I have been growing tomatoes every year with more and more fruit each time although much if it comes very late in the season. This year my plants are kind of spindly looking. I use a special fertilizer ever year made with epsom salts, powdered milk, baking soda, and compost I plan in the hole with my tomatoes.
How is everyone else doing this year with their gardening, and do you have any tips for the tomatoes?
Not so great
I don’t vegetable garden anymore but my mother does and her stuff has been slow this year. Her tomatoes and cukes have just been sitting there. But it was a pretty cool late Spring, so we’re hoping that with the warmer weather, everything will take off. They’re certainly getting plenty of rain!
fish heads
One of our best years for tomatoes was the year we planted fish heads under them when they went into the ground.
rotate
Tomato crops should be rotate each year and not planted in the same spot year after year as they are then prone to disease. This wet cold weather is not going to do any favors and you might see some wilt issue s in a few weeks if this wet, damp, humid weather keeps up.
sadly I do not have enough
sadly I do not have enough room to plant my tomatoes in a different place. Instead i just till the soil as best I can, and add my compost. It’s actually a large planter big enough to plant Tomatoes and cucumbers in every year that was made for me so I do not have to bend over to plant stuff. I do have some fish fertilizer stuff you mix with water. I am going to do that tonight.
Drainage probs?
I’m attributing the slow growth of my paste tomatoes this year to the excessive rain and not great drainage. Another tomato I planted on the same date in a bed with better drainage is doing much better.
Potatoes, kale, basil, strawberries, & zucchini are happy. Not so much the cucumber, eggplant, & tomatoes.
still not so good
my tomatoes are still not looking very good. They keep getting taller but with very little leaves. I have one blossom on one plant out of all seven. I am going to give them some more fish fertilizer this evening and see if it helps.
Hopeful for tomatoes here
We didn’t get our tomatoes into the ground until the first week of June … I delayed because I had hatched this project of making a sifter for the soil in our two 4×16 raised beds, which are visible from the corner of Green and High, if anyone wants to see them. I made the beds last year using recycled stable planks I got at Renew Salvage. Got plenty of tomatoes from them last year.
So I hand-sifted all the soil, mixed in 9 bags of Moo Dirt, and sowed our summer crops for this year. Tomatoes are now about 3′ high and they are generating some fruit, still green. We have one cherry tomato plant that is generating handfuls of little ones. The other seven are sandwich-type tomato plants.
This year I planted them further apart (about 18″) and I think that has helped. They are also in the other bed from last year’s ones, because I hear it’s a good idea to alternate them. But having sifted through well over a hundred cubic feet of soil, thus in effect hand-treating the soil, I am not sure it really mattered that I moved them … the surface soil and the soil a foot and a half deep in the beds has all been sifted and mixed together, and the resulting cubic yard of colorful gravel is in our driveway on Chestnut Hill, awaiting the next landscaping project … a Guilford Slate walkway from the driveway down to the High Street steps.
The raised beds also have pepper, eggplant, onions, and scallions growing, plus one potato plant that found its way into the planting from no one really knows where!