Single Stem Tomatoes - Page 7

Crandrew · May 21, 2012

what post number where they in?

May 21, 2012

They were in post #80 and all photos are now gone from the post plus the gray mold photo from post 84 is now gone. They are still in photobucket. Normally if a problem occurs at the storage server, it will be reported as a broken or missing link in a post. It seems like the image code in my post was edited out. I don't mind, but I am curious why they were removed. Ted

Rockporter · May 21, 2012

Candrew, I see he has lots of photos posted in #80. I see them but I wonder if for some reason he isn't seeing them?

May 21, 2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rockporter

Candrew, I see he has lots of photos posted in #80. I see them but I wonder if for some reason he isn't seeing them?

Rockport, If your still seeing the photos, the problem must be on my end. My browser stopped loading the images for some reason. I did look at some other photos I posted on different threads and they are still there. Are the photos you can see in the full page mode or have they been reduced to icon size requiring a mouse click to display?

Okay, I rebooted and the photos are back as posted.

Ted

Rockporter · May 21, 2012

Glad you're back in the game.

tjg911 · May 21, 2012

it took a while but i just read this entire thread. very interesting.

initially, i had some comments about single stem, i never heard of this before, but it seems a lot of the things have been discussed or proven in the thread.

thanks b54red for your posts and experimenting updates, i was going to ask if anyone ever did a side by side comparison of single vs multi stem plants. it seemed that a plant with just 1 stem couldn't possibly produce as many tomatoes as a multi stemmed plant because there are so many more opportunities on a multi stemmed plant for flowers.

it seems the majority of people doing this or interested are in the deep south and have serious issues with diseases, humidity issues too and this allows for better air circulation with less foliage.

i don't know if these are typos but what is BTDB, BTDP, i found PBTD is pink berkley tie dyed.

in the video, the farmer said 1 plant allowed to go multi stemmed would use 9 sq feet and that seems to be excessive, 4 sf would be 2' X 2' but 3' X 3'? my plants are in the ground, multi stemmed, in crw cages 24 or 26" in diameter, no suckering cuz i want all the foliage i can get as i read tomatoes are sweeter with the shade and ability to photosynthesize more food (i trim only the bottom 14-16" from the ground up for air circulation in early july) and they use about 4 sq ft. i top all plants on labor day to encourage ripening of the fruits since there is only 3 good weeks left, fruits by late september just don't taste as good as a week earlier.

tom

Tania · May 21, 2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by nctomatoman

I did small pot, extreme prune indeterminates last year - 2 gal pot, one stem, 2-3 trusses, topped at 4 feet tall - so I could get some fresh seed from some...they did spectacularly - great flavor, production.....great way to fit lots of varieties in for just an evaluation and a seed save.

nice idea - I will try that with my leftover seedlings!

b54red · May 22, 2012

Tom I have used BTDP for Berkley Tie Dye Pink for years and am probably too set in my ways to change it.

I too couldn't believe the number of fruits set on some of the single stem plants. In the long run they may not produce as many as plants with more stems but some of them particularly BTDP

, Black Krim, Spudakee, Cherokee Purple, Indian Stripe, Marianna's Peace, Lumpy Red, and Tarasenko-6 all set more fruit on the first 3 or 4 trusses when kept to one stem than their counterparts with more stems.

One big problem I have run into is the lose of leaves due to the massive worm attack and Gray Mold that hit about a week ago has left too many of my plants without enough foliage for leaf protection. I am going to rig a little shade for them with some leftover ground cover cloth. I hope a 2 ft strip over the center of the trellis will give them enough protection from sun scald.

tjg911 · May 22, 2012

i don't know what your "worm" problem is but i suspect you mean caterpillars. you can spray the plants with BT and that'll end the cat problem. never heard of grey mold, you have diseases we don't have. from what i have read here over the years, growing in the south is much more difficult than up here due to diseases and bugs.

the single stem sounds good for air circulation but as you noted lose leaves and you have sun scald or the inability to feed the plant. i am surprised that a single stem will produce such a high yield, i would have thought this was going to severely lower your harvest.

