You can raise beautiful tomatoes in that awful gumbo, don't get discouraged. Sounds like you have plenty of OM available so I would just start by watering with 1-2 tbs of molasses per gallon of water (rain IF we ever get any more) while you look for sources for the other organic things you would like to try. I have much better luck at feed stores finding the things I like to use.

Whether you would need to "feed" those plants depends on the nutrients that are available in the soil, and that knowledge comes from a good soil test rather than a guess. What is the level of organic matter in your soil?
What is the soil pH?
What is the balance of nutrients?
For some answers you need to contact you local office of the Texas A & M Cooperative Extension Service for a soil test and for other information you need to dig in and find out with these simple tests;

1. Structure. From that soil sample put enough of the rest to make a 4 inch level in a clear 1 quart jar, with a tight fitting lid. Fill that jar with water and replace the lid, tightly. Shake the jar vigorously and then let it stand for 24 hours. Your soil will settle out according to soil particle size and weight. A good loam will have about 1-3/4 inch (about 45%) of sand on the bottom. about 1 inch (about 25%) of silt next, about 1 inch (25%) of clay above that, and about 1/4 inch (about 5%) of organic matter on the top. Your primary concern is the OM level and yours may be pretty good.

2) Drainage. Dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill that with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with more water and time how long it takes that to drain away. Anything less than 2 hours and your soil drains too quickly and needs more organic matter to slow that drainage down. Anything over 6 hours and the soil drains too slowly and needs lots of organic matter to speed it up.

3) Tilth. Take a handful of your slightly damp soil and squeeze it tightly. When the pressure is released the soil should hold together in that clump, but when poked with a finger that clump should fall apart.

4) Smell. What does your soil smell like? A pleasant, rich earthy odor? Putrid, offensive, repugnant odor? The more organic matter in your soil the more active the soil bacteria will be and the nicer you soil will smell.

5) Life. How many earthworms per shovel full were there? 5 or more indicates a pretty healthy soil. Fewer than 5, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, indicates a soil that is not healthy.

I was looking for seaweed extract/kelp meal for fertilizing a couple of tomatoes and one pepper plant.

These make an excellent, if expensive, organic fertilizer. A slightly better one would include fish hydrolysate instead of emulsion. Look for Neptune's Harvest brand.

One tomato is in a raised lasagna bed with very little peat moss, and lots of composted manure and compost...

Just for reference, composted manure and compost are the same thing. Once it is fully decomposed, you should not be able to tell what the sources are of the original ingredients.

At present point, I am using a homemade soap/tobacco/mustard spray regularly on the leaves of my plants to hopefully make them less tasty to the huge crowd of bugs we suffer here in southern Texas.

Are you Jerry Baker? ;-)

I would stay far away from anything with tobacco in it simply because tobacco is one of the most dangerous "organic" materials that can by found or used in the garden. I also stay reasonably far away from soap. Mustard sounds harmless enough; however, you are already using kelp in the garden. Kelp spray is the best thing you can use ON the plant to keep the sucking insects away. If you are worried about tomato horn worms, then be absolutely as careful as can be to manage your paper wasps around the house. They are your BEST friends when it comes to cleaning up the caterpillars. Secondarily, compost under the plants (only on the surface), and finally, you can find products with BT (bacillus thurengensis). That is a fast acting bacterial poison that only affects caterpillars. Once you have the BT in your soil, usually the caterpillars, once they hatch, can last only a day or two.

Here's the question: In your opinion..do I really need to fertilize these plants in these conditions? Or would it be sufficient to feel the tomatoes (which I realize are heavy feeders) with a solution of compost or manure tea?

Yes you need to feed them. Compost is not a fertilizer. Yes it has a formal NPK listed for it but it makes a much better source of missing microbes than it does an actual fertilizer. If you want to fertilize, use a real fertilizer like corn meal, alfalfa meal/pellets, cottonseed meal, soybean meal, or any other ground up grain, seed, or nut you can find at your local feed store. The application rate for these grains is one heaping handful, scattered under each plant, once a month. Actually, the more of these different grains you can find, the better. Mix as many as you can find and apply the mixed product at the heaping handful per plant rate. These are real fertilizer. The soil microbes will eat these and take good care of your plant. They will feed the plant and protect it from disease and insects.

