Does https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6809
steps still apply well?
I grew some cherry tomatoes in pots last year and they didn't get too well. Had only about 40 tomatoes. Hoping to improve this year.
Post links. I find photos, step by steps, and materials list help me the most. (So I can head out next week to buy them and get started)
I still have my indoor light stand + shop lights to start indoors.
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Imperialboy
- Senior Member
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- Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2010 11:11 pm
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rainbowgardener
- Super Green Thumb
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Thanks for resurrecting opabinia's nice post! Yup, tomatoes grow the same as they did in 2009! Opa didn't talk much about lighting in there. If you are starting seedlings under lights indoors, you want the lights to be just a few inches above the plants, raising the lights as the plants grow, and leave them on 16 hrs a day.
The other thing to be very careful about is hardening off, that is the transition between indoors and outdoors. You can't just take a plant that has been very protected indoors and plop it out in the garden. They need a gradual transition, where they are brought out for just a few hours at first in a protected situation. Over the course of a week or so you can increase the hours until they are staying out and then gradually move them to less protected situations.
Otherwise opa's post is all good advice. What do you think about why your tomatoes didn't do very well last year? Were they in full sun? How big were the pots? Were you fertilizing? Pots have to be watered a lot, they dry out quickly. All that watering tends to flush the nutrients out of the small amount of soil, so you need to keep adding nutrients back in. But if you got big, leafy, fast growing plants with not a lot of fruit, you may have been using fertilizer with too much nitrogen, which encourages leafy growth at the expense of fruiting. Look for Tomato Tone or something like that, which is higher on the PK end of NPK, lower in nitrogen.
The other thing to be very careful about is hardening off, that is the transition between indoors and outdoors. You can't just take a plant that has been very protected indoors and plop it out in the garden. They need a gradual transition, where they are brought out for just a few hours at first in a protected situation. Over the course of a week or so you can increase the hours until they are staying out and then gradually move them to less protected situations.
Otherwise opa's post is all good advice. What do you think about why your tomatoes didn't do very well last year? Were they in full sun? How big were the pots? Were you fertilizing? Pots have to be watered a lot, they dry out quickly. All that watering tends to flush the nutrients out of the small amount of soil, so you need to keep adding nutrients back in. But if you got big, leafy, fast growing plants with not a lot of fruit, you may have been using fertilizer with too much nitrogen, which encourages leafy growth at the expense of fruiting. Look for Tomato Tone or something like that, which is higher on the PK end of NPK, lower in nitrogen.
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Imperialboy
- Senior Member
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- Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2010 11:11 pm
I think I had some photos. Might have to find it. Not much fruiting. Skinny tall plant. Might be root bound. I did not do any fertilizing. Didn't research that while still keeping organic. Some leaves seemed burnt all the time. Wind or sun. I don't know. I might have to move to bigger pots this year. 5gallon? And find appropriate places for tomatoes to be. Generally I left it in the middle of the yard where there was almost always sun till night.