What's Happening At My House (Bartlesville, OK)

6 years ago

I apologize for the dark picture. It's early morning here. AND IT's BEEN RAINING!!!!

Today I decided to work on my tomato plants. I've purchased Burpee hybrid seed this year because I've been having such an awful time with drought and with poor production. If I don't get tomato plants in the ground early enough to make fruit by early July, all the plants get stressed with the heat, even when I am able to keep them sufficiently watered, and then the insects come in like vultures and finish off the plant. By fall, all the plants are dead and I don't even get a fall crop. Start plants in August for a fall garden? I've tried, without success. I even tried cutting off branches of mature plants and trying to root them in water to use as new plants for the fall. Didn't have a lot of success with that, either. They will make roots, but often don't make the transplant into soil or die before I can get them transplanted.

Are any of you familiar with Gary Pilarchik? He has quite a repertoire of gardening videos on YouTube, under The Rusted Garden. Today I watched the one about tomato pruning because my plants have grown very well and I think I see an opportunity here. Gary is doing something a little differently than others. Instead of taking off the sucker branches, he is allowing one or two on the lowest part of the stem to remain, and removing the fruiting branch. This creates two (or three) main branches that then make fruiting branches and make for a more prolific plant. Here is that video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfXzT9UZCM0

I found, also, a video by TexasPrepper2, that you might want to look at, regarding cloning tomato plants by rooting sucker branches:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhTdg4dzDW0

Gary's method of cutting off fruiting branches, low on the stem, fell right into my needs, because I notice my plants do not have any sucker branches yet. (Sucker branches grow in the inside of the "elbow" between the main stem and the fruiting branch. Many people break these off and throw them away because they compete for nutrients and water and do not produce fruit, and also to allow better air circulation into the plant.)

And also because, when I plant them, I always put them lower into the hole by quite a bit and would probably break off these lower branches, anyway. So I decided I might try rooting some new plants.

Gotta tell ya, I'm spoiled by collecting my own seed from open-pollinated tomatoes and I was pretty aghast at how few seed were in those Burpee envelopes, priced at $3 per envelope. (Atwood's discounts seeds during most of the springtime, right now it's 40%, and that's a real help, but still, I hope the price of paper doesn't explode because these seed houses that sell only a few seed in envelopes that are about 1000 times too big to hold them will go broke buying all those big envelopes!) I'm pretty seriously disgusted with these folks, putting so few seeds in a packet. It's not just Burpee, either. I bought a pack of seeds for artichoke from Baker Creek, and there were FOUR SEEDS in the pack. FOUR!!!! Only two of which came up, and the plants stood in the garden and never made anything, anyway. Sheesh.

My thinking is that if tomato plant cloning will work better by rooting in potting soil, then cloning will get more yield from the seed packet and will produce a plant that is the same as the parent plant. Following Texas Prepper2's lead, I am trying his method, but inside, while I wait for temperatures to warm such that I can set things out.

This is my make-shift cloning lab. Bwa-ha-ha!! I used rooting compound on the stems. And I will not clamp that lid shut, I'll probably want to let a little air into there because of the danger of mold formation and/or damping off.

I always mess up when it comes to pepper seed. It always takes longer to germinate than I think it's going to. I was really worried this time that my cheese pepper seed saved from previous years' crops was no longer viable.

....Not to worry.....

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Comments (4)

jacoblockcuff (z5b/6a CNTRL Missouri
6 years ago
Nice setup you have there. It rained here as well this morning. Much needed! Bit chilly though.

I like Gary's videos. He's precise and quick to the point, and he's (at least seems to be) a no-nonsense kind of guy. Very helpful

I've wanted to attempt taking suckers off of a tomato in the autumn and potting it up, letting it grow over winter slowly in my greenhouse with the shorter daylight length and use it for next year's crop. I'll be interested to see how yours fare. Tomatoes are a tough crop here, especially with our sporadic weather and hot, humid summers. I've not had luck with them. I'm hoping this year will be the year to change that, but that's optimism speaking!

Burpee's prices are outrageous. I would love to order some tomatoes from them this spring, but the prices get me. Is 4 seeds the number Baker's Creek state they offer in those packets?! Wow!! I've not been impressed with them. I've had many issues last year with seeds not being viable, sickly growth, etc.; while as seed from a different company grown the same was almost 100% better in terms of viability, growth, and other factors. They're very popular however, and many people like them a lot.

We need some more people active on the forums! Maybe that'll be the case as the growing season comes closer?
User
Original Author
6 years ago
They say, "If You Build It, They Will Come". Several people that used to come here have said they'd like to see this forum become more active. We can only do what we can do. In the meantime, maybe we can provide some assistance to each other.

Not remembering for sure, but I think that many seeds were sold by weight in grams, which means absolutely nothing to me. Artichoke seeds are good-sized seeds. I found Ferry-Morse at Lowe's last week. Not exactly cheap, but less than Burpee's. And at the Dollar Store, I found 2 oz. boxes (5"x7"x1.5") of Zinnia and Hummingbird Wild Flower Mix from American Seed for $1.50 and $2.00. Unfortunately, I just opened the zinna box and found that the weight of the product included mostly some kind of vermiculite-like filler. Zinna seed are lance-shaped and there are not many of them present in the "mix". I'm really disappointed in American Seed now, as this is what I consider deceptive marketing.

Nothing in packets yet there.

Tomatoes grow pretty fast, I'm thinking if you sprouted new plants from old, you'd have to do it for more than one generation, because you'd have to have enough light and nutrients to keep them healthy, which would also make them grow.

