Branching Out's Seeds and Sprouts

[Branching Out]

I tomatoes!

 

[heirloomgal]

Most of the beans seeds that I planted last week are beginning to poke through the soil, including two of my network beans-- Orange Speckled Tepary and Van Gogh's Olive (semi-runner). Yay! Now I just need to keep them alive for the next four months. Lol. No signs of life yet in this one section shown in the photo below though. It is my Rio Zape out-cross from last year, which is in the hottest, driest corner of the back garden. I salvaged the vented sides from my parents' old box fan, and it is making a nice shade tent to help this little bean patch along.

Yesterday I started another dozen bean varieties but I used soil blocks this time. I am not sure how well this will work, but given that we have another brief hot spell in the forecast with temperatures reaching 32C(90F) the blocks will afford me more control over the moisture level for germination. My plan is to keep them in the soil blocks for as little time as possible, likely only a week or so. Then once the seedlings have a good root mass they should be able to survive on the hot, dry western-facing plot that I have earmarked for them.The ones that I am trying in blocks are all small-seeded varieties such as Cocaigne, Comtesse de Chambord, Empress, Flageolet Vert, Flambeau Flageolet, Tezier French fillet-- and the measly 3 or 4 seeds that I managed to salvage from Tendergreen bush snap beans last summer (that one was overlooked in the vegetable garden and didn't get enough water; it barely survived).

Such an awesome and creative idea!

 

[Branching Out]

Back on March 8th I winter sowed some tomato seeds in a milk jug, and they just kind of sat there and did nothing through our wet, cold spring. Now three months later we have lots of warm sunshine, and the seedlings are looking good. I moved a Glacier, a Manitoba, and four Moskvich to tall pots today so they can grow on. No hardening off required given that they have lived their whole lives outdoors. It will be fun to see when they fruit!

 

[Branching Out]

This year I am team gardening a shared plot with some friends, and one of my good garden buddies is shocked and horrified that I won't be watering my tomatoes very frequently. It's not that I have anything against irrigation; mostly I want the tomatoes to put down deep roots, so I proved deep waterings weekly unless it happens to rain a lot. Last year the harvest was amazing, with more fruit than we could comfortably handle through to early October.

How often do you folks water your tomato plants?

 

[Branching Out]

It's totally normal to keep a sign like this in the drawer with your oven mitts, right?? You just never know when you might need it!

 

[digitS']

Branching Out, I would prefer to water the entire distant garden 3times/week. The soil in this valley is "gravel," hundreds of feet deep -- glacial moraine. A Summer rainstorm amounting to 1/4" is unlikely.

What I'm trying for is 3/4", twice/week but, I know that it would be better if it was 1/2", 3 times/week because I was able to have the property owner run water on about that schedule for his and my garden together. When he was not available and now that it is only my garden out there, we reverted to less frequent watering because it is miles from my home and I cannot do much of anything while the sprinklers are running .

Daily watering may work for shallow-rooted lawngrass but not for much else. I think that some folks are outta their minds to stand with a hose daily, throwing down 1/10th of an inch of water. Measuring a sprinkler's output is easy: use a cake pan from the kitchen. Set it down at various distances from the sprinkler. Use the clock and measure. Come up with an average. Check with the weather service on rainfall amounts. Take into account heat and wind. Of course, flexible schedules can be useful but most people cannot go too far in that direction.

Yes, tomato plants can and should develop deep roots. I imagine that in many locations, adequate water once/week would work fine. Setting things up so that they are dependent on daily ... Yeah, then go ahead and take a little Summer vacation and return to a disaster! Nope.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

...
How often do you folks water your tomato plants?

when it has been so hot and dry at the beginning i'm watering twice a day just to be sure they are not drying out and water is percolating down deep enough (the plants are also down a ways and have pretty big holes filled underneath them with worm compost and better garden soil because some of them were planted in very compacted areas).

now that the temperatures are moderating and they've had a week to adjust i'll start tapering off to twice a week deeper watering which is normal for us. i don't want them to dry out too much because it does take some time for the water to get down that deep and i don't want the stress of a hot day to cause BER problems.

 

[heirloomgal]

I water daily my tomatoes @Branching Out , but I do it puddle style. I create a slight well around the base of the plants and water deeply that well, filling it up sometimes twice. But my tomatoes are planted in a part of my garden where I know the soil isn't terribly deep, and it's very clayish beyond the good soil, so I feel like I don't have much of a choice. I think too I've been influenced by some of the gardening bits from Bob Flowerdew, who raved about how great his crops were when he could lavishly trench water, before they banned hoses in his part of England. Deep down I think I registered more water equals... more!

 

[Alasgun]

My tomato’s are watered for 8-10 minutes at 7:00am thru a 1 gph emitter, every day. (1 pint) My experience has been that uniform watering right along helps tremendously with blossom end rot which most “authorities” will tell you is caused by a calcium deficiency/im-balance. There’s another camp out there who ascribe to the thinking that its a physiological problem. Im with these guys; early on id get all freaky when the soft brown area would develop on some of the early fruit. Then i noticed it clearing up for no apparent reason once everything was normalized with the irrigation!

i beat the Drip irrigation drum pretty regularly and am ecstatic over the time savings alone with the uniformity of all produce coming in second.

 

[digitS']

Here is a chart compiled by the University of California on root depth. They recommend 1.5 inches of water per week for the home gardener/small farmer. That is a fairly consistent rule of thumb shared by many agencies.