i won't use the single stem method as i don't see it being necessary for me. last year a cp plant had some fruits out in the sun and sun scald ruined most of them, this happened another year to another variety so i want more foliage not less. this is why i never prune the suckers, more shade and more leaves to feed the plant. i space plants far enough they have good air circulation despite the humidity and the nasty habit of it raining before dark vs early in the day so things can dry out. trimming the lower leaves helps with air circulation. i get some foliar problems but usually nothing too bad. my plants usually have most of their leaves in mid september, in other gardens the plants are often dead by then.

tom

FILMNET · May 22, 2012

In the photos shown the huge crops on the bottom of these single stems will be the first fruit, and then in the middle will be for fruits. .And as the plants grow after 50-60 days the top or plants may has last fruit. So 3 big crops from this plants. Here is my from 2 years ago.

b54red · May 23, 2012

I am always envious when I see pictures posted where the plants have nice foliage all the way to the bottom of the plant. The diseases and pests never let me have leaves close to the bottom. By the time I have a decent fruit set the bottom truss is always without leaf cover due to one thing or another.

The BT was not doing the job on the caterpillars so I had to use Sevin. I wish I had used it much sooner because I would have more leaves now.

May 23, 2012

Bill,

I suppose when you say BT, you are referencing Thuricide or equivalent. I've been using the Thuricide for about three years and it works great. I usually start spraying with it when I see a high population of moths in my garden. I was a little late spraying this year and had a few tomatoes damaged by the small worms boring into the tomatoes. I thought it would take longer for the eggs to hatch into caterpillars than it did.

Like you, I usually lose most of the leaves near the bottom of my plants. With my aggressive spraying for fungus this year, I only have four or five varieties almost naked near the bottom of the plants. My Mortgage Lifter got it first and it went down the bed to the Tarasenko, then the Hilbilly, then the Prudens Purple, skipping the Jetsetter and Goliath hybrids; and finishing with my Cowlicks. My other beds are barely affected with heavy foliage from bottom to top.

Since you and I are basically growing in similar climates with similar varieties, I'm not surprised we have similar problems. I thought I even located some Fusarium in my garden a few days ago when I found a branch wilted on a Gary O'Sena. The branch recovered after a few days, so guess I am okay.

Ted

tjg911 · May 23, 2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by b54red

The BT was not doing the job on the caterpillars so I had to use Sevin. I wish I had used it much sooner because I would have more leaves now.

b54red,

BT will kill cats and do it fast and extremely effectively. there are 3 different types of BT. please read this, it explains how BT works and at the bottom it describes the 3 types. you want the Kurstaki strain. another is for potato beetle larvae and another is for mosquitoes, those 2 are not what you want.

sevin is nasty stuff and BT will do the job without harming the beneficial insects and spiders that will help you.

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05556.html

tom

dice · May 24, 2012

Gray mold I believe is another name for botrytis:
http://msucares.com/crops/comhort/to...s/botrytis.jpg
http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.corne...otrytisFS2.htm
http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=21996

b54red · May 24, 2012

Tom I have been using BT for over 20 years with great success most of the time. It seems it doesn't always work on some varieties of caterpillars as well as others. This is only the second time it has performed so poorly on tomatoes the other time was 4 years ago. It also looked like the same type caterpillar as that time. I have been applying BT every week since the plants went into the ground and have not had any hornworms. Another thing BT doesn't work well on is squash and cucumber borers. If it wasn't for using Sevin sparingly I would have a very very short season with both squash and cucumbers. I have found that by using a dust of Sevin around just the stems of my squash plants I can extend the harvest by at least a month before the vine borers finally get in them and demolish the plants.

That Indian Stripe plant that had so much fruit on it has more Gray mold and is now without any leaves except a tiny amount at the one growth tip. I have rigged some shade but don't think it will be adequate to protect the fruit as the temps are moving into the upper 90s this week with relentless sunshine. Would love to see a few cloudy days to allow some of them time to ripen before scalding. At the first signs of scalding I am going to pick the plant clean and put the tomatoes on the porch to continue ripening. The plant is just a long vine with nothing but fruit on it so when I pick it I will also pull it and replace it. I do think that down here where diseases and pests are so prevalent that some type of shade cloth is going to be mandatory when using the single stem method.

It does appear that using the single stem method has helped thwart the fusarium problem to a small degree. Although I am losing a good number of plants to it the number still healthy in the bed is far more than I would ordinarily have left untouched at this time by using my regular tomato plant spacing and as a result I think I will have more production from the same space.

