Dice,
I will set it up that way. As we do not get rain here from May until October, no concern about anything leaching down into the water reservoir from runoff. My only concern is that I had planned on using TomatoTone as the standard control fertilizer, and that has something like 5% calcium. Can you suggest an alternate fertilizer that does not contain calcium. Also, thanks for the "dispensation" to not put my Purple Haze plants at risk, and will use tomatoes that are on my "B List" for some of the more riskier experiments.;) Ray |
I would probably use a generic 5-10-10 vegetable food
that lacks calcium for fertilizer in a BER test. Likely national brands (that can be found anywhere in the country): Garden Rite 6-10-10 (RiteAid house brand): [url]http://agr.wa.gov/PestFert/Fertilizers/FertDB/prodinfo.asp?pname=4023[/url] Shultz 9-10-15 Tomato Plus Plant Food (probably at HD): [url]http://agr.wa.gov/PestFert/Fertilizers/FertDB/prodinfo.asp?pname=2258[/url] Turfking Tomato & Vegetable Food 4-10-10: [url]http://agr.wa.gov/PestFert/Fertilizers/FertDB/prodinfo.asp?pname=2882[/url] These all contain calcium (so avoid for this test): Greenall (E.B. Stone; 8%) MorCrop (Lilly Miller; 4%) Lilly Miller Vegetable Food (Lilly Miller; 4%) Lilly Miller Bulb & Bloom(4-10-10; Lilly Miller; 6%) Master Nursery (E.B. Stone; 7%) (If you want to look anything up in the WA State fertilizer db: [url]http://agr.wa.gov/PestFert/Fertilizers/ProductDatabase.htm[/url] ) Edit: Those Purple Haze plants are rare, and I would treat them accordingly: test the pH in the container mix before adding lime, add gypsum, use your best fertilizer, use Daconil, give them your best spot on the deck, hire an armed guard, etc. |
I found no info on the web about the
pH of MG w/MC except one assertion that it was "too acidic" for some crop, with no measurements. Anyway, it is peat-based, plus perlite, coir, some dilute fertilizer, and compost. Compost tends to be close enough to neutral (bacteria and worms buffer the acidity or alkalinity of the feed materials) not to require pH adjustment on its own, fertilizer at those levels is a very mild acidifier, perlite is neutral, coir is close enough to neutral not to need any pH raising for vegetables, and peat moss is acidic, with wide variation depending on the source, from around pH 3.5 to 5.5. So the peat is the key factor, and it is probably 50-60% of the container mix. It could vary from "way too acidic for tomatoes" to "more acidic than we would like for efficient nutrient utilization." According to [url]http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/CN002[/url] dolomite lime takes from several weeks to several months to break down, depending on particle size. Lilly Miller Soil Sweet looks to be about 99% particles finer than salt (I have a half a bag of it here) but coarser than talc, so it is probably in the range of 6-8 weeks breakdown time before the nutrients become available to the roots. If we added different amounts of that kind of dolomite to some set amount of MG w/MC, kept them moist for 8 weeks, put them in containers that we could fill up with water and soak overnight, and then tested them all with litmus paper (coarse grained test, but it is very cheap and will show neutral by not changing color), in 2 months we would know about how much dolomite to add to a given volume of [B]this year's[/B] MG w/MC container mix to keep the pH close to neutral during the bulk of the growing season. (I am assuming that the manufacturer probably gets the peat moss in train car loads at a time, so a given pallet of bags at a vendor probably has little variation in pH from one bag to the next, while there might be much greater variation in pH seen in bags of the same product bought over a period of months or years.) Not much immediate help there for the question of how much dolomite to add to adjust the pH of your container mix to an ideal value (requires another sets of tests and an 8-week wait), but that does answer the calcium availability from dolomite question, if we take the document at the URL above at face value: within 8 weeks, the calcium from a fine grade of dolomite should be mostly available to the plant. We could ask Scotts (manufacturer of Miracle-Gro products), but the pH of a peat-based product may be a moving target even for them, depending on where exactly the peat moss in a particular bag of container mix was harvested. Anyway, I would not back off from using a whole cup of dolomite for one side of your containers. The native container mix is likely to be quite acidic, with a low enough pH to hamper nutrient uptake. The dolomite/gypsum+epsom_salt test may not be needed to test calcium availability from commonly available commercial grades of bagged dolomite like Soil Sweet, but you could still do it to see how much the native pH of the container mix affects growth and productivity. (We would expect the side with dolomite to do better than the side with gypsum because of the upward pH adjustment on the dolomite side.) If you are taking calcium availability from both dolomite and gypsum as a given, then you no longer need to use a fertilizer without calcium in it to avoid skewing the results, as long as both sides have the same amount of fertilizer. (Kind of long winded, but this is science, even if not very precise science. There are a lot of details to consider.) |
One other detail: how do people ever grow anything
in peaty container mixes, if the pH is so suboptimal? It is not suboptimal for everything, even if it is for most vegetables. Azaleas and blueberries have no problem with the pH levels of peat moss, for example. But the real answer for tomato growers is probably humates, organic compounds that bind to nutrients in fertilizer and make them available to plants even at pH levels that would make most of those nutrients insoluble in soil. Peat has some humic acid, compost has more. Your average container mix is probably also low in the metals, etc, that those nutrients bind to in soil in excessively low or high pH conditions (making them insoluble). re: litmus paper - I am assuming that buying a $100-800 industrial pH tester for testing the initial pH of a given bag of container mix does not sound reasonable to a home gardener. Anyway, if you litmus test the containers that had a cup of dolomite added to one side after two months and it shows a little alkaline (if 1 cup of dolomite for half an Earthtainer was too much for that batch of container mix), you can pour a small bottle of vinegar into the water reservoir for instant relief and/or drop a couple of tablespoons of wettable sulfur into the reservoir for longer term adjustment (it will get wicked up with the water). That is one nice thing about these Earthboxes and Homemade Earthboxes: with that consistent water flow through the container mix via wicking, it is easy to make adjustments to soil chemistry by adding water soluble compounds to the water reservoir. |
Wow dice,
Thanks for all the information. The little guys have been outside "incubating" for the past 2 weeks. [U] [IMG]http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh67/rnewste/EarthTainer%20pix/IMG_3910.jpg[/IMG] [/U] Ray:D |
They look great!
