"Earl's Hole" Disaster

[PeteD]

My "soil" mix is 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 compost. My tomatoes did very well last year. I have raised beds. This is the square foot garden recipe for soil. You may be OK. How do they look?

[amideutch]

hasshoes, check out that first link I gave you (PDF File) and go to page 4. That says it all. Ami

[hasshoes]

Thank you amideutch. . . I'm off to buy some lime the second I finish this post!!!!

I didn't post yesterday because I was involved in "Adventures in Soil Testing". . . I couldn't get many consistent reads for my raised beds (I didn't want to knock what was left of my mounds over. . . more on that later. . .) but what was consistant is that my "Heather's Hole" ph's (I have two I haven't planted in) were ph 4.5 (or lower. . . that was as low as the test went.)

My raised beds aka giant mounds melted. They were about 22-26 inches high and my fluffly holes were as deep as I could dig (about 20, maybe 26 inches), so I think the raised beds sunk into the fluffy holes. Also, the child of the neighboring gardener watered them for me (!!!!) and I hadn't yet reinforced them, so I'm sure that eroded them too.

I may acutally go crazy!!!!! :0s I can't dig anymore!!! My back is wack from carrying around a 30lb puppy. . .although I guess there are worse problems to have. . . :0).

I found a store that allegedly has composted peat hummus, so I'm going to try to get that and try planting in the correct Earl's fashion in my garden area that doesn't get tons of sun. If my other maters look horrific when I get there, I may just rip them up and start over with short season varieties.

Thank you Earl for your kindness :0). Sorry to be the first person to make a disaster of your famous Hole method :0(. . .it may be foolproof but not Lowe's-proof!!!!! (they told me all peat was the same) The spagham peat was a giant "compacted" bag. . . it was the heaviest thing I've ever carried and I had to really chop it to get the orangey-red peat stuff out. For the "Heather's Holes" I tried to follow your Earl's ratio on GW plus with maybe an extra several inches of peat to fluff up the soil. Some of the raised areas were almost half spagham peat because I read on Laurel's Heirloom Tomato plants that the soil was supposed to be FLUFFY (she said this many times :0).

My ph readings from the mounds (I took samples from the mounds and mixed them together) were mainly ph 5 with a few 5.5s and one 6 (untouched topsoil). . . . so I'm off to buy some lime. Will update tonight, and maybe even entertain everyone with hilarious pictures (of my tomatoes and weird mounds, that is :0)

Thanks again!! I will grow a tomato this summer, even if it means raising a dwarf under the sunroof of my car. . . . :0)

[dice]

You can always adjust the soil right around
the plant itself with wood ash (if you have
a fireplace or wood stove or a nearby neighbor
or campground with plenty, etc). It is not a
replacement for lime, because tomatoes need
the calcium in the lime, but a little wood ash
goes a long way in adjusting pH, and it breaks
down and changes pH fast. (That will reduce
how much lime you have to spread around to
get a reasonable pH for tomatoes.)

If you want to test it, pick a spot off to one side,
a few feet away from any plants, on the edge
of your mounds. Measure some wood ash (like
a coffee can full), cultivate it in to about a 3'
circle of peaty soil, water it well, then wait
2 weeks and test it to see how much difference
that made.

Since you are going to be adding lime, too, you
probably don't want to use more wood ash than
that, and I would amend the soil with the lime
before testing the wood ash treatment. If the result
is favorable (raises the pH but not to more than 7),
you can do it around the plants that you already
have in the ground. If it raises it too high , cut
the amount of wood ash in half for each plant.

[Sherry_AK]

Just curious ... what would be the visible symptoms of a tomato plant grown in low PH soil?

Sherry

[amideutch]

Sherry, to find out what the plants would look like look up the symptoms for phosphorus, calcium and magnesium deficiencies and also aluminum toxicity as this is what low ph (highly acidic) soil will cause. I know there are links here at Tville for sites that have pictures of tomato plants with various nutrient dificiencies. If I find them I will edit this post and add them to it. Ami I found it.
http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~psoil...nual/lab7.html

[Sherry_AK]

Thanks, Ami. Fortunately, none of those conditions look familiar to me!!! Our soils are naturally acidic, so I did wonder. Of course, most all of my tomatoes are grown in pots, in potting mix, anyway.

Sherry

[hasshoes]

Lowe's does it again!!

Seriously, I am now utterly, wholey (no pun intended) convinced that Mother Earth or at least Lowes Home Improvement are out to completely thwart my tomato growing process.

Yesterday, I drove to a far away Lowe's to pick up the Holy Grail I mean some composted peat hummus. I paid for it/purchased online for in store pickup, but shocker!!! when I got there it was out of stock and was encouraged to buy more of the evil ph 3 spaghum peat moss instead. They kept rolling their eyes at me I telling me I was confused when I said it wasn't the same thing.

