I think my hydrated lime may have deep-sixed my tomato plants
rod707
8 years ago
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rod707
8 years agoRelated Discussions
Hydrated lime on my new garden!
Comments (5)A common fallacie repeated by many people is that clay soils, or sandy soils if that is what you have, need lime. Maybe, maybe not. Some new england garden "gurus" tell people they need to lime their soils every year and demonstrate that by throwing a couple of handfuls of lime down on a 4 x 8 plot in the spring which is the wrong time of year and probably not enough. The only way to know whether your soil needs lime as well as how much and which, Calcitic or Dolomitic, is with a good reliable soil test. More than likely you did not put enough lime down to do much more than make your soil look like a sugared donut, although Hydrated Lime can be more problematic than would crushed limestone. Because of the time it takes for lime to react in the soil the best time to apply lime to soil is in the fall. Also knowing where in the United States you are would also help since as a rule and because of the amount of rainfall soils east of the Mississppi tend to be acidic while those west of the Mississippi tend to be alkaline. For those that may want to dispute this note that I did state the "tend" to be that because there tends to be more rainfall east of the Mississippi and less rainfall west and the more rain you get the quicker the CaCo3 will be washed out of the soil....See MoreHow close can I plant my tomatoes in really wide deep bed?
Comments (12)Thanks - already started planting 2ft apart (a couple CP and rest BW). Just ran back in the house for cutworm collars, newpaper, and filling a 50-gal barrel with water. I wasn't planning on pruning those, just clipping to remesh fence behind them. I'll plant the determinates closer together (will have to weave those, no room in row next to fence). Martin - thanks for the info on potatoes - think I can sell Red Norland/Pontiac and Yukon Gold for that? I emailed Ag Dept, offered them new potatoes for $4/quart (about 2 lbs) and mature potatoes for $10/half peck(about 7.5 lbs) or $5/2qts(roughly 4lbs). No answer - but they haven't gotten back to me about edamame either and I need to know ASAP so I can plant enough for 30 families!...See MoreBIrds have been at my seeds-Peas are dying..I think
Comments (6)Birds are often the culprits for excavating new seeds; and small rodents. One system which may work for you is to get some small mesh 'chicken' wire to put over a row of wire hoops pushed well into the ground. Fasten the wire to the hoops. When the plants are up you can either leave the protection there until you're ready to harves - or move the wire across to a new site. (Aside: if you have found a source of trashed supermarket trolleys those baskets make very good protection for young plants and small patches of strawberries ;-) ) For the euc's: ask on the Australia forum. There are many species of Eucalyptus. Bear in mind that if you get more rain than the Blue Mountains your plants are going to grow much faster. For the tomatoes - generous holes with the soil well-mixed with plenty of compost, a stake or other means of support, and the recommended serving of fertiliser, followed by reliable watering. A trickle system would probably work well and ensure that the leaves aren't left damp. For soil-planted plants - you might want to investigate what it would take to install a watering system on an automatic timer. Trickle is probably more economical and effective than sprinklers as such. For plants you're growing on, or house plants - might be worth looking at capillary watering pads. (More forums to look at!) PS unless you have access to vast amounts of material - and mechanical assistance - your compost heaps will never supply all the organic stuff you'll want in your garden. It pays to allocate a chunk of the garden budget for buying in. If you develop the habit of always adding a couple of gallons of compost to the soil whenever you put in a new permanent plant - and a six inch layer when you renew your beds for annuals and bulbs your soil will steadily improve and so will the water-holding capacity. Mix it through rather than burying a layer. In some soils buried compost can become a toxic mess. Clay can be particularly bad this way. Keep the humus in the top six inches. If you're not home often enough to water things week by week - a deep watering and a hefty mulch layer can help plants carry over. Usually established plants will be fine. It's just the new ones that are making roots to escape from the root ball that can seriously suffer. Bare-rooted planting can take a year or so to create a decent root mass. With that in mind you might want to work a patch at a time to give the high intensity care needed to get plants well-established....See MoreWhy are my tomato plant stems deep purple?
Comments (10)joy: I hardened off my tomato plants in a covered porch. If they stayed in a covered porch the whole time, they weren't really hardened off. Hardening off requires a gradual exposure to full sunlight, wind, etc., starting with a day in full shade outdoors (covered porch works well for this) but then progressing to exposure to direct sun, from an hour or so of morning light increasing over the course of about a week to spending all day out in the sun. At any rate, the marks on your leaves are classic for sunscald. Since the damage is not too extensive, they should recover OK. joy: I fed my tomato plants with worm castings, bone meal and epsom salts. None of these things are fertilizers, really. Bone meal is, sort of, if your soil lacks P, but if it doesn't, excessive P can cause problems. Epsom salts are a source of Mg, but, once again, if you don't have a deficiency in your soil, it can do more harm than good. It's easy to create an imbalance by using these nutrient-specific products without getting proper soil testing done and if you don't have a lot of experience with soil and plant nutrition. N, P, and K to a plant are like protein, fat, and carbohydrates for us--the basic building blocks of our nutritional requirements. What you're doing now is like feeding a kid only fat and vitamins and not providing any protein or carbohydrates. Obviously, that's not a recipe for thriving. Worm castings are terrific and contribute to good tilth, add good microorganisms, etc., so keep using it, but it's not really food. It's a common myth that using fertilizer is somehow "bad" and true organic gardening relies only on compost. That's probably why we see so many people who use compost and various home remedies then show up on here wondering why their plants look so poorly. To not use fertilizer at all, you have to put time and effort into a long-term and constant soil-building program that has been going on for many years. In the quantities that most people use compost, i.e., a few handfuls in the planting hole and then top- or side-dressed a few times over a season, certain greens and herbs may be happy, but it's not going to cut it for fruiting plants. Right now, your plants need N, so I would feed them a general plant fertilizer that will be relatively higher in N. Once they start flowering and fruiting, switch to a tomato-specific fertilizer, which will be lower in N than in P or K. I hope you didn't add large amounts of bone meal, as that would mean you'd have to customize your fertilizer application more instead of being able to rely on commonly available pre-mixed products....See Morerod707
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