TOMATO ISSUES DETAILED
Greetings from Calgary, Alberta, Canada (we are located on the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of 3400 feet and on the 51st parallel, the combination makes for a very short growing season). I've been greenhouse gardening now for 3 years growing mostly tomato, cucumber, and pepper plants.
The greenhouse is heated by a gas infrared heater, and for cooling I have an automatic intake louver and exhaust fan that comes on when the temperature in the greenhouse hits 82 degrees. I've set the heater to come on when the temperature in the greenhouse hits 55 degrees. My greenhouse is 17 feet long by 12 feet wide by 10 feet at its highest point. For glazing I have Lexan clear corrugated panels on the roof ( I couldn't afford the thermoclear panels at the time, but the panels I have on the greenhouse now have withstood hail the size of baseballs... Calgary gets at least one storm like this per year ) and for the sides I use glass (unfortunately the glass on the west side of the greenhouse shattered and had to be replaced after one particular hailstorm/flashflood last year.
Now, to my first problem. This year my wife suggested to me that we grow our vegetables organically which I was all for. Previous years I used a 20 20 30 water soluble fertilizer and had great results with all of my vegetables. This year, we mixed sheep manure and egg shells into the soil ( my father-in-law suggested this)so far, our peppers, cucumbers, and some of our tomatoes are doing O.K (they are growing much slower without the chemical fertilizer, though) but all of the leaves on the Italian tomatoes are a yellowish green color and have rusty blotches on them. Also, the plants are quite splindly and have very few flowers or tomatoes on them.
Every day, my wife and I give the flower clusters on the tomatoes a good shaking so pollination is not a problem. My father-in-law brought me these tomato seeds from Italy last year but he does not know the botanical name for this variety of tomato but you can make some great sauces with it. If you have any suggestions on how to remedy this problem, please let me know.
My second problem involves my father-in-law...let me explain. I'm used to growing my cucumbers and tomatoes on a single vine, that is, I remove the suckers that grow between the leaves. My father-in-law suggested this year that I don't remove the suckers as this shortens the life of the tomato and cucumber plants and reduces the amount of potential fruit (he used to own a tomato juice factory in Italy and he claims to be an expert on tomato growing).
Anyway, I took his advice, and to be honest, I am not impressed with the outcome. There doesn't seem to be as many fruits as last year, and what fruits there are are substantially smaller (lots of leaves, though). This might have something to do with the lack of fertilizer but I'm sure that the extra leaves are sapping up the energy that would normally go into fruiting (I don't remove the leaves on my pepper plants, though).
When you have a chance, I would appreciate your feedback on this 'issue'. By the way, your site is very informative (I now have a box fan that is constantly running in the greenhouse) keep up the great work.
--- Bill P.
OK, the first problem is fertilizer. You're used to 20-20-30 chemical fertilizer which is highly concentrated. Organic fertilizers are much more gentle than chemical fertilizers. For example, dried sheep manure might be something like 4-3-1. (Fresh manure has less nutrient by weight because it is diluted with moisture. It should not be placed near plant roots anyway until it has aged a bit.)
More examples:
Blood meal NPK (Nitrogren-Phosphorous-Potassium) is 15-1-1.
Bonemeal is 4-21-0.25.
Fish meal is 10-5-0
Kelp is 1-0-12 (plus it's a great source of trace minerals)
Rock phosphate is 0-30-0
Organic fertilizers are slower-acting than chemical fertilizers. You can offset that difference by changing your method of application. If you have only been feeding your plants through their roots, try foliar feeding.
Plants absorb nutrients also through their leaves, stems, buds, and flowers much more quickly than through their roots. They will also absorb more of that same nutrient than they do through their roots (better utilization).
Use fish and seaweed emulsion for foliar feeding. It's especially good to feed your plants through their leaves when they are stressed due to hot weather or due to lack of proper nutrients. From your description, it sounds like your plants are stressed and need foliar feeding right away. (Mine are, too--I'll be foliar feeding tomorrow morning. Writing this answer to you reminds me of that!) Foliar feeding should be done in the morning so that the plant leaves dry before nightfall.
The eggshells are good for calcium, which prevents blossom end rot on tomatoes, for one thing. Some other calcium sources: gypsum, limestone, bonemeal. The yellowish green leaves may indicate a nitrogen deficiency.
