The weight got to the stalks. I thought I had them secured but two major branches with a lot of my best fruit bent over and are broken but not broken through. I tied them up and straightened them out as the leaves looked pretty perky still. Any chance they'll make it or should I just cut them off? I lost 8 good sized fruit from another branch that was hanging only by a thread. Can they be made to ripen possibly?
I sure beat the BER problem. It just took way more calcium than I ever thought necessary. In the last 2 weeks I only lost 3 to BER after heavy calcium supplements.
Most tomatoes, except for the "patio" tomatoes that have a fairly thrifty habit and can even be pruned to grow as a standard, require some sort of support. You can influence the directions of growth and, some say, the number of fruit by early pruning but, as a rule, I don't bother with it. I just cage the plants in fence wire and let them rip. Small fruit can be a sign of over-bearing, commonplace for tomatoes and in which case the fruit may be thinned very early in its development (if you wait too late, say until they're "frying" size, the remaining fruit isn't likely to get any bigger), and/or of root crowding, which is particularly troublesome for container-grown plants. Limestone may not be your best source of calcium because of its effect on pH. Gypsum adds calcium without raising pH. Unless you have serious nutrient imbalances to correct you can eliminate or, at the very least, seriously mitigate future calcium deficiencies by incorporating bone meal, a slow-release source of phosphate and calcium, into your admixture in whatever quantity is required to provide sufficient phosphate. Excesses of certain micro-nutrients -- magnesium, for example
-- can interfere with plants' ability to acquire and/or to transport Ca.
I used cages and trained the vines as best I could. But I did not tie off the heavy clusters and they broke higher up the vine. All the break points were my biggest clusters. Next time I'll tie off each cluster individually. I may just get rid of the smallest ones at this point and let the plant put its energy into the largest fruit.
Very interesting. Since my tomatoes are next to my peppers I was watering them with the same magnesium rich fertilizer I used for the peppers. I did stop doing this and switched the tomatoes to fish emulsion only about the time the BER showed signs of abating. You may have found the missing link.
Last I looked farmers never tied up tomato plants. They were hand picked every day till exhausted but then a machine came and the plant was taken whole. Those truck farms are now homes after first growing soybeans in a transition time. Guess if you want to tie or support plants the vineyards could offer a template but they deal with hardwood. So my question is what is wrong with losing some tomatoes to a turtle or some other varmint. Esthetics in the garden I appreciate but I have to look at the energy required. Perhaps younger folks in small area like to garden for different reasons ?
I am doing it for the shear beauty of all those plants bearing brilliantly colored fruits. I also love the plethora of insects that it attracts such as bees, June bugs, dragon flies, butterflies, praying mantii etc. My cats love the foliage and like to lie beside the pots under the shade.
It's just a pleasant hobby that I get to enjoy on several levels.
Well, I guess too much of a good thing really _can_ be "too much", eh? LOL! Tying up individual "hands" of tomatoes for support is something we forgot to mention. I don't mean to come across like an "old fogey" but with a little experience, you'll get the hang of how much space to allow for individual plants. Remember that tomato vines do not have grow vertically and you can save considerable space by dressing them horizontally around the circumference of your cages; did you do that? Also, as the plant progresses and you harvest the older fruit from the botton, you may untie the vines and lower them so that the older canes coil up on themselves. If you do this, be sure to remove leaves to allow for airflow to help prevent fungus.
Well, you'd probably have to test a few thousand times to imply a causal link but I did learn the hard way about planting heavy nitrogen feeders too close to light nitrogen feeders. Somewhat off the subject: If no one has mentioned the importance of keeping a garden journal or diary, then, I'm mentioning it ;-). Down the road, the information and impressions that you record can prove invaluable.
the bit about calcium and growing region, which is related to the above.
The interaction between nutrient mobility in the plant, and plant growth rate can be a major factor influencing the type and location of deficiency symptoms that develop. For very mobile nutrients such as nitrogen and potassium, deficiency symptoms develop predominantly in the older and mature leaves. This is a result of these nutrients being preferentially mobilized during times of nutrient stress from the older leaves to the newer leaves near the growing regions of the plant. Additionally, mobile nutrients newly acquired by the roots are also preferentially translocated to new leaves and the growing regions. Thus old and mature leaves are depleted of mobile nutrients during times of stress while the new leaves are maintained at a more favorable nutrient status.
The typical localization of deficiency symptoms of very weakly mobile nutrients such as calcium, boron, and iron is the opposite to that of the mobile nutrients; these deficiency symptoms are first displayed in the growing regions and new leaves while the old leaves remain in a favorable nutrient status. (This assumes that these plants started with sufficient nutrient, but ran out of nutrient as they developed). In plants growing very slowly for reasons other than nutrition (such as low light) a normally limiting supply of a nutrient could, under these conditions, be sufficient for the plant to slowly develop, maybe even without symptoms. This type of development is likely to occur in the case of weakly mobile nutrients because excess nutrients in the older leaves will eventually be mobilized to supply newly developing tissues. In contrast, a plant with a similar supply that is growing rapidly will develop severe deficiencies in the actively growing tissue such as leaf edges and the growing region of the plant. A classic example of this is calcium deficiency in vegetables such as lettuce where symptoms develop on the leaf margins (tip burn) and the growing region near the meristems. The maximal growth rate of lettuce is often limited by the internal translocation rate of calcium to the growing tissue rather than from a limited nutrient supply in the soil.
When moderately mobile nutrients such as sulfur and magnesium are the limiting nutrients of the system, deficiency symptoms are normally seen over the entire plant. However the growth rate and rate of nutrient availability can make a considerable difference on the locations at which the symptoms develop. If the nutrient supply is marginal compared to the growth rate, symptoms will appear on the older tissue, but if the nutrient supply is very low compared to the growth rate, or the nutrient is totally depleted, the younger tissue will become deficient first.
I'll have to reread this later, it certainly explains a lot to me. Perhaps excess mobility in some nutrients inhibits slow moving nutrients like calcium. Just speculating...
I don't doubt that this is what happened. The plant in its vigorous vegetative stage was unable to take-up the calcium that it needed due to dry roots, nutrients being flushed away, or high temps which simply required water for evaporative cooling with no Ca transport. So the above is a very good answer to a question that I didn't ask ;O)
My question was to the Balvenieman, who wrote on Thu, 15 Jul 2010
14:02:52 that "Excesses of certain micro-nutrients -- magnesium, for example -- can interfere with plants' ability to acquire and/or to transport Ca."
I was just wondering if he had a citation for it because I had always heard that a deficiency of Mg would affect Ca transport, as a result, some would use epsom salts in a foliar spray on their plants to try to alleviate this condition, but I have never heard of an excess of magnesium as being a problem. It is true that an excess of boron or NO3 can hamper Ca transport, but that wasn't the question.
there can go a long way in helping one correct nutrient deficiencies early by noting where they manifest. Just the same for determining earliest on whether corrective action is working. In my view, the whole document is worth understanding, even if parts of it must be taken in small bits. LOL The photoillustrations are sterling, IMO, although they depict advanced stages. I'd like to find photodocumention of early symptoms.
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