Boy, I'd just about forgotten about this thread!
.....
Sadly, I'm done gardening. My garden behind the garage is being seeded for a lawn once the new wood fence is in, since that garden was a total mildew disaster caused by the pond next door. The container garden was also an epic failure due to the rats eating anything that even just started turning red. (Just a faint change from unripe green, and they'd kill it.) And I still had leaf blight issues anyway. Short of doing hydroponic inside the house somewhere (which I have no room for), I'll have to wait until I get some acreage and can do something proper.
You should do hanging planters like this:
Or you can make your own like this...
I would actually go with red buckets myself. Not only are they cheaper and reusable pretty much indefinitely, but the red color helps to isolate and magnify the red spectrum of UV rays that are beneficial, and can actually increase yields by up to 20%. By hanging your plants, you will avoid any and all contact with the ground and the soil itself, thereby avoiding the viruses inherent in your soil and from your neighbor's pond next door. If you go this route, I would even go as far as mixing the soil for your planters on pavement to avoid any unintentional contact with the soil on your property. I still think there are measures you can take to avoid the issues you've had in the past. If you isolate the plants and the soil they grow in from the problem, you will be able to avoid those issues, and hanging inversion planters are the way to do this. Furthermore, if you do this on sturdy poles (preferably metal), the rat issue will be a thing of the past too.
I'd say give it a try. It might be too late to start it for most vegetables, but try it with flowers and other plants to get used to growing them inverted, and then do it next year with tomatoes and all the other things you used to grow.
Don't give up!
I put in 600 dollars worth of plants this past weekend. 6 varieties of tomatoes, 2 different yellow squashes & 2 different zucchinis. 4, 50 ft rows of bush beans, watermelons & cantaloupe. 3 types of cucumbers , 2, 20 ft rows of okra and last but not least about 6 or 30 pepper plant of various types. Forgot the potatoes 2 75 ft rows of russets, yukon gold & kennick whites. I sell to local restaurants that support area farmers.
Sounds like what I'd love to do if I had the room (and the sunlight) to do so. I'd just about have a mini farmer's market if I could. lol And that's cool about you selling to local restaurants. The "100 mile diet". I highly approve.
Those look really good. We have a tomato festival nearby in Fairfield, Ca. where I first tasted some of the heirloom tomatoes. They are what tomatoes are supposed to taste like! I also live in an area of the central valley called the "tomato capital of the world," but what you find in the grocery store does not compare to these. I have never seen or tasted the green ones like you planted. Let us know how they do. I'll be looking for them now.
I found that the purple/black ones were the tastiest ones. They have that earthy tomato taste more than others. Good luck!
Thanks! I'm really excited to see how they all taste later this summer.
And yeah, I couldn't agree more. Heirlooms are the way to go for taste. Some hybrids and other varieties may yield more, but I can't taste "quantity", only
quality.
It must be nice to live in an area that is a high yield area for tomatoes. There is an area like that here in Canada too. It's an area in southwest Ontario that is known as the "tomato capital of Canada". Unfortunately, Heinz who had a factory in the area for over 100 years, pulled out a few years ago (bastards), and left many families in several counties out of a job, and without a buyer for what they were growing. Before the closure, the surrounding area was the largest tomato processing region per acreage in the world, but now that Heinz is gone, not so much anymore.
Anyway, despite that sad sack story, I'll try to keep you and everyone else updated on my tomato plants for this year. And agreed, the black/purple varieties are delicious. I was very happy with my Indian Stripe tomatoes last year.
I hope this year's Aunt Mary's German Green variety tastes good too. BTW, you should also keep an eye out for another green tomato called Green Zebra. They are a smaller tomato, but they have a sweet, zesty, tangy flavor that is incredible for eating as-is, in salads, or in sandwiches. So good!
Works for all plants, vegetables, and fruits; if you haven't been using, or live under a rock, handfuls of Epsom salt once a month will make your yield explode!!! 2 years ago, 22 maters from one plant, last year (Epsom salt year lol) 112 maters. I've used it on my lawn for years to replenish magnesium back into our sorry Colorado soil, but 2 years ago started using it on all plants inside house and out and the results were dramatic!
Agreed, I used a homemade tomato booster tonic for the first time last year that uses much less epsom salt, and I saw a HUGE increase in flowers that formed. The recipe goes as such:
1 gallon of water
2 tablespoons of epsom salts
1 teaspoon of baby soap (this helps the salts to bind to the soil and other minerals within it)
Apply full mixture to each plant.
Unfortunately, last year was
very dry, very hot in the daytime (up to the mid to high 90's), with very cool nights due to the dry air (into the 40's), which set up a trifecta that was detrimental to my tomato plants. On each plant I had
well over 100 flowers on each plant (one plant I guessed almost 200!), but due to the dry conditions, and the constant variable days and nights from the 90's down to the 40's, the plants got stressed and they dropped about 75% of the flower heads.
I used the tonic again this year, and so far so good. This year's weather has been mostly cool and rainy, with some hot days mixed in, so I am hoping I don't have the same issues as last year. Which brings me to my next post.....
But again, last year was an unusually hot year, and this year is actually a bit cooler than average (so far), so I may have to curb my expectations a bit. Considering how cool it's been for the most part up to now (we've only had a few hot days), they are larger than last year (I started them from seed about 10 days earlier this year though), and they are doing well so far. If you notice, I also have my plants trimmed down as well. I have the lower foot or so bare of leaves and branches to prevent soil splash back to prevent disease, and I also have other unneeded branches further up in the main plant trimmed as well. What this does is it allows the plant to focus its energy into the flowers (and eventually the tomatoes), and into growing new growth at the top instead of it going into too much greenery. These are good things to do for all tomato growers, but with as little sunlight that my plants get, I need all the help I can get. I just prune the suckers off and keep an eye on unneeded branches, and they seem to do just fine. 
DSC_8529 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
