Tomato blossoms. A little out of focus, but the pic is less than 5 minutes old. ;)
/johnny
Posted on 09/27/2013 12:37:17 PM PDT by greeneyes
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Well, the link won’t post. Search UTube for “The Beauty of Pollination”. It shows, in slow motion, all the insects who pollinate and shows them doing it and it’s set to music. It is quite beautiful.
I wonder if all of you know this: The food of Hummingbirds is insects. They only drink nectar for energy.
I see the Tromboncino Squash hasn’t gotten you yet. That’s good, and I hope your neck is all better.
I went to Walmart & picked up my grow light..That four foot long light is really long..
It went together easy as pie...well, easy as eating a pie, not making a pie. I used a deadhead rubber mallet, which was a really good investment for putting things together, and not dinging them up. I plugged in the lamp, and all systems are go.
Now, I have no idea what to plant, and stick under it, but it looks like I can plant a bunch of somethings that are yet to be determined.
Time to look through my seeds, and decide.Some toy choi, and I’m not sure what else.
Tomato blossoms. A little out of focus, but the pic is less than 5 minutes old. ;)
/johnny
Ok Marcella, before you do the dastardly unforgivable sin, try this on just one of your tomato plants. Add some bonemeal.
Flowering veggies need phosphorus to produce flowers. Bonemeal is an organic source. It is puzzling to me, because I know you bought good soil for the pots, so I would not have expected to do anything except add some compost when the fowers appear.
Still it is worth a try. When did you plant those tomatoes, and what type are they (mortgage lifter etc.)?
Would the Romas blossom faster than Mortgage Lifters?
If I can’t grow a freaking tomato, I’m a massive failure.
Are the 'maters getting too much nitrogen and not enough potassium/potash? Try a fertilizer feed 20-20-20 or similar. I had that problem last year and enriched the soil with coffee grinds, egg shells (calcium) and a deeper cultivation. You live in Texas too so maybe the heat has stunted the blooms too. Next year I'm going with cherry and Roma 'maters for an early yield until the Fall season round 2 for more. /johnny's compost tea/seaweed liquid/molasses mixture does wonders in the spring but the dang Texas heat stunts the growth of blooms bigtime in summer. So split into 2 seasons for them 'maters 'round these parts in Lone Star land.
Are the tomatoes getting a LOT of sunlight? They are a full sun plant.
/johnny
My lemon boy tomato grew out of it's cage, so I took a bungee cord, and just hooked it around one of the branches of it, then hooked the other end to a T shaped post that's about six feet tall...It's grown past that, and is just about 8 or 9 feet tall, and still growing..
It doesn't have any tomatoes on it...Well, I haven't gotten on a ladder to check the part that's reaching for the sky.
Marcella, here’s a link that may help with your tomato questions.
http://www.ehow.com/info_8074162_tomato-plant-would-blossoms.html
“Bonemeal”
I have some Jobe’s tomato spike I haven’t used. Here is what is in them - would this do the same as bonemeal?
Ammoniacal Nitrogen, Water insoluble nitrogen, urea nitrogen
Total nitrogen 6%
Available phosphate 18%
Soluble Potash 6%
If that isn’t it, I’ll get a bag of bonemeal - how do I apply that?
“Are the tomatoes getting a LOT of sunlight? They are a full sun plant.”
That could be it - afternoon shade gets them about 3 pm
It’s not a problem to move them down the deck a bit out of that space that gets shade at that time.
See my post #50 for a link and quick discussion on possible causes of no bloom on tomatoes. For one thing, it takes a good deal of time for the plant to grow to the point of flowering.
In general, if the plant is growing well with lots of green growth, and it’s time to flower, and it doesn’t-lack of phosphorus can be a reason, and would be my first guess. Use some bonemeal according to directions on the package, would be my first guess at a solution.
My late father did an incredible job building up his soil. He was a fisherman too and whenever he caught a big old carp he buried it in the garden. That man could make anything grow.
I only use a drop of soap, and sometimes a drop of oil in my bug spray. I was really skeptical when I found the recipe back when I first started gardening, but I figured it was worth a try.
So I fixed it up and put it into a spray bottle. Just as I finished putting on the lid, I spied what my mom called a water bug, and let go with a squirt. Hit it dead on. It ran around for about 2 seconds, turned belly up and died.
I was astonished. It worked better than all that stuff like raid. So now I just keep a little under the sink for bugs that like to crawl in under the basement door. And that’s all I usually use for my garden plants too.
/johnny
I still need to stake those tomatoes. I have to get with the program and get on this. The heat was keeping me in the house. I just couldn’t stay out there long enough to stake them. Sunday and Monday the temp. will be in the high 80s so I will get some stakes which I think will be bamboo since they are easy to work with and those bags aren’t going to take a big stake in them. I have some ties that are easy to use to hold them to the stake.
So, I’ll do it all - move them more into the sun and use the bonemeal. I’ll click on that link. too.
All the tomatoes are in fresh potting soil mix so they should be getting what they are supposed to get.
I’ll try more sun and bonemeal.
Dad spent almost 50 years building up his soil. Started with a backyard garden in the heart of the south side of Chicago, near the Indiana border. My brother still lives there. The houses were built on rock and slag, lots of steel mills around and that’s where he worked. Besides compost and fish he caught he would drive a couple of miles into Indiana to a forest preserve where a few people rode horses and he would shovel the poop into his trunk. He also got chicken manure from a guy a few blocks away who had a triple lot and had chickens for eggs. Every now and then we would bring him down a few bales of straw (we were 200 miles away). When we were kids he would send us up and down the block with bouquets of leaf lettuce and green onions wrapped in newspaper for the neighbors. Ah, memories.
Marcella, any tomatoes that have a shorter days to maturity(DTM) will bloom quicker than the longer DTM. Mortgage lifters are a late variety than take a little longer than Romas.
A good early variety for my climate is Stupice, with a 60 DTM. I’m not sure how long your mortgage lifters have been going.
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