Probably successfully starting my seeds while living in a small apartment. Let me try to find a picture of my setup...

Biggest achievement(s)? Probably having grown over 4,000 varieties, introduced many hundreds of new ones via SSE listings and seed offers and being asked to write a book about heirloom tomatoes.

Carolyn

Grubby, that is the bottom line, when it come to growing tomatoes, me thinks.

Sey

Grubby, what you show looks like cut up fruits of the same variety. If so, what variety is it? And if more than one variety, which varieties are they?

Just curious,

Carolyn

For me it is having a garden to grow in, and the fact that the weather has been so great so far this year. I am miles ahead of where I was at this time last year. My peppers are starting to take off as well.

This is also this time last year from the other side.

Even the grass is greener this year...

Can we see closer pictures ?

JM - that is awesome - in an apartment?! It appears you have been successful ! What do you do with the seedlings when they are ready to plant? Do you have a garden spot? Nice setup for an apartment!

Carolyn - being asked to write a book or writing a book? I doubt there are many that have more knowledge and experience with tomatoes that you!

The thing I am most proud (thankful) of is actually something I have never done. Spray!

I only sorta know what they are! Right now the determinates that are ripening are Big Beef and either Big Boy or Better Boy and they're all growing together in a thicket and when picked they all go together in a bowl before being eaten indiscriminately by vicious children. There are labels down at dirt level but I can't remember what "B BOY" stands for. So much for careful record keeping.

My biggest accomplishment is my vegetable garden itself and my PVC trellis setup.

Here's a link to my garden pictures. There's a few albums for tomatoes

Tom's Garden

And here's a link to my PVC cage page

Tom's PVC cage page

And Hudson, Carolyn HAS written a book. '100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden.....she's quite modest about it.

Bump the thread

My biggest accomplishment for tomatoes is that I do not water my tomatoes (well, to be exact, only once at transplanting).

People would laugh at me: "neither do you have tomato fruits".

Well, if one tomato plant can grow 100+ sweet/none cracking fruit, I don't need more.

By the way, I also do not fertilize after the initial planting hole.

My biggest failue is that I cannot control/prevent tomato diseases.

well hp, maybe you give us some details about your "wonder" soil...

do you mulch the soil ?

some pictures would be nice too...

I assume hp is referring to "dry gardening?" But even the things I've read on that technique do mention "fertigating" once or twice during the season. No watering at all is impressive.

I am working on it . hehe

Sey

I finally figured out what I am going to use to support my tomatoes! I have grown tired of wimpy cages and I didn't get the results I wanted the past few years with a trellis and line. I ended up buying some cattle panel and I was going to tie it to T- bar but didn't like the idea of doing a weave later on with the tomatoes. I then saw that some people use two sides of cattle panel to hold the tomatoes in like this. http://peacecreekontheprairie.com/summer-fun/frugal-heavy-duty-tomato-cages These aren't my photos but demonstrate the idea.

I also found a way of making cages with cattle panel but you only get 2 cages, some scrap and you have to make cuts in the panel http://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/garden/super-sturdy-tomato-cage

So what I did was hybridize them! Each cattle panel is 24 squares long so I bent up the first 2 at 90 degrees, counted down 10 more squares from the first bend and bent it again to 90 and then one more bend 2 squares after that so the finished cage is a rectangle about 6.5 ft (10 squares) long 1.5 ft (2 squares) wide and should hold at least 3 plants. All with no cutting and no scrap not to mention they are very sturdy and should last for years. I need to finish them by securing the open end with hog clips and then I will tie each cage to a single piece of T-bar. Anyway I am pretty excited to see how these turn out. Greg

this is what they look like these ones will support my black raspberries

nice...

Good achievement, Greg.
It is like a big rectangular cage ?
How do you get in there ?

Sey

Daniel I will have to take some more pics at home this evening.

Sey; That is exactly what it is, a big cage that is 50" high , 18" wide and 6.5 ' long

The rectangle holes are large enough you can easily reach in and prune or move the branches around if you need to. Also with it being 18" wide you have access to the center from either side. Maybe next year if I get enough time and money I will make raised beds the same dimensions as the cage.

Hi Daniel and wormgirl,

I didn't have "wonder" soil but the native soil to begin with. My experiment used low tech and didn't cost money. It saved my gym membership too. Here are the steps for preparing the soil:

In the very beginning:

1. Double dig the garden, also double dig area surrounding the garden. The total depth is about 2 ft. Bury organic materials, such as leaves, tree branches, Xmas tree, a few phone books, any thing organic, in the bottom of the trench. When back filling the trench, I sandwiched the soil with leaves.

2. after filling back the trench, the garden naturally became a raised bed because of the additional organic materials. At this point, the depth of the garden is about 2~3 ft.

3. after double digging, pile more compost and soil (from a different area in my yard, screened) onto the garden (already a raised bed). The depth is now about 3+ ft.

