plowing. I'll probably be hauling rocks for a few more years until I have soil instead of rocks. I made my rows 6ft apart so I can get between the rows with my Ventrac tractor and scoop. Its the easiest way to get in and pick up rocks and also dump the mulch. Once the soil is built up, I'll double the number of rows.
 
Since gardening is going on now and its been a year since this thread has been active, I thought I would revive it to see how everybody is dealing with bugs and fungus and in my case drought.
For fungus, I forgo the copper sulfate and usual fungicides. I like using Neem oil about once a week. I usually mix the neem with spinosad to get a pretty good control of just about everything in the garden. That includes most types of fungus. Both products are considered organic and can be used in a organic program. Neem doesnt hurt earthworms, but will kill bees so you have to pick a time to spray while bees are not active. So far this year, I have seen just one japanese beetle and I seem to have the potatoe bug under control. The potatoe bug hit with a vengeance almost overnite. One spraying two weeks ago almost eliminated them completely. Yesterday there where a few scattered thru the field and today I hit them with another round of neem and spinosad. That might be the last time this year I have to spray for the potatoe bug. Will have to wait and see if the japanese beetle decides to make a run at the veggies.

For dealing with the drought, I bought a couple of 330gal totes. I already had a trashpump and a couple of impact sprinklers. I had to buy a few fittings to hook everything up. I loaded both totes on my 6x10 dump trailer and use the trash pump to fill the totes at the creek. I then hual the totes to the garden and use the trash pump to supply the water to the sprinklers. So far, I have pumped a little over 2000gal of water on my two plots. Supposed to rain tomorrow, we'll see. I took the opportunity today to till and weed the garden patch and spray the tater patch. If it rains, the water should soak into the soil. If it dont rain, I'll just fill up the totes and fire up the pump.

I didn't have much of a potato crop last year either. I'd been too busy to watch my potatoes and I let the potato bugs get out of control. This year I almost did it again and also had a lot of those tiny flea beetles. I sprayed this time with some Sevin I've still got left, which I use very sparingly. This one time on the taters won't hurt me. It did kill all the bugs and my taters are looking good right now. If the tater bugs and flea beetles come back again and it's closer to harvest I'll have to go organic - I'm a skinflint and it's tough sometimes to spend those big bucks on organic pesticides.
 
Spinosad is just as, if not more, effective as sevin. Considering the amount needed, I suspect the spinosad is quite a bit cheaper than sevin and is certified organic. I use two ounces in 2 gal of water to spray my entire tater patch..
 
With all the rain we’re having I doubt my garden will make it this year, this is a time when the soil not being up to par will show up. I’m usually on top of it with chicken glickum but I’m slacking off. Horse manure works better. Having the soil rich on the sunny days what little we have the garden should shoot it. I’m sure my ph is way off too. This fall it’s time to bring the soil up to par.

In the past I’ve seen bad growing seasons too. I wish I spent more time with grandpa he’s from the old country he knew how to grow things, and make wine.
 
Has anyone noticed tomato plants only ripening one tomato at a time. Mine will grow only one tomato while the other blooms sit dormant. Then when I pick that one, another will come on until it's ready to pick and then again, one more tomato will come on. Never seen anything like it. Someone said it could be the lack of pollinators. Not enough bees to get the job done. Anybody have anything like this going on with yours?
 
Just this week I started having ripe tomatoes. Water has always been a huge issue here. So started filling up about a dozen pots with dirt after sealing the bottom to keep the water in then sticking some seed in them. I built a small green house to act as a nursery, but since my mom lives in the desert I start some down there. When the snow and freeze condition subside about May I start transplanting them here in the mountains. With just a few pots I am able to have at least two or three ripe tomatoes every day until the end of November or December. With an assortment of plastic trash cans filled with rain water I do not need any domestic water use. I often have a large assortment of lizards just waiting to grab all the bees and flies, but the pollination process seems to be working. Thanks
 
I finally put my new water pump in storage. It hasnt done anything but rain since I bought it. I took the weed eater to the garden today. At least I can find the rows. I have squash, cukes, tomatoes, zucinni (sp), Onions the size of soft balls with the tops dieing off, beans fixing to come in and my taters have made and the vines dieing off. For some reason, my okra doesnt seem to be doing anything. It was one of the first to come out of the ground and its about knee high, but no blooms. Blueberries the size of marbles and the grape vines are hanging full. Corn is in tassel, but I havent noticed any bees. Usually all you can hear is the humm of the bees when corn is tasseling
 

Latest posts

Back
Top