The rust blotches may be a fungus of some sort. Remove and destroy any affected leaves. Be sure air circulation is sufficient. Be sure water is not on leaves overnight. Maybe you need to prune a few leaves! (See next issue below.)
It's still important to maintain good soil condition--don't rely entirely on foliar feeding.
OK, now on to the next issue: PRUNE or NOT.
First, I don't believe, nor have I ever read, that pruning tomatoes or cucumbers shortens their life--unless of course, you prune off so much foliage that the plants cannot manufacture food. Besides, people don't generally raise tomatoes or cucumbers as perennial plants anyway. The commercial tomato grower I know raises new plants from seed each year because, as he puts it, "They have more vigor." So, the life of those plants is going to be short, pruned or not.
Definitely I have read (and intend to experience next year--more on that in a minute) that pruned/trained plants produce larger fruit; unpruned plants tend to produce more but smaller fruit.
I must confess that I have a very hard time chopping off anything that wants to grow in the greenhouse. I see those blossom clusters on those tomato suckers that I missed earlier and I see potential fruit. I also end up with a big jungle in there and it gets difficult to harvest. Sometimes I think that the leaves are covering the fruit so it doesn't ripen as soon as it would if I were diligent about pruning.
Obviously the variety of plants that you are growing is going to have something to do with your harvest quantity and quality also. The commercial tomato grower that I know prunes his plants regularly and precisely and gets a LOT of fruit from those vines. He is growing tomato varieties that are bred for greenhouse growing. Considering that, I would say that pruning is the way to go. If not pruning produced a better crop, wouldn't the commercial growers be doing it that way? Well, they are pruning, and I should be too, and I think that you should continue pruning as you did before (and if your father-in-law should happen to ask--this was your idea, not mine--ha!).
Here's an idea: Prove to your father-in-law that pruning is better by growing the same variety side by side. Prune one--don't prune the other. Treat the plants the same otherwise. Count and weigh the harvest. Please let me know how it turns out if you do this. I'm interested, too. (You will have to do it next year for a proper experiment. At this point, if you start pruning your previously unpruned tomato plants severely, they will probably respond by sending out a lot more leaves.)
My best to you,
--- Sherry
Hi Sherry.
Shortly after I last wrote to you, I started keeping a day to day journal of all my greenhouse activities. I would like to share 'the best of' my growing experiences from my journal, with you and your readers.
The weather in Calgary this past summer was incredible! After a bitterly cold winter, we had a warm summer with very little precipitation and only one brief hail storm...enough to put a few holes in the neighbors zucchini leaves, but no major damage. Temperatures ranged from between 21 to 34 degrees Celsius (70 to 95 Fahrenheit). For the months of August and September, I had two oscillating fans in the greenhouse (besides the box fan and the exhaust fan) as temperatures in there often climbed into the low 30's to low 40's ( between 86 to 108 Fahrenheit ). Needless to say, the tomatoes and cucumbers did not like this heat, although the eggplants and peppers seemed to thrive in it.
First, the types of vegetables I grew in the greenhouse are as follows:
Tomatoes:
Peppers:
*Big Beef
*California Wonder
*Better Boy
*Bell Boy
*Heatwave
*Hungarian Wax
*(I still don't know the name of the Italian tomatoes)
Eggplants:
Cucumbers:
*Black Beauty
*Farbiola
*Orient Express
*Spacemaster
Lemons:
*Meyer Lemon
*Ponderosa
Fertilizing: I mixed together 2 Alaskan Fish Fertilizer solutions ( 5-2-2 &
0-10-10 of 30 ml [ 2 tablespoons ] each) in
a 12 Litre ( 3 gallon ) pail of warm water (the 5-2-2 fertilizer is very thick
and dilutes better in warm water). I took your
advice and sprayed the plants with the fish fertilizer. Unfortunately I
didn't notice any difference in the color of the leaves(yellowish green). Mid
August, a friend from British Columbia suggested that I foliar feed the plants
using a chemical based fertilizer (20-30-30) one week, and the following week
fertilize the roots with the fish fertilizer and limestone. Not only did the
leaves turn a healthy dark green, but the harvest of tomatoes and cucumbers
was the biggest I've had since building this greenhouse. When I added the
extra fans in the greenhouse, the rust problem on the tomato leaves
disappeared.