In past years, I have started tomato plants from purchased seed and sold the extra plants at a garage sale for $2 each. They went fast at that price, and it helped pay for my "seed addiction". Lots of people won't start plants from seed, either because they don't have the room or they don't plan ahead or they just don't want to bother. I always germinate extra seed in case they don't germ well. Last year I gave my extra plants to someone that had just moved "to the country" and wanted to put in a garden.
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User
Original Author
6 years ago
I thought I'd put on an update on progress of tomato plant "clones". I had pretty good luck with getting the cuttings to root. I now have nine fully-rooted hybrid tomato plant clones. Those plants under the lights are peppers. Red Cheese, Yellow Cheese, Gold Cheese, and Jalapeno. I grow these sometimes every year, other times only every-other year. It depends on how good the crop was last time and whether I have enough already put up for another whole year. This year, I am close to being depleted of both. With the jalapeno peppers, this is the recipe I use: http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/nchfp/factsheets/pickled_jalapeno_rings.pdf

Cheese peppers are actually best just seeded and chopped and popped into the freezer in ziplock bags. No blanching is required. You will be surprised how fast the freezer bag fills up, the peppers don't look big enough to yield much. But they have very thick walls and very small seed cavities. If you leave them on the plant till they start to turn color, they will finish ripening in the house after you pick them, and the flavor improves a great deal when they are ripe. That business of using a pepper while it's green was just a marketing ploy in the 1950's and 60's so people would buy them that way, as they had a hard time shipping peppers when they were ripe. Lots of people think they don't like peppers because they've only tasted green ones.

In the process, I actually broke the top out of one of the tomato plants, so one of these "clones" is that piece I broke off, and here is the piece that's left, trying to pull up a new main stem:

It seems like I always plant seeds too early. Many years, I have planted seeds in December. This year, I managed to wait until about the 15th of January. I've had many people just laugh at me and say flatly that they'll die before it's time to get them transplanted and then they just dismiss me. I even had one man just roll his eyes at me and his expression and tone of voice let me know he felt I was a pure-dee Stupid-Butt. Well, Bless his Heart, he can be that way if it gives him pleasure, and I'm always happy to oblige in helping somebody be happy. One year I actually DID plant my seeds late, and something went wrong, they all damped off and died, and then there wasn't time to grow more. So I'll just say, "this works for me".

I've never dared to intentionally top-off my tomato plants before. I had it sorta done for me one year when we got a late frost (in April), and my plants were in the garden by then. Everything that was above the surface died, but the roots sent up new plants and I did get tomatoes that year. Just not till fall, as they lived thru July and August, but didn't make any flowers till the weather cooled.

But this spring, every time I watered, I'd look this Little Sprout tomato over, and also the top half that had broken off the same plant, both still doing well, and I thought, "What have I got to lose?" The chances of at least one of the halves of the plant would live were pretty good. I mean, the bottom half is shorter, but still healthy and well-rooted, afterall. So I'd be no worse off before if none of the cuttings lived. And if any of the cuttings lived, I'd be that much more to the good.

So today, I bit the bullet and went all in.

These are the hybrid plants that were grown from seed, and they are shown here after I lopped off the top. Today they get to be outside for a full day. We're expecting a bit of a frost tonight or tomorrow morning, so they will be brought in for the night. Starting tomorrow, they can stay out 24/7 because the night temps will allow it. I do have to protect them from the wind if it's going to go gale-force on me, but they will be better able to tolerate wind now that they are more compact. They are handling the outside temperatures and the morning sun that they get in this spot just fine. They will be getting planted into the garden very soon now.

These are the tops that I cut off, dipped in rooting hormone powder (can be found at WMT or most garden centers, looks like a vitamin bottle, with loose white powder inside, $5 or less, depending), and settled down in cups of potting soil:
They will be staying inside, under fluorescent lighting, until they show signs of new growth. If they all live, I will have increased my inventory of hybrid tomato plants by at least 20, and maybe twice that, because each one of these cups has a plant top and a smaller side-cutting in it. If we get a super-late frost and I lose the plants in the garden, then I'll still have these. Otherwise, I may plant some of these if I have room, or I can sell them or donate them somewhere.

I might add that I use a lot of "recyclable materials" in the garden. These cups are 32-oz Quick-Trip drink cups I rescued from a big container at the park. I burn a small hole in the center of each cup bottom for drainage, and use them every year till they turn brittle and crack with age. I think some of the ones I'm still using might be as old as 8 years. The white "boxes" that hold four cups, each, are Aldi kitty litter one-gallon plastic jugs, with the tops cut off straight, using a wood-burner tool. My DIL doesn't mind bringing them to me. I use them in lots of different ways and am glad to get them. The plants are tied with strips of an old T-shirt to 12" long sticks saved from the garden clean-up. A little support goes a long way when transplants are in this stage.

Well, that's all I have to share about that. I CAN STILL HEAR THE CRICKETS SINGING HERE!!! WHERE IS EVERYBODY??? Did you go to Facebook? And how's THAT working out for ya? ;~0 Hugs, ILENE
jacoblockcuff (z5b/6a CNTRL Missouri
6 years ago
Looking good. I started my tomatoes on March 9th, just now sprouting. I probably won't have them out until May. I would start a little earlier to get bigger plants by planting time, but my greenhouse is reliant to an extent on outside temps. It's easier to maintain the inside of it around 80 now than it is in February lol. I'll start my peppers at the end of the month. I'm going to put them in in June after a hopefully early brassica crop.

Crickets aren't singing at the moment, but I've be hearing them on the occasional very warm days. I think they're earlier this year with the milder weather.