Tomatoville® Gardening Forums


Notices

Share your favorite photos with us here. Instructions on how to post them can be found in the first post within.

 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
Old March 1, 2018   #1
GoDawgs
Tomatovillian™
 
GoDawgs's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Location: Augusta area, Georgia, 8a/7b
Posts: 1,685
Default The Tomato "Garden"

Since this is my first real post in Tomatoville, I thought I'd better post about my tomatoes. LOL!

The garden here consists of sixteen 4'x18' raised beds plus other open areas (no raised beds). About five years ago we started having real problems with some kind of tomato wilt. The plants would start setting tomatoes and then one day the 2" tip of just one branch would look wilty. By the next day about a third of the plant would be wilted and in two more days the whole plant would be wilted.
The only solution was to start growing the tomatoes in buckets. We use 15 gallon nursery pots set on pallets. So far keeping the tomato buckets on pallets have prevented fire ants from taking up residence.



The cages are made from 5' of field fence and slipped over the buckets. When the tomatoes are almost at the top of the cage, I add a second cage on top of the first, tying the two cages together in three places. To stabilize the whole setup, I run some furring strips down the middle of the cages, tying each cage to the strips and tying the strips down to the pallets. That rigging was devised when a bad summer storm blew a couple of plants over. No problems since!



This past summer was the first time I used growing media from a company that makes compost because a) I can't make enough myself and b) buying bags of various ingredients and mixing my own potting soil was a long and tedious process. For $40 I got a cubic yard of compost, shoveled it off my truck right into the pots and handtrucked them to the nearby pallets. It was the fastest, easiest bucket fill ever! Well worth the cash.

The tomato plants are up at the house, away from the garden and right there to keep an eye on. So far the system has worked very well with the added plus of freeing up a garden bed or two!
GoDawgs is offline   Reply With Quote
 

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 02:41 AM.


★ Tomatoville® is a registered trademark of Commerce Holdings, LLC ★ All Content ©2022 Commerce Holdings, LLC ★