I have had one bit of good luck so far this season on the disease front and that is only having one plant with TSWV so far this year. Usually by this time in the season I have about 20% of my plants devastated by it. Maybe I will get hit by it a bit later so I am keeping my fingers crossed and being thankful for now.

May 21, 2012	#93
Rockporter Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Texas Coastal Bend Posts: 3,205	Candrew, I see he has lots of photos posted in #80. I see them but I wonder if for some reason he isn't seeing them? __________________ In the spring at the end of the day you should smell like dirt ~Margaret Atwood~

May 21, 2012	#95
Rockporter Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Texas Coastal Bend Posts: 3,205	Glad you're back in the game. __________________ In the spring at the end of the day you should smell like dirt ~Margaret Atwood~

May 21, 2012	#96
tjg911 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: zone 5b northwest connecticut Posts: 2,570	it took a while but i just read this entire thread. very interesting. initially, i had some comments about single stem, i never heard of this before, but it seems a lot of the things have been discussed or proven in the thread. thanks b54red for your posts and experimenting updates, i was going to ask if anyone ever did a side by side comparison of single vs multi stem plants. it seemed that a plant with just 1 stem couldn't possibly produce as many tomatoes as a multi stemmed plant because there are so many more opportunities on a multi stemmed plant for flowers. it seems the majority of people doing this or interested are in the deep south and have serious issues with diseases, humidity issues too and this allows for better air circulation with less foliage. i don't know if these are typos but what is BTDB, BTDP, i found PBTD is pink berkley tie dyed. in the video, the farmer said 1 plant allowed to go multi stemmed would use 9 sq feet and that seems to be excessive, 4 sf would be 2' X 2' but 3' X 3'? my plants are in the ground, multi stemmed, in crw cages 24 or 26" in diameter, no suckering cuz i want all the foliage i can get as i read tomatoes are sweeter with the shade and ability to photosynthesize more food (i trim only the bottom 14-16" from the ground up for air circulation in early july) and they use about 4 sq ft. i top all plants on labor day to encourage ripening of the fruits since there is only 3 good weeks left, fruits by late september just don't taste as good as a week earlier. tom __________________ I need a hero I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the end of the night He’s gotta be strong And he’s gotta be fast And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight I need a hero I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the morning light He’s gotta be sure And it’s gotta be soon And he’s gotta be larger than life

May 22, 2012	#98
b54red Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Alabama Posts: 7,068	Tom I have used BTDP for Berkley Tie Dye Pink for years and am probably too set in my ways to change it. I too couldn't believe the number of fruits set on some of the single stem plants. In the long run they may not produce as many as plants with more stems but some of them particularly BTDP, Black Krim, Spudakee, Cherokee Purple, Indian Stripe, Marianna's Peace, Lumpy Red, and Tarasenko-6 all set more fruit on the first 3 or 4 trusses when kept to one stem than their counterparts with more stems. One big problem I have run into is the lose of leaves due to the massive worm attack and Gray Mold that hit about a week ago has left too many of my plants without enough foliage for leaf protection. I am going to rig a little shade for them with some leftover ground cover cloth. I hope a 2 ft strip over the center of the trellis will give them enough protection from sun scald.

May 22, 2012	#99
tjg911 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: zone 5b northwest connecticut Posts: 2,570	i don't know what your "worm" problem is but i suspect you mean caterpillars. you can spray the plants with BT and that'll end the cat problem. never heard of grey mold, you have diseases we don't have. from what i have read here over the years, growing in the south is much more difficult than up here due to diseases and bugs. the single stem sounds good for air circulation but as you noted lose leaves and you have sun scald or the inability to feed the plant. i am surprised that a single stem will produce such a high yield, i would have thought this was going to severely lower your harvest. i won't use the single stem method as i don't see it being necessary for me. last year a cp plant had some fruits out in the sun and sun scald ruined most of them, this happened another year to another variety so i want more foliage not less. this is why i never prune the suckers, more shade and more leaves to feed the plant. i space plants far enough they have good air circulation despite the humidity and the nasty habit of it raining before dark vs early in the day so things can dry out. trimming the lower leaves helps with air circulation. i get some foliar problems but usually nothing too bad. my plants usually have most of their leaves in mid september, in other gardens the plants are often dead by then. tom __________________ I need a hero I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the end of the night He’s gotta be strong And he’s gotta be fast And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight I need a hero I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the morning light He’s gotta be sure And it’s gotta be soon And he’s gotta be larger than life

May 21, 2012	#91
Crandrew Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: asdf Posts: 1,202	what post number where they in?

