Rickcef, Thanks for the advice. That is sort of my feeling as well. I assume that once that tomato is picked, the plant will start growing well again. My determinates always seem to be able to grow and produce at the same time once the summer gets going. I'm not sure if the lack of growth isn't more related to the cooler weather anyway. It seemed to be growing well for a few weeks after transplanting, but that new growth seemed to stop around the same time I noticed the fruit. It is about a foot tall while the others are pushing two feet. I might give them all a little boost of miracle grow since the others are now starting to blossom a little and I think it is warm enough for fruit. I was suprised to see that BrandyBoy be the first to fruit as well, but I guess you just never know. I'll sure be glad to get a taste of that first one, no matter what size plant it came off of. TBT

Can you lead me in any direction of good reads on organic fertilizing? Organic fertilizing in general? Sure, we have a great Organic Gardening forum here. But the problems arise with organic fertilizing in containers. Fertilizing in containers has little in common with fertilizing in-ground.gardening - whether organics or synthetics - just as gardening in containers has little in common with in-ground gardening. Which is why I recommended the Container Gardening forum for the basics. Containers use different soil-less mixes (no dirt since it compacts in containers, doesn't drain well, and causes roots to rot), plants quickly become rootbound in containers (not a problem in the ground) which is why much BIGGER containers is recommended (10-15 gallons for the average tomato plant), plants in containers must be watered much more often than an in ground garden, and every time you water containers the nutrients leach out of the container. So container plants have to be fed regularly - weekly is common - and fed diluted mixes or nutrients based on the size of the containers. So using liquid organic fertilizers work much better than dry granular ferts. Organic fertilizers need bacteria and soil microbes and bugs to convert them to a form usable by the plants. Garden dirt contains them naturally but container mixes don't have those bacteria and such unless you add them to it and do so regularly. Some folks do it with compost and compost or manure teas, and some do it with one of the many liquid bacterial supplements available. So some reading about fertilizers on the Organic Gardening forum will be of help but keep in mind that you are working with containers so much of what in-ground gardeners recommend just work work for you. The Container Gardening forum does have some organic gardeners too however and they can help balance the two issues for you. Dave

Hi BennVenn, I didn't realize you are in Australia till now... who in their right mind isn't growing their tomatoes outside down under in this wonderful season? You know 80% of the North Americans are foaming at the mouth just waiting for Spring here ;-) Just joking around ... I'm sure this is a great learning experience. Let me just give a few pointers and address a couple more doubts you had. OK, $8/1000L for an all-in-one product .... hmmmm Unless I'm wrong that's 3 cents a gallon, way to go mate! .... wait, let's just look at it to be sure ... OK, the formula is no good for fruiting tomatoes, though it ought to be ok for greens and herbs. Potassium nitrate was not the way to adjust it, it should have been adjusted with sulfate of potash, and we don't knowthe micros so who knows except the leaves don't show any problem with them yet. Too young to say really. I looked at the way the leaves curl in your excellent pictures and that is why I thought you had some accumulated salts already. But it could be that the plant is simply weak. Both are likely. Coconut based substrate is less forgiving on roots than a mineral substrate and when repotting that is an art, not a science where you rip as few roots as you can and open it up somewhat, and put it in its new place avoiding compacting in any way so the roots have time to spread out. I think your comments about roots and water are not far off the mark, except that it is oxygen, not water that is getting excluded and this will be a risk of fungal problems now ... another reason not to dawdle on repotting. We didn't talk about the composition of your source water. 16 CF is fine at this stage including the water ;-). OK, if that is fine ...back to the formula, if it is one liter (100:1), you are blasting the poor plants with nitrogen, and unless your source water is passing through a calcite mine, the calcium is not a problem, but will likely become your first deficiency ... it's too low. The formula will work fine at 200:1, but as the fruit load increases, then iron must be added as long as you want to use this sub-optimal tomato product. What kind of grow light do you have? can it deliver roughly 500 W/m2? OK, well, at least 350, but to each of the leaves? All right, you can twist the tomato plant's arms some and have 200, but that will only get by. Unfortunately it is the lower leaves that are doing most of the photosynthesis and the bulb must be near them unless it is one of these expensive new bulbs that claims a mini-solar directed output. Still the nice reflective room you made is better than I ever had. Your choice of plant variety is a problem to light up. It is a vigorous indeterminate which needs to make lots of plant mass to complement that fruit mass you're after. Consider a manageable dwarf variety for indoors like that ... and adjust your expectation actually, back to being realistic. You can utilize light with enormous efficiency then. Google the Southern Hemisphere dwarf project and get a good one of those and you'll really have a wonderful project. OK, I hope I helped more than I confused... but I'm thinking it might be a bit much ... let me know if it's helpful or I if need should clear up or said something dumb lol. PC

I have been eyeing this thread since it started in hopes of gaining knowledge for next year. I'll add my 2 cents: I started my tomato seedlings in flats in a greenhouse in late February, moved them to large pots (quart yogurt tubs, small coffee cans, etc) in early March, and planted out in the first week of May. (They ended up being a little long in the tooth, I mean stem: I will start several weeks later in future. I had to deep-plant most of them.) Anyway, I noted that the forsythia was starting to bloom when the tomatoes had been in their pots for about a month, and they did look like they were reaching a respectable transplant size at that point. But there was a lot of weather weirdness forecast, so I did not chance it and instead stuck to my family's tradition: plant on May Day. What I noticed was: this was right about the time that the forsythia was going *out* of bloom. There was not another frost, and every tomato established well. Perhaps the *end* of the forsythia, rather than the beginning, is the tomato indicator. And I picked my first tomato on June 12, and have been getting about a pound of fruit a day for the past week. (Mind you, I have close to 50 plants, so this isn't at all impressive! They are just outliers of the main deluge I anticipate. But it will be enough for our cookout hamburgers this Monday!)