What's with that leaner in the lower right corner? The shady spot? |
dice,
Any ideas what is happening to my tomatoes today? I posted pictures in another thread - - but haven't gotten a single response. If this "condition" is fatal, the entire "A/B" experiments may be off.:panic::panic: Ray [IMG]http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh67/rnewste/IMG_3931.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh67/rnewste/IMG_3933.jpg[/IMG] |
Looks more like a fungus than a mineral deficiency,
simply because the leaves are not curled. Look at this photo (closest I could find in the Texas A&M guide): [url]http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/tomatoproblemsolver/leaves/19b.html[/url] Here is a page of mineral deficiency pictures: [url]http://4e.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=5&id=289[/url] One problem is that those pictures are of more advanced stages of deficiency disease than your seedlings could have yet, but in everything that even looks close there is leaf curl, too. Here is another set: [url]http://4e.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=5&id=289[/url] You can see that manganese deficiency is the closest in those photos, but even there it shows some leaf curl at the edges. |
dice,
I did get 2 responses to my other post a few minutes ago, and it seems I did something dumb, in leaving the seedlings exposed to the direct sun for the past 2 days. This tan spotting happened literally within the past 24 hours, so it must be sunburn.:oops::oops: Hopefully, it is recoverable so that the Myth-Buster's "games" can go forward.:) Ray |
[FONT=Times New Roman]Just give them early morning direct sunlight for a couple hrs and more time after a few days until they harden off. They be ok Ray. [/FONT]
|
Indoors to direct sun, that will damage leaves. I have
seen it before on other kinds of plants where I thought it was going to be a cloudy day, moved them outside, then left on some errand, and the sun came out before I got back and stayed for the afternoon. The damage was more extensive than what your plants are showing (whole leaves all over the plant turned silver and eventually died completely). Misting or foliar feeding in them in direct sunlight can do that, too. That is not as unfortunate as an attack of disease or signs of a severe mineral deficiency, though. The plant will recover. At most it will slow it down a little bit until more new leaves develop. |
Raybo,
I hope you will try a "control" container to see how it compares to the regular EB or HEB. I know you said that the water pans under containers didn't work for you before, but after seeing the pictures I'm guessing the containers were too small. I have a hunch that in an 18 inch deep container the hair roots wouldn't grow deep enough to get waterlogged in the bottom. I bought fifteen 24 gallon Rubbermaids today for around $7 each. They are also having a special on 18 gallons at HD for $3.99. That's a much better deal than I've found on comparable black nursery containers. I just hope the Rubbermaids hold up to the sun rays. I plan to take light colored ground cloth and put it around the containers to block the direct sun and heat it causes. Maybe this will do the trick for soil temps and container longevity. Since you are planning (I think) to have 25 HEB's, why not try just one more without the modifications and drill holes a few inches up (2-4") so the bottom can be a water reservoir and see how that compares. I'm guessing with a container this deep the roots won't grow deep enough in any significant way to get waterlogged and the plant will do fine. It it becomes a problem for me here, then I'll just drill more at the bottom. With automatic irrigation I don't think it will matter too much either way. Let me know if you decide to try a "control" container like this. I'd really like to see how it compares. Don |
Don,
Unfortunately, (or fortunately, as I view it) the construction on all 25 EarthTainers is done, and I am in the process of loading each one with potting mix and fertilizer at the moment. 23 of them have the tomato caging system, and I kept two without it, as I want to try growing sweet corn in them to see how corn would perform in an EB. Thanks to a lot of suggestions from T.V. members in this thread, I am running a number of "A / B" trials. I am comparing the growth and production properties of Miracle Grow vs. Lowes Sta-Green potting mix, TomatoTone vs. Fox Farms Peace of Mind fertilizers, dolomite Lime vs. Epsom Salts, Mycro Fungi additive vs. plain (thanks Ami), fertilizer strip vs. circle around the plant, Wall-O-Water vs. none, and others. I will detail each trial with pics in a week or so, once I have everything planted. Been a busy past 6 weeks!!!;) Ray (tired, in Campbell) :?::?: |
Thanks Raybo. Sounds like you've been a busy man lately! Hope the trials turn out to be fun and beneficial for you.
I'm going to try the 24 gallon Rubbermaid containers straight off the shelf with just a couple of drain holes added. They have quite a supply in a neighboring town and since I'm having difficulty in finding a quantity of black nursery containers I'm going with the HD "totes." Will keep you posted. Looking forward to your pictures! Don |
Don,
I still have a lingering concern about you having stagnant water accumulating in the bottom 4" of your container, below the drilled holes. Perhaps Ami, and others who have many more years doing container growing can comment on your design approach, and if they think it will work OK. My "nose" is telling me that you may have root rot with that residual water trapped in the bottom of the container.:?!?::?!?: Ray |
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 09:51 AM. |
★ Tomatoville® is a registered trademark of Commerce Holdings, LLC ★ All Content ©2022 Commerce Holdings, LLC ★