I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I received my wonderful package from Margo. The author was Fern Michaels and the book is The Nosy Neighbor. It sounds like exactly my kind of book! I just finished a Fern Michael's book called Christmas at Timberwoods. It's good if anyone is looking for a Christmas suspense story. I have only read a few of her books and not the one Margo sent. I got up with a very sore back today so it sounds like a good day to read. Margo also sent some seeds, a card, a bookmark with information about hummingbirds, a notepad with my initial, a pretty bracelet that she made, and a pop up vase with a greeting card. Thanks so much, Margo! Here's where we are with our swap. Mellen posted and I'm sure her swap will be received soon. hazelnutbunny: Sent (Mellen has received it.) mellen: flowergirl34: Sent (Rose has received it.) smitties: Sent (Jeanne has received it.) sandlapper_rose: Sent (Melissa has received it.) I had lots of fun with this swap and hope all who joined in did as well. Jeanne

Dan, I've used a few different mixes in containers and I like the sound of your sea soil. The problem with containers is that the system is really too small to set up a true organic soil system in them. People do all sorts of things and may technically get away with it, but I my abilities can't do a completely organic soil and get reliable production, since any "help" and you kid yourself that it is "almost organic". That said, I had some luck with a mixture of 1/3 compost (Black Kow Composted Organic), 1/3 peat & 1/3 perlite in summer but you must watch it doesn't get waterlogged. I know it sounds strange, but raw perlite is "organic". You could put some of those fancy rock dusts in there and dolomitic lime and give it a whirl. Problem is at some point your plants will need the nutrient boost of something like Miracle Gro, which is not organic, but not as bad as some make it out to be, either! There are some Fox Farms hydroponic/organic and Dutch Master hydro organic ones, but these things are really cost intensive and there is no way I could afford to even evaluate them. Tomato-Tone is organic and you can use some of it (the affordable option I would use) but a lot of experimentation is necessary to get it right in a bucket. Those are the tools I would use. There are others that are more expert than I am in this forum on organic methods in a container, but the problem is that ingredients and climates can vary enough that a lot of experimentation is necessary anyway and it is a bit much to ask of a container considering the nutrient demands of a big tomato plant. And a bigger contaner ( say, 25 gallons) can be costly to fill with organic nutrients only. There are other much more economic ways to go if you drop the requirement of deriving all nutrition from "organic" sources, for example pine mulch, etc, is cheap but offers no nutrition so it doesn't get you anywhere nutrient wise, though it might help you save on perlite. I can't answer whether your tap is appropriate for your plant, even knowing the pH is 7.5. That's because it will be the interaction among the tap, soil ingredients and amendments that determine the pH of the container. For example, if your soil starts on the acid side which it likely will it needs to be neutralized with some lime, but you can do what I do ... put less in and water with alkaline water for a while. Clearly that is not an optimal situation but to be honest my plants do fine despite all the issues with pH, and my tap is pH 7.7. But this is a fragil relationship and the only way to now for sure is to pH test your soil while you grow toget the hang of what's happening, if you are really enthusiastic. Just because it works for me, btw, doesn't mean it will work for everyone. We get lots of rain here and that frequently washes trhough soil mixesand I purposely open the tops wide to encourage that. No residue builds up from the tap or any of my not-organic supplements due to the rain. The common wisdom of hydroponics of a vegetative and a reproductive period fertilization schemes doesn't seem very pronounced to me when growing the tomato for the long haul. To be perfectly honest, I think all these mantras about vegetative stages and drastic changes during flowering stages are geared towards high value crops LOL. Really with tomato plants you want to keep the nitrogen at a baseline, low in all of my scenarios. You are not growing vines, they get quickly unmanageable for indeterminates and make few tomatoes, and most everyone here seems to agree that being pretty stingy with nitrogen is the way to go. That's the opposite of what you've done. When I grow my tomatoes, my seedlings have only 1/2 to 2/3 the nitrogen the producing plants do, so my nitrogen rate actually increases for me. At the end I back off though because the plants get less productive and unmanageable so there's a lot of give and take. Hope that helps a little, because nothing is as easy as it seems, so most people find something that works and get pretty stuck to it. Cheers PC

Thanks for the reply, ok so they are too wet, eh? I will shake out what water I can and let them dry up. I think I'll then top feed for a bit, but I can lower the flood level later - I'll just flood to the bottom as noted. This all makes sense. Hopefully they are not too far gone with rot etc. i actually had those pvc covers on the blocks but took them off because I wanted my fan to help Evap the water. My root structure is so small, it's going to be a while before the roots are sucking up water quickly! The leds are very high end setups from the saltwater coral reef world ($800 each-full spectrum Radion pros!). As far as reefing led fixtures go, they are pretty much top of the line. I made a mistake up there, it's about 400w total not 200, and I don't know what the conversion factor is from led to say, mh or cf, but I don't think it's apples to apples. I actually have experience building led lights for my coral tanks, so I really don't think the led are insufficient - I had them about 4' off of the plants to start, but just lowered them to about 1.5' away. They are so bright that when I turn the t5 on, I can't tell if they turned on or not. :) it's blinding to stand near. Anyway, if it can grow plants under water, I think it should be good out of water without the losses incurred by the water itself. Fwiw, here is the led fixture I built from scratch for my reef tank. It uses aluminum heats inks, laser cut acrylic, water jet aluminum chassis... Happy corals! The led lighting ive seen in the Hydroponics world is mostly older tech, which is why the panels are so huge. Reef led lighting hangs on the cutting edge of led design, using the new cree/Osram/etc stuff, but they are also a lot more expensive! Its interesting to note how much overlap there is between the reefing and hydro worlds!

The first link says, "Damage by glyphosate usually results from spray drift." Second link: "It has physically drifted from somewhere" Third link: "Drift from pesticides can kill or damage" Forth link: "Be careful to prevent herbicide drift into home gardens, farms, or greenhouses where tomatoes are growing. " "By claiming you can "frequently use glyphosate near my tomato plants without problem" flies in the face of not only the original product label which clearly states in the Precautions/Restrictions - "NOT RECOMMENDED" around tomatoes but common knowledge." ""NOT RECOMMENDED" is not the same as "RECOMMENDED NOT." That warning is for fools who can't control spray drift. The versions of Roundup with additional active ingredients are much more dangerous because the other active ingredients spread by rain and other water flowing over the ground. And, this can even happen 10 ft. away. This doesn't happen with glyphosate because it binds tightly with soil. What is most remarkable is that you are not criticizing ncrealestateguy for not heeding the warning. ncrealestateguy said,"the tomato plant show signs of twisting stems " That is NOT a symptom of glyphosate poisoning which is evidence that he was not using pure glyphosate. And, I suspect there was water flow along the ground from one plant to the other. To reiterate, I don't let glyphosate drift onto my tomato plants and I don't have problems.