Manure tea is a dangerous product because you can easily start out with a batch of disease ridden manure and end up spraying disease all over you and your garden. The only safe tea is compost tea where the compost is a finished compost.

I did go look for seaweed extract or kelp meal in the big garden stores here...just found a lonely bottle of fish emulsion and was told "we just don't sell that much organic...". Kind of sad. But now I've a good reason for saving up for constructing a compost pile.....

Like I said, compost is not fertilizer and can't be used to replace a real fertilizer like seaweed extract or kelp meal. These are much more expensive than the grain based fertilizers I mentioned above, so I don't use them except as a foliar spray to ward off the bugs.

I'm really not big on soil tests, but if someone convinces you to do one, please send it to the Texas Plant and Soil Lab instead of the county extension service. TPSL will give you a much better test, more tests, and a better service when you tell them what plants you are growing. The tests they conduct have been proved to correlate with plant tests showing the availability of nutrients in the soil versus the uptake of those nutrients by the plant. Texas A&M definitely cannot make that claim. Plus, TPSL does all these extra tests routinely. If you asked TAMU to do the same tests, first they would have to learn how to do them, then they would have to find the chemicals. $pecial order them, and wait for them to arrive. TPSL will do it all, fast, and at a cost which is not much more than TAMU charges. TPSL tests farm soils around the world, so don't be shy about using them. And as another (shameless) plug for them, they developed a way for Texas pecan growers to get a full crop every year instead of every other year. They are a very interesting company. I have nothing to do with TPSL and have never had my soil tested there (I just don't believe most people need them), but I do like to spread the word when I find a really excellent service.

Here is a link that might be useful: Texas Plant and Soil Lab

O.K.....I'll bite...NO, I'm not Jerry Baker. I did read the book among about 10 others from the library, which is why I'm so confused. Can you tell me why you don't like soap and tobacco is dangerous? I don't doubt the information, I just like to learn as much as I can. I live in the suburbs, so it's going to take a bit of doing to find a feed store, I think. Perhaps I'll take a trip soon to College Station. I wish there were a garden center here that knew more about organic gardening. I don't want to use chemicals at all. I'm not saying they're all bad--they just don't make sense to me. I'll go surf now looking for Neptune's Harvest.....Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

srburk

The tobacco issue was started by an aboroist that couldn't find the LD 50 of tobacco, so he ass-u-me-d the the LD 50 of nicotine sulphate, which is a manufactured concentrate.

Byron, the LD 50 (Lethal Dose) of a substance is where 50 percent of a populaton exposed to that amount of a product will be killed by that product.
Nicotine sulfate is a very potent poison with a very low LD 50 that is also a known carcinogen in humans and is a very broad spectrum poison that will kill anything, beneficial or one of the bad guys, it contacts or that contacts it.

I should probably point out that the tobacco I referenced was tobacco tea, made with cheap chewing tobacco and water. While I see the point about spraying a carcinogen on my plants, I really don't think it's that big of a problem at that strength. It's not warding off the leaf miners and now I have a mildew problem, so I'm holding off on its use anyway.

srbuck

FWIW, You start with about 1/3rd oz of chewing tobacco, which is deamed fit for human consumption, IF the whole 1/3 oz was disolved in water, the reduction is 1/98,307th of what is fit for human use. Non of these chemist can show me how to reach this reduction and still be more deadly than stictnine (sp)

BTW I am still using the same package of chewing tobacco that I purchased in 1988 I am still using the last gal of concentrate made in Y2K.

$1.59 for 10 years is cheap

Byron

kimmsr

Your absolutely correct, BUT Nicotine Sulphate is NOT the same thing as chewing tobacco. In Most states you need a pesticide applicators permit to purchase nicotine sulphate.
You and Dchalle are comparing apples to TNT. IT's no where near the same chemical

Chewing tobacco is deamed by the FDA as safe for "human consumpsion". Niootine sulphate is a highly consentrated pesticide. One drop of this suff on your skin can cause nicotine poisoning. I know that nicotine sulpahte has an LD 50 of 55, But chewing tobacco LD 50 is greater than 16,000
IT's below mandantory registration limits.

