Photo below - Since alot of pollen and small leaves are being blown from the trees, I laid a sheet over the makeup bucket to keep the trash out. I'll check tomorrow, to see if it can breathe enough to keep the siphon from failing.
Since it hasn't rained in a few days, the moisture meter was used to check the level of moisture in the Pro-Mix. At the high end of the "moist" range, that's exactly where I want it to stay. It'll be checked once a week throughout the summer. Maybe my crazy restriction method will actually work.
Photo below - Here's the Cherokee Purple tomato plants in their Earthtainer. Although they look kinda rough, I'm happy with them at this point. They are looking better everyday. Whew....
Seeing everyone else's beautiful plants makes me feel like the worst propagator on the web, but i'll do better next year. That......I promise. I don't accept failure very well, and really beat myself up when I do fail. Oh well, maybe the 80 lb. melons trellised will make everyone forget all about my over-watering of the tomato seedlings....Hee Hee. BTW, I started the seed for those today! Get ready!!!!!
Take care, and happy gardening!
EG
13 comments:
Hi EG,
I think your tomatoes look just fine. I'm sure they will produce well for you. Two of my four cherry tomatoes are not looking so great, they have purplish blotches on the leaves. No bloom drop and they keep growing.
Liisa
Your garden production is something my dreams are made of! Hope the storms today aren't too bad.
Failure? Hmm I always figure a few plants will die. It happens. Hopefully not too many. I try to learn from my mistakes, but I always expect something to happen. I'm ecstatic when it all works.
The tomatoes don't look so bad to me. They've got thick stems and stocky growth. That's what you're looking for.
Seeing everyone else's plants make me want to turn up the thermostat on Mother Nature. Remember what Granny said: R-e-l-a-x. E-n-j-o-y. It'll all work out.
EG, my tomatoes are looking a bit rough now, too. I left them in the sun/wind too long one day, and they suffered a bit from it...but the top growth still looks good, so I'm sure they will take right off when they get set out in the garden. Next year I'll try not to rush into spring so quickly. Sure, like that's gonna happen ;-)
Granny
Liisa - There's about 3 plants that are very questionable. The others should perk up in a week or two.
Ribbit - gosh, I don't know what to say...My problem is, that everything has to be perfect all the time. I can't help it! Hee Hee
Daphne - This was a valuable lesson to me. The kind that will be remebered the rest of my life.
Cheryl - You'll have some better weather soon, and then you can show us how to do it right! Relax.....Oh god, that's hard for me to do. I'm tensed up 24/7.
Granny - Maybe your toms will be ok, i'm sure they will. Hardening plants off is something that takes alot of patience, and I killed my sister's plants by getting in a hurry.
EG
Don't worry about how they look now. Wait until they are in MNs climate for a while. You will be surprised how they take off. I emailed a link to yours and Sinforian's blog about SWCs to my son who lives in a rental with a large deck.
John
Your tomatoes look fine! They are actually larger and have more leaves on them than mine do. I strip the leaves and plant almost all of the stem so I just have about 2 leaves on the top of my tomatoes LOL Your "self-watering" contraption looks cool!
That is an amazing setup for sure. Bravo! Glad to see you got the time to get it done before the storms.
Boy am I jealous. hehe
Your tomatoes look great EG. I have some big & some small too. In 2-3 weeks I bet you couldn't tell the difference between them. That watering system is pretty cool stuff!
I burnt some leaves on my early tomato today, poor fella.
"Seeing everyone else's beautiful plants makes me feel like the worst propagator on the web, but i'll do better next year" I think I just basically said the same thing to Granny. I look at all your beautiful healthy plants and wonder why mine aren't doing as well as yours! At least you didn't fry your toms with a space heater. 0.o They'll perk up don't worry too much about them.
I was wondering about the red syphon bucket too since it also seems like a great mosquito breeding ground. Glad to see it covered. Hope the syphon holds. If not maybe just pick up some mosquito netting which should keep out both bugs and leaf debris.
John - if your son needs any help with them, let me know...
Judy - the self-watering setup seems to be keeping things in check right now, it'll be interesting to see how it does later.
Sinfonian - Thanks. It was quite easy to do, and should do well.
Dan - Thanks. I think we all need to take lessons on tomato seedling propagation from John. Hee Hee...His look great!
Jenn - I was worried about the mosquito thing, too. Maybe I can find some netting, and put that on top. Thanks for the suggestion!
Hi EG,
I love the tainer concept and decided to try for myself, but instead of using siphon for AWS, I connected 5 tainers together with nipples, cut pieces of garden hose and hose clamps just above the bottoms of the water holding areas. (Be sure to drill the hole tight and silicone the hose connector nipple on the inside of your tainers before adding planting platform and soil mix ;)
A feeder bucket attaches to the first tainer the same way the others are connected together and a capped drain hose is drilled into last tainer (to aid winter drainage). The feeder bucket lid will soon have a hole drilled into it to accept a 1/4" drip tube with a 2 gal per hour drip off my timer controlled AWS garden line.
Been a week and everything still looks good. Lifted the lid off the feeder bucket today and it took less than a gallon of water to start the tainer overflows so automatic drip may have to be slower to avoid too much over flow while watering the rest of the garden. Thanks to you and Tomatofest.com for a great idea!
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