Anne's 9a garden 7-30-13 Update

[aclum]

Hi,

I started a thread on my garden May 1 and, for anyone interested, the link is:

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=27840

This is sort of a brief progress report that could be called "the plants get a haircut!"

I've been trying to keep my plants to a single or double stem for the most part, and pruning the lower leaves as the fruit load "moves up the stem." I'm planning on trying some sort of fall crop this year, and I wanted to sort of assess the state of the grafted vs ungrafted plants. So, it was time to top my plants and remove any plants that had finished their useful life. With the removal of a few plants, I had room to do a modified "lower and lean" with the remaining plants (as shown in some of the photos).

As I've been trimming and moving the plants along (usually restringing as I go), I've been saving a few new leaders from lower on the plant to allow to grow into a new larger plant for the fall as I keep trimming the tops, and I've also been taking cuttings to replace the original plants as they give up the ghost. The photo of the vorlons trimmed down to a leaf or two is sort of an extreme experiment - but I'm curious as to what will happen.

I can't say that I've really noticed any significant difference between my grafted and ungrafted plants (although something might emerge when I add up all the weights at the end of the season). However, I don't have any soil borne diseases (that I know of, anyway), and I just used regular hybrids and OPs rather than specifically "tomato rootstock."

Just have a few photos this time:
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My pathetic little vorlon and vorlon on Katana remants

3 Lucky Cross "lowered and leaned" with ungrafted plant on the right and a carbon (ungrafted) in the foreground. The carbon root is actually right next to the ungrafted Lucky Cross, but is "lowered and leaned" along the edge of the bed and brought towards the opposite side.

2 Mortgage Lifter (Estler's) - ungrafted on left - and 3 Mexico - ungrafted on left

Shade House with Chimayo and Shi★★★★o Peppers drying on hardware cloth over the bed, and shallots drying on the shelf below

Shade House with cuttings from all my pruning and a few new seedlings for fall.
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BTW, I discovered that the shade house can also double as a great aviary ! I had to let a trapped bird out this morning ! (The emoticon is how the bird felt).


I've been playing around with triple variety grafts on one no root rootstock and I've started seeds for RST-04-105-T tomato rootstock as well as a bunch of new varieties to use as scions for grafting a fall crop. I'm planning to add 2-3 additional 16' rows to my garden for the fall crop.

My first no root (Delerium's technique) triple graft was a failure - I'm out of practice and I think I didn't have the moisture right. Plus I'm having some issues learning to use the DE as a growing medium. On a whim a couple of days ago, I went out into the garden with a little aluminum baking dish (the throwaway type) in which I'd placed a razor blade, clips, damp DE in a cup, and labels. I did 2 no root triple grafts right in the garden (just sort of browsing through the plants to pick and choose bits that seemed useful/interesting). So far these are looking pretty good in the humidity chamber. BTW, we have one of those instant hot water taps at the sink, and I've been putting a small bowl of this "steaming hot" water in the humidity chamber once or twice a day as my humidity source (rather than misting).

Even though we've had a really hot July and it will be hot for another month, I can feel "autumn in the air" - so the garden is starting its gradual transition into fall.......not the most "photogenic" time of year, but sort of interesting, nevertheless (at least IMHO <g>).

(And I'm getting in the mood for cooking <g>. Made the best provincial style veggie stew a couple of days ago with heirloom tomatoes, trombocino squash, komo and bride eggplant, onions, anchovy paste, kalamata olives, saffron powder, and fresh basil. Yum!!!).

Anne

[aclum]

Oops - forgot some of the most import veggie stew ingredients - grilled and peeled nora, pequillo, and choricero peppers from the garden!!

Anne

[b54red]

Anne it looks like some of your plants are still producing some very nice looking toms. I kind of did the same thing to some of mine the past week. I took out some of the plants that were just a mess of vines and suckers to make room for some that were still putting on fruit regularly. I am leaving some of my main stems to keep growing and some are getting really long so I just keep running them along the top of the trellis. I am allowing a few lower new stems to start growing though I seldom have good luck with them because of their poor join with the main stems and their tendency to grow very tall and thin. I radically pruned a few to see if they would grow back and do anything later in the summer. Usually all plants set out in March and April are dead by now; but the grafting is giving my plants a real chance to get old and so I am just trying to figure out how to deal with these older plants that have gotten too big.

Bill

[efisakov]

Anne, your garden looks so neat. I assume the CD disk is for the unwanted intruders.

[aclum]

Hi Ella,

Thanks for the compliment, but you'd probably think things were not quite so neat if you saw the rest of the garden !

Yes, the CD's are up to deter whatever critters were either pecking or gnawing at the ripe fruit. I don't think they helped that much and I've been picking the fruit before it fully ripens.

Bill,

I've been reading your "southern doldrums" thread and it seems like we're in sort of similar situations in terms of the vines getting out of hand this time of year. Except it seems like you're running the extra along the top and I'm trying to drape the vines more towards the bottom to lower the fruit. Things have slowed down a lot in the hot weather, but I'm still picking about a dozen fruit a day and slowly starting to notice new blossoms here and there. Actually it's a bit of a relief not to have all the tomatoes to deal with!

It's so great to hear what wonderful success you've had with the grafting!! It really does make a difference apparently! As I've mentioned, I'm planning to use a "real tomato rootstock" next season, and seriously thinking about double or triple variety grafts. So I'll just have 3-4 main stems (with 7-12 varieties) per 16' row. And I'd like to employ the lower and lean method a bit less randomly than I'm doing now.

Anne

[efisakov]

Anne, are training and pruning your tomatoes similar to how it is done with grape vine?

[aclum]

Hi Ella,

No, your illustration shows what I think is called "espalier." I tried something similar to this last year - trying to grow leaders horizontally - but it just didn't work out for me.

The "lower and lean" or "lean and lower" is typically used in string trellis greenhouse culture where plants are generally grown to a single (or maybe double) stem that is allowed to grow to great lenghs (I've seen up to 30' mentioned) so that it continues to bear fruit. (In other words, it's not topped). The foliage under the fruit is trimmed as the stem grows. As the plant grows, the stems are gradually lowered by lengthening the strings and moving the longer string with tomatoes attached toward the right so that the bare stem that's already fruited drapes along the ground.

I think that the most common method of lengthening the string is to strip if off a reel attached to the top of the trellis and sliding it along the trellis top as shown in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNqhwtfCtFA

I'm not set up for that (and not quite sure how I'll approach things next year), so I basically just removed the plant at the end of the row (or leaned it out of the way along the edge of the bed) then gradually moved each vine to the right, reattached it to the next string over - "lowering and leaning" as I went down the row.

Hope this makes some sense <g>. The video linked above is a bit long with some extraneous info, but I think it clearly shows the technique.

Anne

[efisakov]

Anne, thank you. Great video. Many interesting recommendations.