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Sage Hermit
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grew about 20 lbs. of toms

Well, in my small raised beds up on my farm I planted about 45 toms and some bind weed. The bindweed really helped and I know that sounds crazy. I planted them and left them to fend for themselves after putting up the chicken fence. The toms grew and I found the bind weed latching onto the toms but in a mysterious manner actually binding the toms to the fence and just making the toms more stable. I planted about 4 bind weeds in there so it wasn't a lot.

last year I went to the gas station and got a couple toms and took the seeds and started growing them. When I had a bunch I transplanted them into the beds and covered the beds with radish husks and grass. About a month later maybe 2 I had more toms than I could count. Went in and unbinded the bindweeds or cut them and staked the toms up on fallen branches.

Because it costs me a grip to drive up and down and because I didn't have a lot of cash I started coming up with ways to plant it and leave it. The no till method I learned from HG is the goods and next year I plan on growing a few hundred lbs, God willing. I actually made the raised beds using the no till fukuoka method but didn't realize it until a while back. it works

Tomato 70 - 80°F, pH 6 - 7, row 12 - 18'', full sun

Here the season really was great but a second opinion may be needed from the local farming community. The temperature went into the 90s a couple times but it rained sufficiently.

Its really so amazing growing food...

Sage Hermit
Nabil Ashour

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rainbowgardener
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Wow! I never heard of anyone actually planting bindweed! Very interesting.

Thanks for posting your experience with no-till, less work gardening, glad to hear it is going so well for you.

But did you really mean 20 lbs. of tomatoes? From 45 plants? That's only a half pound per plant, which is about one medium sized tomato. If all those numbers are right you are telling us each of your tomato plants produced one tomato the whole season. Surely that's not what you meant to say.... Either the number of plants or the amount of tomatoes seems off.

I haven't weighed or counted or anything, but I'm sure I produced more tomatoes than that from my 5 plants over the season.

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applestar
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I've noticed a similar tomato supporting effect from the melons, pumpkins, and gourds that are sharing the tomato supports in various beds.

I'm really sold on the no till and hay mulched raised beds as well. :()

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Sage Hermit
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I didn't weigh them just an estimate. The number isn't as important as the experience. One major issue was sever wind. Sever wind really isn't that big a deal but I wasn't there tending them. That's where the bind weed did its job. It seems they worked out a deal.

I had been growing 5 gal tom containers with morning glory. You can rewire the morning glory pretty easily and not have to use twine of something to hold up the tomato plant. :) look nice but someone said it will choke them and yes they will choke them.


Bind weed is just the name I am using. The vine I used was perhaps a native but it is very pretty and covered in small pink buds not like a morning glory or white bind weed. Hopefully I will grab a pic of it all for yas nice ladies.


Did I mention the bed was made in like 10 mins. and is ten feet long and 2 1/2 feet wide?

garden5
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Uhg, morning glory vines are almost a weed in my book. I never seem to see them coming, but all of a sudden, they seem to have covered 1/3 of whatever plant, rock, bush they are growing on. OK, I could see using them on a trellis, but that's about it.

Glad to hear you has some success growing them on the tomatoes. The one thing I'm worried about is if you ever want to remove them from the garden....you might not be able to :?.

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rainbowgardener
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Wow, you must be REALLY fast, putting a raised bed together in ten min! I have an image in my mind, like one of those speeded up films you see! :)

So in this 10 x 2.5 bed you have 45 tomato plants? Or some of them are somewhere else? Oh you said raised bedS... so you have a bunch of these? I'm sorry, I'm really not trying to be picky, I just have this brain that can't stop obsessing, especially where numbers come into it...

Last year sometime we had a discussion about raised bed width and some people were advocating narrower beds like that for tomatoes. If you don't grow other stuff in with your tomatoes, then wider can just be wasted space.

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Sage Hermit
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[img]https://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa267/adaba/Ninjas049-1.jpg[/img]
Here is the bed when I first started.

[img]https://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa267/adaba/Ninjas050-1.jpg[/img]


I just took the tom and stuffed it into dirt and eventually I have 50 tomatoes for transplant, then I put em in. Each plant had up to 5 toms if not more. 2 radishes grew in there too because I used old radish husks and I guess some seeds germinated and I ate the leaves so good.

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Sage Hermit
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[img]https://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa267/adaba/Ninjas-2.jpg[/img] :P
[img]https://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa267/adaba/Ninjas111.jpg[/img]

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Sage Hermit
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The End~

Stepheninky
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An average of what most tomato plants will produce is probably around 8 lbs per plant, thats planted with no pruning staking.

I think I usually average close to 20lbs per plant, I do not mean to knock on this method but just trying to point out you could have probably gotten better results just planting the tomatoes and covering the ground with straw or some other mulch.

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Sage Hermit
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I fail to point out that a large portion of the annualy yeild was depostied as organic material into the soil naturally. Another portion of the annual yield was taken by my farm hand and his Wife. The end for me after sharing with everyone else was ehn about 20 lbs. But All the best ones. A large percentage of that 20 lbs was green tomatoes.



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