Yes I know that chewing tobacco, used at 3 oz per day for 10 years can cause cancer.

However 1 oz used on plants over 10 years, the odds are damn slim

Byron

Byron

I doubt that the tobacco tea is going to cause any serious problems from a health point of view to you. It is an effective poison to bugs. As I understand it, you should not use it in the garden primarily because tobacco can carry the Tobacco mosaic virus for which, tomatoes and other plants are also susceptable. Therefore, you could introduce disease to your plants.

Pipe, Chewing and Cigar tobacco's have been TMV free for over 40 years,

Cigarette tobaocco is 0.237% infected. USA crop

Okay, I'll retract what I said about tobacco. For the time being, I do not know if there is a difference between nicotine sulfate and the extract from chewing tobacco. But please don't let this divert you from the point I made. There is a great organic alternative to what you are using against insects. It is liquid seaweed. Soap is not a microbial food, and many soaps kill microbes on contact. Most all soaps wash the microbes off of the plant. I just prefer to stay away from them all and go with proved organic materials. Two other organic treatments you can try are garlic juice and milk.

Now that you are aware of an organic alternative, you can decide whether to use what you are currently using or something else.

I don't think you'll get any organic help in College Station. Where do you live?

A contemporary reference is sited here...
http://www.apsnet.org/Education/LessonsPlantPath/TMV/discycleWHITE.htm
or google :"Cigarettes+TMV"

Here is a link that might be useful: TMV and cigarettes

yUP and if you go to U Oregon they talk about a recent "Outbreak" of TMV in a Greenhouse, OK This "Recent Outbreak" happened in 1949 Recent = ?????

Alaska talks about TMV, Who grows tobacco in Alaska????

In 1998 , on another list, I posted Bakers tobacco juice formula, I was flammed by over 75 members of that list. After that I had chats with a 35 year Plant Pathologist at UMASS where they grow 10's of thousands of acres of cigar tobacco, The Director of Plant Pathology (now retired) at NCSU where most of the tobacco is grow, A Pathologist at UKY where most of the Chewing tobacco is grown, And a Pathologist for Phillip Morris Tobacco Co. These folks are in the middle of Tobacco growing regions not an ID 10 T from Alaska that knows squat about growing tobacco.

For Pickwick there is one 640 acre farm in NC that will not burry his TMV crop residue or switch to a hybrid tobacco that is TMV free. One and only 1 farm is the major source of TMV, in tobacco, in the USA

byron, I have no idea where you generated your statistics, but TMV is one of the largest agricultural problems there is. It affects some 360 different species of plants and can and is spread by smoking or even those who do smoke but do not smoke around the crops. Ever wonder why any commercial greenhouse or commercial growing operation is heavily posted with "No Smoking" signs? It's not because it's PC or for fire danger - cigarette smoke is one of the biggest transmitters of this virus. Scientists study TMV for viral research because of its extreme persistance despite heat, cold, extended period of viability and rapid multiplication. Tobacco and the garden simply do not mix. If you have any doubt of this, do a search for any horticultural .edu website for confirmation.

I met a kid a couple years ago who cured TMV to my satisfaction in tomatoes for a science fair project. He went on to take second place in international competition with that project. He also went on to score 1,500 on the SAT two different times. There are some very smart folks working in that field of science.

About the BT...it is applied to the plant leaves as a dust or spray and the caterpillar eats it while eating the leaves. The caterpillar is killed because the bacteria produce crystals and spores that paralyze the digestive tract. BT breaks down quickly in sunlight, so apply in the evening or early morning; reapplication may be necessary. My bottle of Thuricide says to apply weekly, the Dipel dust says as necessary, and I have read every 3-5 days for the spray, if the first application doesn't get all the bugs. There are over 35 varieties of BT and I'm not aware that they will remain in the soil for a length of time. Please let me know the details if this is incorrect. It is one product I always have on hand in liquid and dust form. BT is nontoxic to mammals, won't harm beneficial insects, and can be used rigt up to harvest.

