Topic: Toms

[james1]

I have just sown my toms. In propagator, Variety's are  (Big Zac)  (Durinta F1)
(Money Maker) and my free trial tomato seed (Luci F1) . Later in the season i will sow some cherry super sweet, also shirley my favourite.....
Hoping to win heaviest tomato with big zac at the knowsley show won it last year
well heaviest truss hope it will still count i don't see why not..
has anybody else sown toms as yet if so what variety ?
Also do you participate in the shows if so  what class  ?...

   Jim  :D :D

[saddad]

Not yet James... but I'm sat on my hands... makes the typing very slow...  ;D

[davyw1]

I have my first lot of tomatoes potted on into modules and doing quite well, Tumbling Tom (red & Yellow, Golden Sunrise, Ailsa Craig, Shirley (from these i take the suckers), Bambino, Gardeners delight, Venesa (again for suckers) Herzena (something like that) and a few other that wont come to mind.
Not sure what you mean by what class of show i only know two  Open and Closed.

[Becca]

not sure if i should have started a new thread as im enquiring about blight.

i'm pretty sure i got blight on some of my tomatoes towards the end of last season (after heavy period of rain and gales which blew off one of the windows)

But i've been reading conflicting things about replacing soil or not.  Bottom of greenhouse bed that usually hosts tomatoe's is a soil bed, Should i use pots this year on top of the soil.  Do the blight spores (or whatever they are) live on in the soil during the winter.  ?  or will i get away with planting direct if i add alot of homemade compost,

any help appreciated.

[Vinlander]

I think you'll find that removing soil is the remedy for much more chronic and incurable problems that build up over years.

Basic hygiene should cope with blight spores - then just make sure you spray as soon as recommended and spray regularly.

Please use the simple, tried and tested copper-based bordeaux or burgundy mixtures (must be used VERY FRESH or they precipitate out).

I would never, ever again touch the modern, relatively untried equivalents - they don't work any better than regular copper sprays, also they taste MUCH worse (rotting cabbages!) AND more importantly simply won't wash off.

Copper-based fungicide sprays also have a long and well-tried history of killing blight on soil surfaces - so if you're worried about hygiene you can use double strength for this.

Remember early blight is a different strain and much less troublesome so don't panic if it hits, just pull off the affected leaves. If that doesn't stop it spreading THEN spray.

BTW - I'd be surprised if losing a window made any difference - unless all the plants got wet regularly (losing the roof will do that). Extra ventilation usually helps.

It was just a bad year - not nearly as bad (for me) as 07 and 08 but bad enough.

[Becca]

i dont really want to use any  fungicides or pesticides on my veg, i think i'll just have to move soil,   (just not sure where to put the soil i remove,
The plant in question got very wet.  ( the same window blew off on numerous occasions over the summer. and the plant and one directly beside it were only affected plants  i wasn't exactly quick at replacing the window. . i dug them up quickly and took out good bit of the soil around them at the time.  but maybe i'm reading too much into it

[sunloving]

Hi Jim
Ive already started a samll number of my sungold off and gartenpearl

Becuase its so much room on the window ledges later on , im keeping back my other faves such as gardeners delight for much later sowing in the cold greenhouse.

But really early sowings do go a bit leggy and need tlc far more than those sown say end of feb so try to resist if you can.
x sunloving

[Mortality]

Just planted a few 'Tigerella' so fingers crossed that they will germinate.

[gwynnethmary]

Just planted my very first tomatoes!  Sweet Million F1- I'll be watching every day to see if anything pops up!

[Mortality]

Just planted a few 'Tigerella' so fingers crossed that they will germinate.

Yup my first ones too, planted with my sons help, he is surprising clean considering  :D

[Vinlander]

i dont really want to use any  fungicides or pesticides on my veg, i think i'll just have to move soil,   (just not sure where to put the soil i remove,

Becca, I don't use any complex modern pesticides or fungicides because they have only been tried for a few years whereas the traditional remedies (eg. soap, rhubarb leaf and garlic for pests, copper for fungi, bicarbonate for mildew) have been tested for literally centuries.

So I still think removing soil is an over-reaction - you can spray copper-based stuff on it (and the woodwork) if you're worried about spores on the surface.

There's quite a lot of natural copper in most soils anyway so raising the concentration in the top millimetre will have no effect on the roots below.