Pruning, quantity, and taste: Big Beef, Better Boy, and Heatwave, did
exceptionally well when I pruned them down to two stems each and no more than
3 tomatoes per cluster. Every tomato produced from them was at least one
pound with the biggest one (Big Beef), weighing in at 3.5 pounds (I swear this
is true)!!! You wouldn't believe the amount of string I went through to
support these giants! I won't be planting the Heatwave variety again as the
tomatoes produced were rather tasteless. The Big Beef tomato was the sweetest
tasting and the thickest of the three. Next time I'm planting Big Beef,
Better Boy, and the Italian tomato variety. I planted six Italian tomato
plants...3 of them I pruned back to two stems. The other three grew and
produced vigorously in September and October (although somewhat 'mushy', they
were the sweetest tomatoes I've ever tasted and they are excellent for making
spaghetti sauce). The pruned Italian tomatoes did very poorly...they kept
dropping the blossoms even though I pollinated them. The Farbiola cucumbers
that were pruned to one stem responded by producing many large cucumbers. The
Farbiola cucumbers that were harvested during the hot weather had a bitter
taste to them while the ones that where harvested during the cooler periods
tasted O.K. if you ate them with a bit of salt. They have a very short life
span though...they produced anywhere from 9 to 15 cucumbers each, and then
would suddenly die. In comparison, the smaller but more delicious Space
Master variety, produced cucumbers until early November. I harvested more
cucumbers from the Space Master's that were not pruned. I pruned one pepper
and eggplant and they suffered! I don't recommend pruning peppers or
eggplants. Both the Bell peppers, the Oriental eggplant, and the Hungarian
Wax peppers produced heavily (very sweet fruit in all cases). I had an average
harvest from the California Wonder peppers and was very disappointed in the
taste of the Black Beauty Eggplants ( Each Black Beauty produced only two
eggplants, except for the one I pruned which produced nothing). I read
somewhere on the Internet (could have been your site, Sherry), not to throw
out the leaves pruned from tomato plants. Not only do they make a great mulch
and organic fertilizer, but apparently, as they start to decay, they give off
Carbon Dioxide. Plants grown in a rich Carbon Dioxide environment grow faster
and produce more fruit.
Pests: It was early September when I noticed a family of white fly's
underneath the leaves of my eggplants. Then I
looked underneath the leaves of my tomatoes and, behold...MORE WHITE FLY'S!!!.
They looked like they were
hanging on for dear life. I decided to turn off all the fans in the
greenhouse, left the greenhouse for half an hour, and
came back. There were so many white fly's flying around, it looked like it
was snowing inside the greenhouse! I turned the fans on again, and within
minutes, they disappeared underneath the leaves! I've had aphids and snails
in the greenhouse, but never white fly's. I sprayed the plants with a strong
solution of insecticide soap, once a week for one month but they refused to
die. I was going to try Sherry's 'BBQ' experiment in hopes of smoking them to
death until a family friend brought back from New Zealand, a chemical
insecticide called Target. Even though up to this point I was using a
chemical fertilizer on the leaves of the plants, I wasn't comfortable with the
idea of using a chemical
insecticide...but I was desperate. I wanted to keep the greenhouse
operational during the winter and it would not have
been possible with the 'creatures from hell' sucking the life out of my
tomatoes cucumbers and eggplants (they left the
peppers and lemons alone)! Well, the Target worked great...not a white fly to
be found. Unfortunately, the greenhouse
stunk for weeks after that and the vegetables harvested absorbed the 'flavor'
of the insecticide. I think the BBQ idea
would have worked much better (at least the vegetables would have had a more
appealing BBQ flavor to them). Next
time I'm placing large yellow sticky traps all over the greenhouse. This way
I hope to catch the little buggers earlier
before they take over the whole greenhouse.
Winter greenhouse (January 10, 1998): I don't think I'll be growing plants in
the greenhouse during the winter
anymore. This far north, 51st parallel, even though the sun still shines, the
days are too short (less than 8 hours). The
first year I started gardening in my greenhouse, three years ago, I had two
1000 watt metal halide lamps in there that
were connected to a digital timer. The lights would come on at 6:00 a.m. and
turn off at 10:00 p.m. This lasted for a
month as my neighbors complained that the light coming from the greenhouse was
too bright, and their kids couldn't
sleep at night, so I put blindfolds on the windows (I would open them before I
went to work and close them when I got
home). It still wasn't good enough for them so I had to turn the lights off.
