Prepping The Tomato Area

[GoDawgs]

This year I'm moving the tomatoes that will be in the garden to a different area, one that will get some shade late afternoon in the summer. I think all day blasting heat was a problem last year.

This is the bed before I got working on it last Tuesday. It's called The Winter look. :



Last week we went to my secret source's burn pile and got 8 nice new pallets to supplement the ones here that are still usable. I also loaded up on those 1"x1"x8' pieces that are invaluable for use as stakes when cut to size. Free is GOOD!

After that I set up a washing station to wash all the buckets and spray them with 10% bleach solution. It was good to check that task off the list.



Then I took the cardboard we'd been saving for the occasion and laid a double thickness over the bed to keep the weeds down.



Yesterday we laid down the pallets where the buckets will sit. Done.



Last week we also made two trips to get potting mix, one yard per load, $40 a load. Can’t beat the price. It's an hour and a half round trip so that pretty much shot the morning. After the first trip we had to shovel it all into the tomato buckets to empty the truck for the second trip.



The second load filled the last of the buckets, the 3'x3'x8" empty remainder of the Jerusalem artichoke bed and we wrapped the rest of the mix in a tarp for use at some point in the future.

The filled buckets have been pushed up together and tarped until it's time to take them out to the pallets and plant the tomatoes in them in about three weeks. Half will go on these pallets and the other half will be set on a similar pallet row up next to the house.

[QAGuy]

Not sure why you just don't plant in the ground. Is your soil that bad? Have you considered raised beds? I used to grow in pots too (really big ones) when I had no choice. Now I'm in a house and can plant in the ground and I get much better results.

I had to build raised beds due to my poor soil though. I'm in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains and the native soil is called caliche. Caliche is used in making adobe bricks, so that should tell you something about it's properties. When it dries, it's almost as hard as concrete.

I've brought in a lot of soil amendments and now it's pretty good.

[GoDawgs]

Originally Posted by QAGuy

Not sure why you just don't plant in the ground. Is your soil that bad? Have you considered raised beds?

The garden consists of sixteen 4'x18' raised beds plus non-raised areas for corn, squash etc. Multiple reasons for potting the tomatoes:

My garden soil has some kind of bacterial wilt in it that kills tomato plants. The plants grow healthy, set tomatoes and then the plants begin to wilt. The whole plant collapses in a matter of 3-4 days. Whatever it is doesn't affect anything else I grow.

In addition, root know nematodes inhabit the soil. I've been battling them for at least five years and somewhere on this site there's a whole documentation of my efforts. I've managed to reduce the effect by fallowing beds, adding more organic material to the soil etc but I'm not going to take a chance on the tomatoes. They'll go into buckets.

The reason the pots are on pallets are to keep the fire ants out of them and to prevent contact between the buckets and bed soil.

[QAGuy]

Wow, that sucks! Good luck to you. I'd be doing the same.

[biscuitridge]

Just curious, have you tried using Actinovate to deal with your disease issues?

[b54red]

I have all the same problems and the only thing that really worked with tomatoes was grafting to a root stock that has tolerance to RKN, all three races of Fusarium and some tolerance to Bacterial Wilt. The Bacterial Wilt was only a problem about every other year and usually didn't affect too many plants but the fusarium and RKN were constant. I tried all kinds of additives to the soil and treatments with little long term success though having more organic matter and heavy mulching really helps with RKN. Other than growing those bullet proof tasteless hybrids with tons of resistance and little to no flavor the only thing you can do is graft or grow in containers.

I wasn't very good at maintaining container grown plants and was disappointed in the smaller size and lower production I got compared to grafted plants. Grafting was difficult and fairly expensive but I like growing in the ground better and gradually got better with my grafting so the expense went down; but even now after a lot of practice it can still be frustrating at times.

Bill

[GoDawgs]

Originally Posted by biscuitridge

Just curious, have you tried using Actinovate to deal with your disease issues?

Way too expensive.