Gardengal

I chatted with a Dir of Plant Pathology at NCSU. NC Is one of the largest tobacco producing states in the US, I had a chat with a Plant Pathologist from Phillip Morris Tobacco Company.
I had a chat with a Plant Pathologist from UMASS, In Mass they grow 10's of thousands of acres of Cigar Outer wrapper, He said that in the 40 something years that he had been there, he saw TMV only 4 times, and that was in Bell Peppers.

I had a Chat with a plant pathologist from UKY, where most of the chewing tobacco is grown. He said that all burleigh tobacco's are hybrids and TMV resistant, with no reported cases in over 40 years.

A chat with a Plant Pathologist at PSU, They haven't seen TMV in tobacco in over 40 years.

Yes TMV is a nasty disease, It can live in unburied plant material for over 50 years, It can be vectored in soil, insects, machinery or on clothing. Aphids are a major insect vector,

There are 38 strains of TMV( 1997 stats) and over 2,500 varieties plants that harbor one or more strains of TMV.
TMV can also be transmitted in the soil, and on the seed coat.

At NCSU they are more worried about an infected tomato plant than tobacco plants, NMSU (chile peppers) claims it's no longer a disease of concern.

Oregon say's they had a recent outbreak of TMV in a greenhouse, The last reported outbreak was 1949.
Recent???

I got my facts from folks that grow tobacco, and are responsible for disease control..

How many acres of tobacco are grown in the PNW?

Byron

Wow...it was really not my intention to start a discussion on tobacco usage in gardening, but thank you all for the information. I did find seaweed extract (Maxicrop) that had just been stocked in the local garden store, which might be a miracle. Tomorrow I'm going to scout out a local feed store and see if they can help me. When you say corn meal....is it like the same stuff you cook with? I don't mean to be obtuse, but there is tons of information on organic gardening out there, and a lot of it is conflicting.

hey y'all,

been awhile since i've posted here, but i thought i'd chime in after reading all this stuff about tobacco and ncsu. i'm in NC and not a tobacco farmer, but i do hear about it from time to time. a simple search on google ( +"tobacco mosaic virus" site:ncsu.edu ) yields tons of results. here's a quote from one on growing greenhouse tomatoes:

"The most important virus diseases on tomatoes in North Carolina is tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), but other viruses may cause significant losses. There are many strains of TMV and a few which occur in North Carolina are very damaging. The common ones only cause a mild mosaic. TMV can survive many months outside a living plant or insect, on tools, greenhouse frames, sawdust, and in the soil; in dried leaves such as in cigarettes it can survive for many years. It is rarely transmitted by insects. It is easily spread by touch from diseased plants or from contaminated objects. "

i'd stay far away from tobacco myself. i think "Organic Gardening" and "Mother Earth News" are both good sources of sound organic advice. i personally do not follow jerry baker's advice and i don't pee on any of my plants.

hth

Here is a link that might be useful: Virus Diseases of Greenhouse Tomato and Their Managment

It has been some 25 to 30 years ago that Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine had the articles that Tobacco and Nicotine Sulfate were no more acceptable to an organic gardener than arsenic. These are broad spectrum poisons and should not be necessary in a well tended organic garden. If you have pest problems that require the use of these products your soil is not in balance and you need a good, reliable soil test to start to determine what the problme is. If you soil is in good health and is growing strong, healthy plants they will not be bothered by insect pests.

thank you panchodog for providing the ncsu reference.

While doing a Google search, I accidentally came across this site. To my surprise, I came across some character named Byron defaming me on a couple of places in this forum because I dared to "ASSume" that nicotine was as toxic as nicotine sulfate. I don't know how that article got to be posted on the internet...I thought I sent that out several years ago as a private message (yes, I admit to being the "ID 10 T" that wrote it, Byron).
I noticed that while it was easy to ridicule me as an ignoramus, no "correct" LD50 values were provided, either. Allow me to suggest, for your information, that you look up the following links about nicotine:

MSDS for Nicotine (from UNSW Embryology -- http://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/msds/nicotine.htm ):

TOXICITY: LD50 (ORAL-RAT)(MG/KG) - 50
LD50 (IPR-MOUSE)(MG/KG) - 5.9
LD50 (SKIN-RABBIT)(MG/KG) - 50
LD50 (IV-MOUSE) (MG/KG) - 0.81

___________________

Nicotine (Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine

"The LD50 of nicotine is 50 mg/kg for rats and 3 mg/kg for mice. 4060 mg can be a lethal dosage for adult human beings. This makes it an extremely deadly poison. It is more toxic than many other alkaloids such as cocaine, which has a lethal dose of 1000 mg."

