O Joy, your garden is gorgeous. Im getting a few to fruit, my plants are not near as big as yours. The tree canopy has really done me in this year. Ill take what I can get tho.
New pics of my garden
Garden Glory: Thanks, I've lost about 4 tomatoes and had to uproot them and replace them, I counted, and I have 34 varities this year and love Bob's watering system.
joy
great, but that would over whelm me....LOL
Would you mind sharing where you got your chocolate pepper plants or seeds?
Janet
Janet: I got them from Tomato Growers Supply, they were seeds.
joy
thanks so much Joy.
looking great, just wish I was close enough to buy tomatoes from you. All of my plants have died and with our short growing season there isn't time to start over, so another year without homegrown tomatoes.....
Janet
Your little farm is spectacular, Joy! Good job.
I'm curious, are you finding that the 5 gallon buckets are large enough for the tomatoes over the entire time they should be yielding tomatoes? I'm finding that mine are seriously rootbound down here in the southern part of our state. The performance difference between the 20 gallon tubs and the 5 gallon tubs is huge for me. Of course, I'm just amazed I've got much of anything setting fruit after 95 degree days and 80 degree nights.
(and I'm really fed up with the blasted sand fleas that bite me every time I fiddle in the garden. Can't get them killed!)
Sigourney,
"Overproof" for the sand fleas and the "no see-ums". Rub it on before you go outside...
They tore me up in Jamaica. After many tears, the bartender sent me a bottle of Overproof alcohol, and I wasn't bothered after I practically bathed in the stuff.
Was there two weeks. Would've been the most miserable vacation I ever took. Turns out to be the BEST vacation I ever took!
Linda
P.S. I brought a bottle of Overproof home, too...but not for the fleas!
Sigourney -- Go to Home Depot and buy a bottle of Spectricide for garden bugs. You just connect it to your hose and spray the lawn. It works..
Thanks, the 5 gallon buckets seem to be the right size for me thus far, I've had 4 tomatoes die on me, just bought replacements and pulled up the dead ones and replaced with the new ones. I now have 37 different varities, the beefsteaks are doing great, the black brandywines are doing; but, my red brandywines are not doing so well, I did lose my super heavy weight peppers too, and bought orange and yellow ones at Ace's to replace them. I'm getting overwhelmed with the vines though, it looks like a forest and soon I'll need a machete to get down the aisle. I am running out of my pest control though, was using 4 TBSP of Green Light Lawn and Garden Spray with Spinosad and 2 TBSP of Green Light Fruit Tree Spray with Pyrithrine in it mixed to 1 gallon of water, problem is, to get the undersides and uppersides of all my leaves on my plants it takes 3 gallons each time I spray and I bought this on-line, no one local carries it, groan. TPlant: ya'll got it down there anywheres? It seems to be working pretty well, but I know I'm gonna need more soon.
joy
lol, I just don't think I can bring myself to douse my body with rum before futzing around in the garden (it disappears fast enough in my house anyway). I'm going to opt for Tplant's solution....
Yeah, you must burn through the pesticides in forest, Joy. What do you do for fungus/mildew?
Sigourney Beaver: The Fruit Tree Spray seems to cover the fungus and mildew. I am having a problem with my GP boxes running dry, can't seem to figure out why they are drier than my EBs, they get the same amount of water and I always wind up hand watering the GPs. I know the GP has about a gallon larger reservoir, but, that still doesn't account for this. I planted my bell peppers and my brandywine tomatoes in the GPs and they are not doing well at all. I did decide to try a few large tomato varieties in the EB just to see if they would accomodate the larger tomato and they seem to be doing just fine. Some of my 5 gallon buckets are clogging up on me, so need to have my trusty knife with me at all times and the two totes I had used to accomodate two more tomato plants get clogged also. I did decide to try something different with the totes though. I used vermeculite and perlite mixed and coconut coir mixed with a bit of potting mix and then instead of the fertilizer strip, used Espoma Garden Tone, no dolomite lime, as I think the Espoma Garden Tone, which I'm using 1/4th cup a month on each tomato is supposed to be sufficient. If this works like I think, I might be switching to Espoma permanently and leaving out the dolomite lime entirely.
joy
Joy, a couple of suggestions...It sounds like you need to have your EBs and GPs on seperate lines. In theory, if you start with full reservoirs, it should take the same time to add a gal. of water, but depending on how thirsty the plants are, and how far from the source of water, the GPs seem to require more time on them. It does take some time for the lines to fill. As to the clogging problem... did you use drinking straws? I personally think those are too small and flimsy. I used 1/2" plastic tubing on my e-buckets. You can get it by the foot at any hardware/ home improvement store. So far, I've had no problems with clogging.
I think you have done amazingly well from a beginner last year to where you are today! It's all a learning about learning!
OCCarol: I'm finding the bigger the plant the more water it drinks and the plants in the EBs are extremely huge compared to the newbies in the GPs. I used tubing for the drain holes on my buckets also, just that some of them I didn't drill the holes right, as I didn't allow for the weight of the top bucket when it had a plant and all in it, so the holes wound up not being lined up, a knife fixes that though, all you can do. I'vew always prefered the EB though over all containers.
joy
I am having the worst time setting fruit. Im about to loose my mind. Beuatiful plants, nice flowers, bees abound, but flowers just turn brown. I think I need to try some of that garden tone here.
Garden Glory: I'm just experimenting with it right now to see how well it does in comparison with the 10-10-10 I've been using and the dolomite. My beefsteak bush has lots of fruit on it already; but they are still green balls about the size of my fist. We are facing a whole week and a half of scattered thunderstorms though, and that's not good. Time to bring out the big guns when the storms are over, this I know as the bugs will converge on my tomato forest. I'm going to use the Bug Be Gone Max, as this organic stuff won't be able to handle all the bugs we will have to encounter up here in this part of FL I'm sure.
joy
Garden Glory, are your nights at least fifteen degrees cooler than the days? Tomatoes must rest from the heat of the day.
They are a winter crop here, it's just too hot at night for them in the summer, at 80 degrees, or warmer. I had gorgeous plants the first year i tried, but it was June, and the flowers all fell off, I tried everything, and finally that's what an old man told me.
Do any of your neighbors have tomatoes?
curiosity killed the cat! What are those black buckets that you have your plants in? Never seen any like that. From the photos, it almost looks like landscape fabric. That Florida sand and sunshine does wonders.