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Florida Gardening

pulling up tomato plants, where to put them?

16 years ago

I'm pulling up the tomatoes. Now, some have little green ones, some have almost small ripe ones. I was wondering if I put these scraglies in the "back 40" where it is semi swamp depending on the time of year, what animals or birds might eat them, or if they reseed, and grow, what might eat them next year. Or should I just send them all to the mighty dump. I don't want them in the compost pile. Next year I will want determinent tomatoes, and we are going to solarize this soil. Had those fruit worms, and other nasties this year so need to start fresh. The raised bed we installed works great, just need to weed out the hidden bugs in the soil. Can the cows eat the tomato plants with no ill effect? Big heard, we have 2.

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Comments (6)

naplesgardener
16 years ago
You have cows!!!! Cool. Can you post a photo of them? What are their names? Or are they potential dinner and therefore nonames.
Oh about your question-I have no idea.
presmudjo
Original Author
16 years ago
A1 The Big Dog is about 6 months old. He was a birthday gift in March when his mama didn't care for him. He was 3 weeks old. So we got another calf, Baby Girl who also didn't take to mama. She was 4 months old so I didn't have to give her milk. We live on 5 acres and since we are agricultural, we like to have the cows. City people are moving in and trying to rezone, so it is best we have the animals for zoning arguments. I was willing to eat them, but I'm out voted and we will raise calves to sell. Until it is time to eat them. Home grown beef is the best! Busy today so will post picture maybe tomorrow.
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Tomatos can put new roots along the stem if planted deeper. It might also be a good idea to mist the leaves or place a transluscent plastic shopping bag over the plant for a few days to keep it hydrated if it wants to wilt.
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Paula, Just check the soil and water when they need it. Since you have sandy soil, you may have to water pretty often unless there's a pretty high water table under ground. When you check your soil, use a trowel to sort of open a 'test hole' about 4" down and stick your fingers down into that area to check for moistness. Remember that your goal should be evenly moist soil, and not a cycle of wet-dry-wet-dry. For everyone else, I hope your tomatoes are pulling out of their too-much-moisture-funk. The 2.5" we had here lasted about 3 days and then we were back to being as dry as a bone with the soil cracking and all. I am not expecting very good production from most of the veggie garden if this hot weather sticks around. We need some cold fronts to cool us off. Normally, in an 'average' summer, if there is such a thing, my garden produces great until July when the heat tends to shut down production of some veggies like tomatoes, sweet peppers, green beans, etc. This year, the typical 'shut down' heat of July arrived in late May and I think it shows in the slowing production in the garden. Our temperatures are looking high for the rest of June and the heat index numbers aren't great either. I'm not joking about building a shade canopy over my garden. I'd do it if I could. I bought a 30' x 6' shade cloth yesterday to suspend over one bed of tomatoes to give them some relief from the heat. Now, I have to decide which tomato bed gets the shade cloth. Dawn
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I am thinking that is where someone puts clear plastic over a strip of ground and lets the hot sun bake it to try to sterilize it, and hopefully get rid of any disease or pathogens in that soil. It sounds like Megan intends to try that rather than replacing the soil or growing medium in her 1.5' X 6' X 2' planter box to me. I have no idea about her budget, but if it is possible, I think that she would be better off to just replace the soil. However, if she wants to economize, it does not sound like she has a soil problem to me. Most of the problems she listed are not necessarily soil related. Perhaps BER and leaf curl could be related to inconsistent moisture in the soil, and it might be hard to keep the moisture level and temperature level consistent in that size planter box. A good layer of mulch might help, and perhaps some type insulation on the sides of the planter box if possible. Just my guessing. Bill P.
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Some related questions. They called a frost advisory for the Front Range tonight, and this weekend we'll have the first freeze. Right now my tomato plants (in containers) are all on the back porch. If we have frost (we may or may not), I'm hoping that will protect them a little. But after that, what would happen if I just put the tomato plant containers in the dark in the garage? Would the tomatoes ripen, or would the plants just die? A green tomato that was knocked off the plant ripened just fine in the house. If I picked all of the green tomatoes off the plants, would they ripen inside? Or would only the bigger full-sized tomatoes ripen? Another possibility is to put some of them in my plant room, where I have a couple other plants under grow lights, but I don't think I can fit all 12 in there. Some of them are pretty big. I have a dozen plants, and in total they probably have more than 100 greenies on them. With that number of tomatoes, I don't want to just give up on them and let the frost take them. I want to save as many as I possibly can. Thanks.
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sumala
16 years ago
"Home grown beef is the best!" Very true but also can be said for pork, chicken, goat or any other common food animal. Our commercial farmers employ all kinds of tricks and chemicals to make their animals market size as fast and as cheap as possible. You can't blame them because they are business men competing in an open market but if you raise your own at a more natural pace, the taste is far superior
msmarion
16 years ago
Yes you can feed them to the cows, we always did. We had 250 registered holstens.
sumala
16 years ago
You went from raising cows to Harley hogs msmarion?
cindeea
16 years ago
LOL Sumala, that's our diversified MsMarion Hogster, all right! She is quite unique, doncha think?

pres-it would be so cool to have the acreage to have cows. When I was a little girl we had a 72 acre farm in PA. We had chickens, ducks, goats, pigs, guinea hens, sheep. Only a couple of each, my Dad called himself a 'gentleman farmer'. We also grew all our own veggies and fruit. Fall canning and animal harvesting for the freezer was a big time. What a wonderful way for a kid to start, animals, gardens and woods to play in. My fondest memories!

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