_________________________

From the Center of Disease Control (CDC): http://www.cdc.gov/Niosh/idlh/54115.html

(You'll need to go to the site, I can't print the table in plain text format)

___________________________

MSDS of Nicotine -- from the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Lab of Oxford University: http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/NI/nicotine.html

ORL-RAT LD50 50 mg kg-1
IPR-MUS LD50 5.9 mg kg-1
SKN-RBT LD50 50 mg kg-1
IVN-MUS LD50 0.8 mg kg-1
SKN-RAT LD50 140 mg kg-1

___________________________

I am not in the employ of any chemical company, and most of my educational programming is directed toward reducing pesticide usage by both commercial and consumer horticulturists. I don't know everything and I don't claim to be perfect, but I don't appreciate people taking cheap shots at me, especially when they've obviously not done their own homework.

Folks- when looking at an LD50, make sure that you know what it's for. Nicotine sulphate is not chewing tobacco, any more than THC is marijuana or than caffein is orange pekoe tea.

Looking it up- spit tobacco by brand contains anywhere from 0.6 to 3.4% nicotine. Taking 2% as the average, that means there's 20 mg nicotine per gram of chaw. At 50 mg/kg LD50, you will need to chew (very efficiently, as we can assume less than 100% uptake) you will need 187.5 g of chaw to reach LD50 for a 75 kg adult. 187.5 g is over 6 and a half full ounces.

That assumes one time dose and 100% nicotine uptake.

So- if you chew 6.6 ounces of chaw at once and use your mouth as a soxhlet extraction thimble- pouring maybe a good scotch through the tobacco to extract nicotine... you'll get sick, and have a theoretical 50% chance of dieing.

That is all that means. Applying extracted nicotine to plants means something else. Extract that nicotine and apply it to one plant that you'll eat as soon as it dries without washing it- you may experience a similar effect.

I have a hard time thinking that the nicotine in chaw is going to cause an issue based on LD50 concerns in this application. Nobody has suggested using concentrated nicotine sulphate, so why not dispense with all the LD50 and toxicity of that particular extract?

Now- is it effective? Is there other stuff that may be nasty in tobacco? TMV? I dunno and haven't really thought about it much.

Even though the USDA does not ban the sale and consumption of chewing tobacco should not be considered and endorsement of its use any more than the lack of a ban on the sale of cigarettes, cigars, or pipe tobacco should be considered endorsed by the FDA. Chewing tobacco is a carcinogen and some 30,000 people every year contract mouth cancers, 70 to 80 percent of those because of tobacco and alchohol use.
Nicotene is a very broad spectrum pesticide that has not been recognized as an acceptable organic control product for many years.

Ya, I suggest not chewing or smoking tobacco. Handling straight nicotine is a bad idea as well.

Nobody here has disagreed with you.

Plant a clove of garlic next to your tomato to keep many of the bugs off of it. Forget the fancy, expensive fertilizers and all the chemical analysis here. Blend a jalapeno pepper in a cup of water with a drop of vegetable oil, strain it, and spray that on the leaves to repel the rest of the bugs. If you want to be organic just do the simple things, you don't have to be a PhD to grow a tomato. Geeze.

Pablo is correct in that he is calculating the toxicity of chewing tobacco based on the actual dosage of nicotine within the product. The LD-50 is based on the ACTIVE INGREDIENT, not the total product, which I think confuses some people.

My point in my original message, which Byron pirated without permission, was that looking only at the toxicity of the extracted active ingredient, Mr. Baker is, in my professional opinion, reckless with his "tea" recipes. Hopefully, gardeners (both organic and not) would not use ANY product, natural or not, with as little disregard for environmental and personal safety as Mr. Baker recommends.