Just as well because my electric bill was
$78.00 more than the previous one.
We've had a very mild fall, but winter came back with a vengeance New Years
day. The temperature outside fell for a
few nights to the mid minus 30's (that's almost 30 below Fahrenheit), the
lowest temperature I recorded in the
greenhouse was 5 Celsius ( 40 Fahrenheit) but I'm sure the 40,000 BTU infrared
heater worked around the clock to
maintain that temperature. I put clear plastic between the window panes on
the side of the greenhouse and the roof but the amount of light lost was
significant. The unpruned Italian tomato plants, the lemon plants, and the
newly regrouped white fly family are the only survivors in the greenhouse.
Today I'm going to harvest the last of my tomatoes and will bring the lemon
plants indoors. By the way, the lemon trees, especially the Meyer lemon, are
loaded with lemons and flowers. The beginning of February I will plant my
tomato, pepper, eggplant, and cucumber seeds indoors, and will hopefully have
them planted in the greenhouse by mid February (the daylight and the
temperature increase significantly after the 15th). I tilled the soil in the
greenhouse and added sheep and steer manure, and limestone. Another year of
greenhouse gardening comes to a close.
Update (January 24, 1998): My gas bill arrived...$185.27!!! Last year was
the 5th coldest winter in Calgary, and the
highest gas bill I paid then was $83.00. This is another reason why I'm not
going to run the greenhouse again during the winter! The temperature outside
today is 5 degrees Celsius and the snow and ice is thawing. I walked towards
the
greenhouse and noticed a major crack in the glass of the greenhouse door. I
talked to a friend about this and he thought that it was probably caused by
the humidity that froze onto the door (the ice was a good two inches thick in
some places...it was a miracle I was able to unlock the door, let alone open
it). He suggested for now to put a clear silicone caulking along the crack on
both sides of the door and if it continues to crack, to replace the glass. He
also suggested that I setup a fan to blow air onto the door to reduce the
amount of condensation on the glass. Even with the heater working full blast,
the humidity still remained above 30%. This may not seem very high but when
this air comes into contact with glass or plastic that's below zero, it
freezes solid.
Ever since I moved my Lemon trees indoors, they've been going through a period
of adjustment. The ponderosa
dropped about 50% of the lemons and the flowers. The Meyer lemon is doing
O.K. I sprayed it with Safer's insect
soap to kill the aphids and, so far, it's holding on to the 33 lemons. All of
the blossoms on the Meyer lemon opened at
the same time and up to the point when I sprayed the tree with the soap, the
smell in the living room was heavenly!!!
They are both facing a south window and occasionally mist them with water when
I remember. Just thought I'd let you
know, that, during the summer, I gave the lemons the same Alaskan Fish
fertilizer as the tomatoes, and they thrived on it. Indoors I water them once
a week, and every second watering I feed them with a lite solution (half a
teaspoon per 1 litre of warm water) of Wilson's 5-5-10 fish fertilizer for
vegetables (this fertilizer has been deodorized so it's good for indoor use).
Once they are back in the greenhouse this February 15th, I will resume the
regular feeding program that I used for the tomatoes during the summer.
I'm not big on flowers, but I have a Gardenia that's at least 5 years old. I
'borrowed' it from my cousin when she gave
up on it after it stopped blooming...it was less than a foot high. Today it's
over 4 feet high and 8 feet in circumference. feed it with Wilson's
5-10-5 fertilizer (half a teaspoon to one litre of warm water) every 2 weeks
from October to
March, and from April to September I increase the 'dosage' to one teaspoon
every time I water it. It flowers from late
February to late October. Occasionally, especially during the winter, spider
mites will make the Gardenia their home.
Every few weeks I move the Gardenia into the bathtub (not an easy chore) and
shower it with warm water. That keeps
the spider mite problem under control. I tried spraying it with Safer's
Insecticide soap but unfortunately the leaves turned yellow and most of the
flower buds dropped off. I had to wait a year before this 'skeleton' turned
back into a healthy Gardenia. Same thing happened the first year I moved it
into my Greenhouse. It did very well during the summer, but as soon as I
brought it indoors, it's leaves turned yellow and dropped off. The past few
years I've kept it indoors and it's doing great. The smell of the Gardenia
flower is amazing!!!
Well that's all I have to say for now. I will e-mail you again sometime in
February. Until then, take care and keep up the excellent work on your web
page.
Bill P.