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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Greenhouse toms in container culture

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  • From: Pat Meadows <pat AT meadows.pair.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Greenhouse toms in container culture
  • Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 08:55:06 -0500

On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 15:32:54 -0500, you wrote:


>Has anyone out there had any experience doing anything like this?
>Anyone have any obvious tips, pointers, resources for growing in a
>greenhouse container culture? So far, we have just been making this up
>as we go alone. Thanks in advance.

I've been growing tomatoes in containers for years. I have
not been growing them in a greenhouse, however, I will this
year (now that we have a hoophouse!).

You need a large container for indeterminate tomatoes (or
you need to prune them), but it appears that your containers
will be large. Containers tend to dry out quickly
otherwise. There are many smaller tomato plants available
if you wish to use small containers (Glacier, Silvery Fir
Tree, Patio Hybrid, etc.)

You need to water container-grown plants more often than you
water plants growing in the ground, and this tends to flush
out nutrients: so you need to fertilize them more often
than you would fertilize plants growing in the ground.

I fertilize my container-veggies (including tomatoes) twice
a week, using 1/2 strength fertilizer. That is, 1/2 the
dilution recommended on the container - whether organic or
chemical fertilizer. Miracle Grow for Tomatoes is really
excellent, if you're not an organic grower. (You could use
manure tea, fish or seaweed emulsions, etc. if you are an
organic grower.)

I use mushroom compost to fill my containers (spent mushroom
soil), it's fairly cheaply available to me, and I get
excellent results. I've tried not fertilizing them (in
mushroom compost) and fertilizing twice a week at half
strength, as above and fertilizing them twice a week gives
me better results. Considerably better.

A friend of mine has grown tomatoes very successfully in
both EarthBoxes and 'homemade EarthBoxes'. The big
advantage to these (as far as I know) is that they are
'self-watering'. The disadvantage is that they are pricey,
although the 'homemade Earthboxes' are much cheaper than the
real thing.

http://www.earthbox.com

http://josho.com/Earthbox.htm

I have not used Earthboxes yet - I have grown a big tomato
plant in a 22-gallon Rubbermaid tub (Yellow Pear, even,
which is a huge plant!) and it was a disaster, I wound up
watering it four times/day in the hot weather - the roots
totally filled the container. But I hadn't pruned it at
all. Generally, I grow smaller (determinate) tomatoes in
containers.

Another friend of mine grows indeterminate tomatoes in
containers in a greenhouse and ties them to strings and
prunes them. He's British, and this is the way tomatoes are
generally grown in the UK.

Pat
--
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism,
since it is the merger of state and corporate power."
- Benito Mussolini




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