[QUOTE=travis;481490]Randy, do you have a way to accurately measure Brix? If so, that will be helpful ... to compare Brix in same varieties of tomatoes, those without Atomic Grow and those treated with Atomic Grow, especially as "Jim" is claiming significant increase in Brix for treated examples.[/QUOTE]

Nope, sure don't. But, I'm a pretty good judge of flavor. In this article it wasn't mentioned that the two years that Omar's Lebanese won they were my entries (go to the TomatoFest part of the article):

[URL]http://berkeley.ext.wvu.edu/r/download/199635[/URL]

However, I've retired from competitive tasting growing to pursue other interests. I went out on top now it's someone else's turn. :)

Fortunately in Side Garden 2 Garrison (and others) are across from each other. What that means is some will be getting my old foliar fertilizer some will be Atomic Grow.

Here are pictures of the Atomic Grow bottle with directions. I had to take 3 photos because the label wraps around the bottle. Yes, I am aware that it says "for tender vegetable plats..." instead of "for tender vegetable plants...".

I made videos of me mixing and spraying the product and posted to YouTube.

Mixing recommended strength:
[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=212AZGDe518[/URL]

Spraying recommended strength:
[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne2K-zZ4gpk[/URL]

Mixing double strength:
[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgbYEJroA_Y[/URL]

Spraying one plant double strength:
[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peXzmfszjmo[/URL]

I shall resize and upload still pictures of the before and after selected plants and after spraying pictures of the side gardens and overall side gardens (test and control group).

Basically no plants were harmed during the filming. :)

Side Gardens 1 and 2 before Atomic Grow application:

Side Gardens 1 and 2 taken approximately 32 hours after application (orange ribbon indicates control group row which did not receive Atomic Grow):

Close up of plant which received the double dose application is below. Most people would be happy if their plants didn't have burned leaves. I guess I am too, but I'm a little disappointed because I thought I was on to the reason behind the burned leaves. I can think of other possible causes, but unless someone steps forward with what they did so we can compare to what I did I'd be grasping at straws and possibly wasting my time. I plan to post monthly progress photos.

sin defence of atomic fertilizer and kathy
 

I see several comments defiling this atom smasher and crowleys. HEADS UP!

I have spent about $2,000.00 over a period of 4 or 5 years at crowley's nursery. everything was okay until about a month ago when i purchased some plants and that atomic slop. included in my purchase of about $400.00 was a beautiful lychee tree which was to be front and center for my florida house. when i got home i noticed that there were some brown spots on the leaves and called Kathy. She assured me that everything would be okay and that it was just going into shock and instructed me to spray some of that atom stuff on the leaves. per her mixing instructions i did that and to all of my other plants and planted the lychee. UHOH!

everything that i sprayed went south. leaves turned brown. some plants died while others were able to withstand the storm and survive. again i was assured by Kathy that everything would be okay. now, over a month later, the lychee is a dead stick, probably due to that atom smasher, and they refuse to replace it saying what you bought is what you get.

the only think that i could say, in email, was BYE. yes. there is a fence there. FAIR WARNING.

Unfortunately comparison testing of Atomic Grow vs. my normal organic foliar fertilizer has been suspended for the remainder of the growing season. There came a time that the only thing I wanted to get my tomato leaves wet with was fungicide. The results were inconclusive.

why did you have to suspend the experiment, Randy?

[QUOTE=nctomatoman;495617]why did you have to suspend the experiment, Randy?[/QUOTE]

Because of all the rain we've had I'm having major issues with fungal diseases. So, I didn't want to get the leaves of the plants wet with anything other than fungicide. The recommended cycle of of applying Atomic Grow 3 weeks in a row then every other week was interrupted which I thought might have an impact on the results. Having said that I don't think that following the recommended cycle for the entire growing season has anything to do with burned leaves and dead plants. It seems that those issues happen after initial spraying.

At the time I suspended application of both my regular foliar fertilizer and Atomic Grow I could see no discernible difference.

The fungal disease was exasperated in roughly half of my garden by the use of aspirin as a fungicide. I will be doing a full report on that. Basically it didn't go well. I'm sticking with copper and Serenade going forward.

Interesting. I found that by spacing plants well, mulching well, and strictly bottom watering, as well as disciplined removal of lower leaf spotting (early blight), my plants were the best I've ever had - spraying absolutely nothing.

Then again, all in containers and bales, I do have an advantage, since there are probably less spores to worry about.

So my Large Lucky Red (I grew one of the plants) is a large pink - seems to have circled all the way back to Brandywine! Not yet tasted.

[QUOTE=nctomatoman;495693]Interesting. I found that by spacing plants well, mulching well, and strictly bottom watering, as well as disciplined removal of lower leaf spotting (early blight), my plants were the best I've ever had - spraying absolutely nothing.

Then again, all in containers and bales, I do have an advantage, since there are probably less spores to worry about.

So my Large Lucky Red (I grew one of the plants) is a large pink - seems to have circled all the way back to Brandywine! Not yet tasted.[/QUOTE]

Good information. Interesting on the Large Lucky Red. Mine are true to type and I saved lots of seeds. I'm not sure what filial generation it is, but if you want to advance it I can supply you seeds.

Some of my plants were well spaced were treated with copper and Serenade and hardly show any signs of disease. That is not the case with the ones treated with aspirin. In other areas I went with tighter spacing to get in more plants due to breeding. Everything is a trade off. :)

I mulch everything, but was a little late getting the mulch down so there was some initial splash back (I still don't know if that's one word or two). So much so that in some cases it had the appearance of flea beetle damage. I have eggplants so I have no flea beetles on my tomatoes and peppers. :)

Of course the other reason for suspending the Atomic Grow testing was because if my foliar fertilizer went on to win I could be accused of slanting the experiment. Next year I plan to grow 6 plants of the same variety. Two will be treated with Atomic Grow, two with my foliar fertilizer and two will be untreated. I also want to do more thorough testing of Epsom Salt, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to fit that in.

Good stuff, Randy!

A few years back tried both atomic grow and bio wash . Waste of money

And he's back bathmouthing Tomatoville on Gardenweb last Tuesday.