May 21, 2012	#92
tedln Guest Posts: n/a	They were in post #80 and all photos are now gone from the post plus the gray mold photo from post 84 is now gone. They are still in photobucket. Normally if a problem occurs at the storage server, it will be reported as a broken or missing link in a post. It seems like the image code in my post was edited out. I don't mind, but I am curious why they were removed. Ted

May 23, 2012	#101
b54red Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Alabama Posts: 7,068	I am always envious when I see pictures posted where the plants have nice foliage all the way to the bottom of the plant. The diseases and pests never let me have leaves close to the bottom. By the time I have a decent fruit set the bottom truss is always without leaf cover due to one thing or another. The BT was not doing the job on the caterpillars so I had to use Sevin. I wish I had used it much sooner because I would have more leaves now.

May 23, 2012	#102
tedln Guest Posts: n/a	Bill, I suppose when you say BT, you are referencing Thuricide or equivalent. I've been using the Thuricide for about three years and it works great. I usually start spraying with it when I see a high population of moths in my garden. I was a little late spraying this year and had a few tomatoes damaged by the small worms boring into the tomatoes. I thought it would take longer for the eggs to hatch into caterpillars than it did. Like you, I usually lose most of the leaves near the bottom of my plants. With my aggressive spraying for fungus this year, I only have four or five varieties almost naked near the bottom of the plants. My Mortgage Lifter got it first and it went down the bed to the Tarasenko, then the Hilbilly, then the Prudens Purple, skipping the Jetsetter and Goliath hybrids; and finishing with my Cowlicks. My other beds are barely affected with heavy foliage from bottom to top. Since you and I are basically growing in similar climates with similar varieties, I'm not surprised we have similar problems. I thought I even located some Fusarium in my garden a few days ago when I found a branch wilted on a Gary O'Sena. The branch recovered after a few days, so guess I am okay. Ted

May 24, 2012	#104
dice Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: PNW Posts: 4,743	Gray mold I believe is another name for botrytis: http://msucares.com/crops/comhort/to...s/botrytis.jpg http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.corne...otrytisFS2.htm http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=21996 __________________ -- alias

May 24, 2012	#105
b54red Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Alabama Posts: 7,068	Tom I have been using BT for over 20 years with great success most of the time. It seems it doesn't always work on some varieties of caterpillars as well as others. This is only the second time it has performed so poorly on tomatoes the other time was 4 years ago. It also looked like the same type caterpillar as that time. I have been applying BT every week since the plants went into the ground and have not had any hornworms. Another thing BT doesn't work well on is squash and cucumber borers. If it wasn't for using Sevin sparingly I would have a very very short season with both squash and cucumbers. I have found that by using a dust of Sevin around just the stems of my squash plants I can extend the harvest by at least a month before the vine borers finally get in them and demolish the plants. That Indian Stripe plant that had so much fruit on it has more Gray mold and is now without any leaves except a tiny amount at the one growth tip. I have rigged some shade but don't think it will be adequate to protect the fruit as the temps are moving into the upper 90s this week with relentless sunshine. Would love to see a few cloudy days to allow some of them time to ripen before scalding. At the first signs of scalding I am going to pick the plant clean and put the tomatoes on the porch to continue ripening. The plant is just a long vine with nothing but fruit on it so when I pick it I will also pull it and replace it. I do think that down here where diseases and pests are so prevalent that some type of shade cloth is going to be mandatory when using the single stem method. It does appear that using the single stem method has helped thwart the fusarium problem to a small degree. Although I am losing a good number of plants to it the number still healthy in the bed is far more than I would ordinarily have left untouched at this time by using my regular tomato plant spacing and as a result I think I will have more production from the same space. I have had one bit of good luck so far this season on the disease front and that is only having one plant with TSWV so far this year. Usually by this time in the season I have about 20% of my plants devastated by it. Maybe I will get hit by it a bit later so I am keeping my fingers crossed and being thankful for now.