Last season I put out eight different varieties of tomatoes all hybrids. Jet Star won hands down as far as production and a very nice slicing tomato that we enjoyed. This season I plan to have a few Jet Star plants again as well as other hybrids and also some heirlooms. Last year I pruned all my plants to one main stem and also used stakes which I was very happy with. I averaged about 25 nice tomatoes per plant. I fertilized with Jobes tomato spikes and also Miracle grow for tomatoes. After doing some research I found out that a large scale produce grower also here in PA plants thousands of Jet Star tomatoes every year. I did notice as the season wore on that my tomatoes did get a bit smaller compared to the earlier fruits. I blame this on too much watering. I would water every other day by laying a garden hose at the base of each plant and water for around three minutes each. I think by watering so often that I washed much of the fertilizer away. As a newbie to gardening I did make a few mistakes last season which I hope to correct this year! I'll be growing many more veggies this year instead of just tomatoes. Won't be long until I'll be starting my plants from seed indoors. April 1 for me here in our area. The weather is getting nice now and I'm really getting the urge to play in the dirt or as Bill would perhaps say: putter in the garden :)
In article , White_Noise snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net (EVP MAN) wrote:
As Charlie Underlog often recites,"There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments." -- Janet Kilburn Phillips. A damn good observation that seems to have become a cottage industry with everyone quoting it, but Ms. Phillips seems to be unfamiliar with chemical fertilizers.
Real gardeners grow soil as well as plants. Jobes tomato spikes and Miracle Grow aren't healthy for your soil and they are a MISTAKE. It's cheaper and more eco-friendly to get ORGANIC fish emulsion (the seas have been polluted too: copper, lead, mercury, arsenic, PCBs, and PBDEs) or manure for your plants. Don't even have to dig it in. Sprinkle it around your plants or side dress with it (18 lb/100 sq.ft., chicken manure). Don't water until the top inch of the soil is dry. Over feeding will encourage the plant to vegetate, instead of setting and maturing fruit.
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p.2 Most gardeners think of plants as only taking up nutrients through root systems and feeding the leaves. Few realize that a great deal of the energy that results from photosynthesis in the leaves is actually used by plants to produce chemicals they secrete through their roots. These secretions are known as exudates. A good analogy is perspiration, a human's exudate. Root exudates are in the form of carbohydrates (including sugars) and proteins. Amazingly, their presence wakes up, attracts, and grows specific beneficial bacteria and fungi living in the soil that subsist on these exudates and the_ cellular material sloughed off as the plant's root tips grow. All this secretion of_ exudates and sloughing-off of cells takes place in the rhizosphere, a zone immediately around the roots, extending out about a tenth of an inch, or a couple of millimeters (1 millimeter = 1/25 inch). The rhizosphere, which can look_ like a jelly or jam under the electron microscope, contains a constantly changing mix of soil organisms, including bacteria, fungi, nematodes, protozoa, and_ even larger organisms. All this "life" competes for the exudates in the rhizosphere, or its water or mineral content. At the bottom of the soil food web are bacteria and fungi, which are attracted to and consume plant root exudates. In turn, they attract and are eaten _by bigger microbes, specifically nematodes and protozoa (remember the _amoebae, paramecia, flagellates, and ciliates you should have studied in biology?), who eat bacteria and fungi (primarily for carbon) to fuel their metabolic_ functions. Anything they don't need is excreted as wastes, which plant roots are _readily able to absorb as nutrients. How convenient that this production of_ plant nutrients takes place right in the rhizosphere, the site of root-nutrient_ absorption. At the center of any viable soil food web are plants. Plants control the food_ web for their own benefit, an amazing fact that is too little understood and_ surely not appreciated by gardeners who are constantly interfering with Nature's system. Studies indicate that individual plants can control the numbers_ and the different kinds of fungi and bacteria attracted to the rhizosphere by the exudates they produce. During different times of the growing season, populations of rhizosphere bacteria and fungi wax and wane, depending on the nutrient needs of the plant and the exudates it produces. Soil bacteria and fungi are like small bags of fertilizer, retaining in their_ bodies nitrogen and other nutrients they gain from root exudates and other _organic matter (such as those sloughed-off root-tip cells). Carrying on the _analogy, soil protozoa and nematodes act as "fertilizer spreaders" by releasing ,_the nutrients locked up in the bacteria and fungi "fertilizer bags." The nematodes and protozoa in the soil come along and eat the bacteria and fungi in the,_ rhizosphere. They digest what they need to survive and excrete excess carbon_ and other nutrients as waste. Left to their own devices, then, plants produce exudates that attract fungi_ and bacteria (and, ultimately, nematodes and protozoa); their survival depends on the interplay between these microbes. It is a completely natural system, the very same one that has fueled plants since they evolved. Soil life provides the nutrients needed for plant life, and plants initiate and fuel the cycle_ by producing exudates.
Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis
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Petrochemicals are the reason that we are in the Middle East today. They kill top soil (a vanishing commodity in the world), pollute our drinking water, and create hugh "dead zones" in the ocean. The more petrochemical fertilizer that is used, the less organic material is in the soil, and the more petrochemical fertilizer that will be needed to maintain productivity levels. Petrochemical fertilizers are salts that will kill off a portion of the microbes that support plants, or all of them. If a person is going to be use petrochemicals, they might just as well jump in their Hummer, and drive down to the supermarket to buy their veggies.
This is a hell of a good cd, Bill....everything on on it, IMO. Just pulled it up for a little desk dancing while reading, though the dancing will win out!
Another good link, Bill, and I thankee.
Here's an OT link for the great unwashed and true believers....enjoy your dreams, all. Dmitry Orlov comes to mind. He has written some good essays that include gardening in ... uhhh... circumstances that may be paralleling ours.
Just had to get this link in...might inspire some folks to cover a little sod with lasagna gardens and give the grannies summit to do.
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