Organic Gardening will upgrade its login and registration system on
December 11. The new system is needed to support some of the major site
enhancements that we are currently developing. The new system is shared with
other Rodale sites, including Prevention, Men's Health, Runner's World and Women's Health.
Click here for answers to the most frequently
asked questions related to the new system.
I'm a new gardener and my hubby plants first and asks questions later. We have a bout 80 tomato plants "sitting". They are green and have tomatoes on them but seem to be in a lull. I planted with a balanced organic fertilizer (bag is gone), added epsom salt when about a foot high, and strawed them for mulch. We've had good rain. What can I do to improve my chances for a good harvest? Thanks, Carol
Hi Carol and welcome! Where do you live? How has the weather been? My tomatoes are a month behind this year. Our late spring/early summer was cool and they just sat there.
Muddy knees David! Compost is my friend. Every day I enroll in gardening school. Some days it feels like kindergarten!
Hi Carol, you sure did a good job at controlling and imporving your conditions.
Now it's up to mother nature! Tomatoes needs lots of sun and hot weather. Around my part of the world... this has been a real bad summer. It's been raining non stop and the temperature rarelly gets over 80 degrees.
_________________________ Andre
If man cheats the earth, the earth will cheat man.
Posts: 69 | Location: New-Brunswick, Canada, Zone 3b | Registered: April 29, 2008
If your tomatoes are straked or trellised to your satisfaction and the 'mater patch isn't too weedy, the all else you can do is mix up a tall cocktail and sit back and watch your 'maters grow.
Hello to All and thanks for so many helper. I am in northern piedmont of North Carolina, zone 7. I guess I want things to hurry up. I got my hands on some really good side dressing at a steal yesterday and when it stops raining I will give them all a kick. I am going away soon and want my babies to be ripening while I am gone. Actually we're hot and humid here if that matters. Okay off for a cocktail, Carol
Even though tomatoes come from the tropics they do not like HOT weather and will sit and pout when it gets too hot and in some places they could benefit from some shade during the hottest part of many days. Then again it can depend on which cultivars were planted. My long season tomatoes have green tomatoes hanging on and not ripening while the early season ones have produced ripe fruit. If yours are 100 day, long season, the fruit can seem to take a really long time to ripen.
The sign of a good gardener is not a green thumb, it is brown knees.
Posts: 2187 | Location: Central Michigan along the Lakeshore | Registered: August 28, 2004
I am rolling on the floor laughing, at myself. I have requested space to sell at a local market, spent hours on hands and knees working on tomatoes. My hubby saved seed from a Rose tomato and promised that's what we had. I need a marketing strategy for beautiful, meaty Romas. They will be ripening up when I get home from the beach next Friday. Talk to ya later, Carol