But wait, it gets worse!!!! I told them that I had to buy lime because someone else at Lowe's gave me the same wrong advice and it lowered my ph too low, and two employees spent 15 minutes trying to prevent me from buying lime "because lime will lower your ph even more" and "lime is what you use to make soil more acidic." I almost lost it when the guy tried to get me to buy Hollytone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's right, HOLLYTONE when my ph is already a friggen 4! In a joking (albeit kinda passive-agressive hostile way) they stood in front of the lime and told me I'd be an idiot to waste my money on it!!!!! After 15 minutes of arguing (and after a 3d "garden specialist" agreed I needed Hollytone,) one guy told me he was a "tomato expert in the process of beating the world record for largest tomato" and had put some insane 26-32-whatever-ish miracle grow all over his plants. . . this gave me the courage to lightly nudge them aside (physically!), grab my lime, and haul off with a polite "thank you!" As I walked (almost ran) to checkout they tried to follow me and argue some more, and then finatlly exclaimed, "Women!"
:

I would write someone a very irate letter if I thought anyone would actually care. . .I suppose I should be happy no one made inappropriate s. harrassment comments like I got at Home Depot.

Anyway, I just really, REALLY wanted to thank everyone here for their expert advice, because if it wasn't for you guys, I'd be dumping Hollytone all over my tomatoes about now. . .

Lime addition/plant health updates to follow. . .:
Heather
ps- who knew growing tomatoes invited so much drama?

[feldon30]

Really sad to hear Big Box Retail employees giving such bad advice. I'd rather stick with what they know: cluelessness.

I guess I never have to wrestle with employees to get to the stuff I want to buy like you had to. I guess it's cause I'm 6'9".

[hasshoes]

Originally Posted by feldon30

I guess it's cause I'm 6'9".

Feldon, you were born to grow heirlooms!

[korney19]

Don't you have a WalMart nearby? I was just at a local one here and they had PEAT HUMUS in bags. And Cow Manure too, like in Earl's recipe. You can probably substitute something like compost for the peat humus.

Actually, municipal compost here is cheap. It's pH is over 7, which would really help your problem.

In my container tomatoes, I use about 1/3rd to 1/2 compost, the majority of the remainder is peat, or ProMix BX, which is mostly peat plus vermiculite & perlite (plus dolomitic lime.)

See if your town or county has a compost facility. I travel 10-15 miles for compost and it's about $13 per pickup truck load, or about $1.50 for a rubbermaid 18 gallon toteful. Every year I add about 3-4" of compost to my raised beds, in the past, it was a fortune in gas using a Blazer and filling 6 totes at a time.... but now I got a 10-year loan from a friend who owed me a favor and got a ZR2 pickup.

How big are your plants and how long have they been planted?

[hasshoes]

We've had serious storms with flooding and hail warnings with mad branches flying off trees everywhere, so I haven't driven to look at them. . . besides spreading a little lime in the midst of the storm My basement even flooded with half a foot, so I'm worried that if I go to see them they'll no longer be there!

Our Walmart had no peat anything, mainly tons of pesticide and Miracle-Gro products. I did find a place that sells peat hummus though, I just need the sky to stop pounding me so I can put it in!

We do have free compost here, but I'm trying to be semi-organic (I was completely organic before I added the lime!), and the compost here gets a lot of grass from local golf courses, which has who knows what in them! I get about 35-45 mpg (especially if I accelerate slowly and irritate %*#@!! the people behind me ) so driving all over the place is not a problem. . . except for delaying the time left for my maters, of course!

[Ruby]

Lime is from natural mineral sources, right? (at least dolomite, I would think) So you could still be organic. 8)

(I hope you end up writing letters to these companies about their employees providing wrong info!)

[hasshoes]

Originally Posted by Ruby

Lime is from natural mineral sources, right? (at least dolomite, I would think) So you could still be organic. 8)
(I hope you end up writing letters to these companies about their employees providing wrong info!)

That's what I was hoping. . . I just didn't know if it was "treated" or anything . . .

Well I did write a letter to HD about being asked out by SEVERAL employees in the store and one employee's not-so-quiet comment about my rear. . . but I've yet to receive a response. I could totally talk to a manager or something, but it's pretty typical here. . . this region of Ct (Farmington Valley) has such a great education system that it's hard to get anyone to fill the non white collar jobs. . . it's really not worth the hassle at this point. . . I just wanna move back to the big city! :0)

On another note. . . a tornado was just spotted south of us. . . looks like my plants may be "off to see the wizard!"

[Worth1]

I have sent emails to many companies asking many questions about many things.
I have yet to receive anything from any of them.
These were Emails sent to the Email address the said to send to for more information too.
And that is AFTER I looked at the FAQ like they said to do.
I think they go strait to junk Email and never get read.

One shotgun manufacture lost my business because of this.

Worth