Here's the question: In your opinion..do I really need to fertilize these plants in these conditions? Or would it be sufficient to feel the tomatoes (which I realize are heavy feeders) with a solution of compost or manure tea? I see so many points of information here and elsewhere that I admit I'm thoroughly confused.

I realize the question I am quoting is from March 2006 and the thread has long since diverged into another (interesting) discussion, but I think the question posed is well worth spending a bit of time on.

The question, as I read it is this:

Do I need to fertilize (name the plant here) if I grow it in (fill in the growing medium here).

The answer is, the plant will tell you. Unfortunately the plant won't tell you in a timely manner. It will tell you only after you notice the effects of the plant getting too much or too little of something.

There really is no shortcut to experience and don't be in any rush to have perfect growing results from day one.

There is always the farmer's market or grocery when the garden plants fail ;-)

It simply takes time to learn what conditions a given plant does best in and all the guides in the world are, at best, approximations and often they are simply inaccurate or only accurate in the writer's growing conditions.

As an example, srburk said in his OP that he realizes tomatos are heavy feeders. Now, where did s/he get that idea from? No criticism of srburk intended at all, it is a common misperception propagated by many sources. Tomatos are not heavy feeders, they are moderate feeders. This is an example of the kind of misinformation involved in gardening that is spread by many otherwise helpful and knowlegable sources. How on earth can the newbie seperate the wheat from the chaff?

It can't really be done. Nothing short cuts experience with a plant.

Whether or not a plant requires supplemental fertilization or not can really only be determined by the grower after observing the plant.

If you know you are growing in a nutrient poor condition (like growing in containers) then you can pretty much be assured that supplementation will be required, but when growing in soil amended with organic matter, the plants simply have to be observed.

There is no short cut.

Justaguy2 is correct...nothing beats experience.

The only suggestion I can make, short of having all gardeners try things by trial-and-error, is to rely on your state land-grant university and its Extension Service. They should have publications that are based on multiple years of research to indicate when to fertilize, amounts needed, etc.

The only problem with your suggestion, Larry, is that most Cooperative Extension Agents do not supply organic gardening information yet. I am lucky in that my Extension Horticulturist is an organic gardener but I have talked with many that still maintain that organic methods do not work.
Partly this is our, organic gardeners, fault because we have drifted away and have not insisted on getting good solid organic gardening information from them. If enough organic gardeners visit their county offices and insist on good soil organic gardening information we will get it, eventually.

I have to agree with Kimmsr. As well, many of the places you send your soil off to to be tested, if they aren't the state University that is also the source/sponsor for the extension agents, will assume that you are gardening/farming conventionally, and will make recommendations from that point of view. You have to specificly state, when you send the soil sample in, that you are gardening/farming organicly, and hope that the lab can make any recommendations that apply to you.

In many ways, a better resource is OLD books on gardening and farming, from before WWII, and, even better, before WWI, before the fertilizer companies were able to produce lots of fertilizer cheaply, and were able to brainwash the American farmer into going for the quick returns. (I will grant, the first dose of chemical fertilizer probably did look like an easy miracle, compared to using manures, etc., to fertilize with!) If you can find any old regional publications, the recommendations in them will be pertinant to your local conditions for the most part, and probably be fairly "organic". Just bear in mind that many of the concoctions that the old-timers used for pesticides were in fact rather deadly brews, and aren't allowed under the Organic Standards....

does anyone know where I can get merced seeds

does anyone know where I can get merced seeds

The main reason not to use tobacco as a pesticide is that it's a broad-spectrum pesticide--it kills beneficials as well as bad guys. Not to mention it stinks.

I don't care what anyone says, using tobacco in any form can and will cause TMV. Case in point. I am a cigar smoker, not havatampas or white owls, but nice handmade cigars. I saved all my butts, and threw them into the garden area and composted a bunch as well. My first year with the tomatoes and peppers was hell. County extension agent (and myself after researching on the web, and every nursery that I showed the foliage to) diagnosed the TMV. I was told that this happens quite frequently. Last year, it came back, but not as strong, prolly due to me scraping off the top 10" of the garden in question, and replacing with my compost, topsoil, sand, and manures.
I say stay away from tobacco in your garden. TiMo