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Old February 25, 2008   #31
rnewste
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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
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Old February 25, 2008   #32
dice
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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):
http://agr.wa.gov/PestFert/Fertilize...asp?pname=4023

Shultz 9-10-15 Tomato Plus Plant Food (probably at HD):
http://agr.wa.gov/PestFert/Fertilize...asp?pname=2258

Turfking Tomato & Vegetable Food 4-10-10:
http://agr.wa.gov/PestFert/Fertilize...asp?pname=2882

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:

http://agr.wa.gov/PestFert/Fertilize...ctDatabase.htm
)

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.
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Last edited by dice; February 25, 2008 at 04:51 PM. Reason: re: Purple Haze
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Old February 26, 2008   #33
dice
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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

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/CN002

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 this year's 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.)
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Old February 26, 2008   #34
dice
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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.
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Old February 26, 2008   #35
rnewste
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Wow dice,

Thanks for all the information.

The little guys have been outside "incubating" for the past 2 weeks.



Ray
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Old February 27, 2008   #36
dice
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They look great!

What's with that leaner in the lower right corner?
The shady spot?
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Old February 27, 2008   #37
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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.

Ray



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Old February 27, 2008   #38
dice
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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):

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/t...eaves/19b.html

Here is a page of mineral deficiency pictures:

http://4e.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=5&id=289

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:

http://4e.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=5&id=289

You can see that manganese deficiency is the closest
in those photos, but even there it shows some leaf curl
at the edges.
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Old February 27, 2008   #39
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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.

Hopefully, it is recoverable so that the Myth-Buster's "games" can go forward.

Ray
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Old February 27, 2008   #40
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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.
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Old February 28, 2008   #41
dice
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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.
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Old March 17, 2008   #42
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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
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Old March 17, 2008   #43
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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)
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Old March 17, 2008   #44
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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
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Old March 17, 2008   #45
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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
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