In the following years:

4. In the fall, I pilled about 1 foot of shreded leaves as mulch.

5. The next sping after snow was gone, I worked(or buried) the leaves into soil (using fork, not shovel or machine, to avoid killing worms),

6. At planting time, I dug a big hole (can fit in a 5-gal bucket) for each plant. Let the hole warm up in the sun and filled in the hole with warm compost+ash+bone meal+101010+other ingredients (such as chiken poop). Bone meal/ash/poop went first to the bottom. Blend compost in with soil inside the wall of the hole.

7. Put tomato plant as deep as possible into the hole. Water really well with warm rainwater because it's going to be the first and last "drink" .

8. Do not water (unless in emergency) to discourage shallow lateral root growth. All the food was placed below the plant to encourage deep root growth.

8. later (in a few weeks), mulch the garden by about 1"-2" shredded leaves (more worm food) and then cover the whole garden by cardboard (free from Costco). Cardboard has two functions: a) as mulch to keep moisture in and supress weeds, b) to keep soil from splashing onto tomato plants during the rain to help prevent diseases.

My "Not watering tomato growing" experiment has been successful for many years. I remember about 3 or 4 years ago in July, there was a stretch of about 10 days in the 80-90s without rain. Tomatoes wilted noon time (12-3 pm). I resisted the temptation to rush in with water hose for rescuing because after sunset, all plants went back to normal.

Every year I grow about 40 tomatoes. This year it's 39. All grow in my "no water" condition.

pat

Proving my family wrong who had doubts and made sarcastic remarks at my first attempt at gardening. My tomatoes plants were all 10ft+, and we ate tomato almost everyday for a while. And they never seen stripe tomatoes before.

Max , That was a good one : to prove that you can do it just as anybody else can. .

Sey

Here are a couple of pics I just took with my phone.

Sadly, I'd have to say my biggest accomplishment is actually just getting ripe tomatoes right off the vine. Every season prior to last year, my tomato plants and fruits would grow huge, only to die off in a matter of days due to late blight. All my tomato-growing neighbors complain of the same issue. I guess it's just a bit too rainy in my area for tomatoes to do well without constant attention to air circulation around the plant and keeping them off the ground.

Last year, I finally managed to pamper a "Rio Grande" determinate plant enough to get a solid supply of tomatoes during July and August before it ran out of steam. I also had an "Beefsteak" that received no attention other than watering, and it pumped out a few big tomatoes before predictably dying from late blight.

I hope to change all of that this year, with my investment of T-posts and baling string to grow my plants using the Florida weave method. No more crappy 3-ring cages to fall over once the tomatoes get huge.

My biggest achievement was growing so much tomatoes that my neighbors were running away when they heard the word "tomato" from me. Ha-ha, just joking. But really, I had so much of them the last two years that I canned, dried and gave them away. It is not only my efforts, I just happen to have a very good soil and a climate that tomatoes love, moderately hot and dry, so no major disease problems so far.

Getting over 1000 Black Cherrys from a 5 gal container plant.

Hp... how does one go 90 days with no irrigation or rain at all? That seems hard to believe.

Dust mulching is actually more effective than one might think. Clay soils are especially effective at trapping moisture in the subsoil. I tried it last year with one of my tomatoes and I didn't have to water for at least two months after transplanting. One has to be ruthless about pulling weeds all around the drip line of the plant, though... I think that is the main disadvantage, especially when mulch keeps weeds down and moisture high at the same time.

Here's a good book on the subject, albeit old: http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0302hsted/030201/03020100frame.html

Buying a good moisture meter!! When I switched to container growing a number of years back I was always overwatering. Stuck my finger in the soil and if it felt dry, I watered. Leaves would turn yellow, classic syptom of overwatering. Finally I bought a water meter. I know they aren't precise, but it does help me know that the potting mix a little deeper is moist and to not water just because the top layer of potting mix looks or feels dry.

Jennie

triplione,

I have a love/hate relationship with my heavy clay soil but one thing it does do is retain moisture. In the 30 years I have been growing tomatoes I have only watered a handful of times. Of course if there is too much rain it retains that as well. If you get a crust on top an inch or so thick it takes forever to dry out underneath. I can easily do a couple of months without rain. In 2012 we had the worst drought since the 1930's, maybe ever. The winter before was very dry as well. I tilled my garden in March and never tilled it again. We didn't get any appreciable rainfall until September. I think I watered twice with a soaker hose very deeply. Had a very good tomato crop that year, my last good one as a matter of fact as the following two years were very wet and cool.

I managed to get one and only one plant to survive the Miami Summer. I'm not giving up.

Hi ncrealestateguy,

Your reaction is expected.

In Boston we have frequent rains. I believe one can duplicate my experiment in similar climate and soil. The key is to have deep garden bed with lots of organic matters. The plants will find water deep down and nutrients made by worms.

Last year I harvested 75 or so tomatoes from (6) vines.

(In prior years I might have gotten a dozen or so, tops ...)

I took tomatoes to church and my wife took some to work.

I felt like a true tomato gardener for the very first time.