Copper is an essential micro-nutrient for life and circulates quite quickly through the mammalian body - it is used as a mineral supplement in animal husbandry - some quite nasty problems occur when there's too little. Shellfish blood is based on copper!

You should make sure your copper exposure doesn't exceed what you normally get from food - so wear gloves and stand upwind. 99% of copper on tomatoes and other shiny fruit will polish right off, it is incredibly bitter so you'd soon know if it hasn't.

Absolutely no comparison with dithane which is an extremely complex chemical related to compounds with a proven track record for causing birth defects and reproductive damage generally - it probably degrades to similar problem chemicals and the evidence against it is mounting almost daily.

Bordeaux and Bergundy mixtures are very simple (more predictable) copper compounds tolerated in organic growing, and used to be orthodox organic when the organic movement was still scientific (based on doubt) and before it started edging towards religion (based on faith and dogma).

On the other hand if you have those other chronic replant problems from too much monoculture then replacing the soil is a great idea, and think how much cheaper it is than joining a gym...

Cheers.

[Becca]

thanks vinlander,  thats cleared things up a bit. though still havent decided if will spray with a copper based fungicide.
your post was v.helpful .  i dont think i will replace compost,  as greenhouse has been plant free for last few months. and i'll add new stuff from the compost bin soon.
just planted  some tigerella,  costuloto fiorentina  ildi and red pear, also planted san marzano but didnt have much look with them last year, something kept drillin in to them and making a home and eating out the inside last year.   whatever it was didnt touch any other type of tomato.
just have to see what germinates dis year.
 

[lottiedolly]

Trying to hold off sowing at the moment as i am waiting for the toms swaps to come round and to see what my options are (coz normally my eyes end up 4 times larger than my growing space)  :-X

[emmy1978]

waiting, waiting, waiting.....

[Jayb]

(coz normally my eyes end up 4 times larger than my growing space) 

Only 4X     :o ;D

[lottie lou]

Are you trying to say that I DON'T have to replace the soil in my borders every year?   Dart...... I've already done it for this year

[davyw1]

Are you trying to say that I DON'T have to replace the soil in my borders every year?   Dart...... I've already done it for this year

It is best to replace the soil, if you cant then you need to give it a good flush through but you should not let it go more than three years without changing it.
If you leave it year after year then you get a build up of salts and minerals which may cause bad results.

[Vinlander]

Sorry folks - but soil replacement is the cure for replant diseases - these are almost impossible to define but you'd have to be very unlucky to suffer significantly after just 3 years - even with monoculture (most people grow aubergines and peppers alongside their tomatoes - peppers are different enough to be used as a a kind of rotation-rest for the soil, aubergines not so much).

Soil replacement is NOT a cure for blight! Blight isn't defeated that easily - if only it were...

Yes there can be a buildup of salts (if you use the worst kind of chemical fertilisers in huge quantities like some commercial growers used to - they're mostly hydroponic now).

If soil replacement is such a good solution then you are losing very little by putting it off for one year. If it isn't that good then you should be considering doing it and adding ring culture or growbags anyway - you can't have it both ways.

Basically if you're unhappy with the yields and they don't pick up when you add more compost and more water then you need to change the soil. But don't forget there are good years and bad years anyway - 3 bad in a row to date...

There is a sort of complication with tomatoes because they taste better when there's salt inside them - so it's tempting to over-fertilise and under-water!

My advice is to dig in homemade compost and if in doubt put a few grow bags in the greenhouse too. If the growbags massively outperform the tomatoes in soil then consider replacing the soil next year. This is called hedging your bets.

Commercial growers might see a big dent in their profits with 3 year old soil - but that's because the supermarkets squeeze them until the pips squeak - a 1% drop in productivity might be a 25% drop in their profits.

Cheers.

PS. the commercial guys aren't stupid - they sometimes use greenhouses on rails - every 100Kg of greenhouse is covering something like 25000Kg of topsoil. Topsoil that can grow a perfectly good crop of anything except tomatoes.

Which would you rather move?

[cleo]

Also do you participate in the shows if so  what class  ?...

No but if there was one for a really awfull tomato you have started well-Moneymaker???

 ;D ;D

[gwynnethmary]

Just planted my very first tomatoes!  Sweet Million F1- I'll be watching every day to see if anything pops up!

They've popped!