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Subject: Market Farming

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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] PS
  • Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 08:26:13 -0500

On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 13:20:00 -0500, you wrote:

>Pat - 3 months early in a HOOP HOUSE?

Why not? I'm guessing about this, I haven't actually done
it. Nor do I know where the original poster lives.

It would be difficult here in northern Pennsylvania but I
think it can be done (based on my experiences with
container-grown early tomatoes).....

Suppose the original poster lives in Delaware, or Maryland,
or a place with a similar climate:

Supposing he starts seeds (indoors - in the house) on
January 15, and transplants them outdoors in the hoophouse
on March 1 (by which time they are in gallon containers,
probably), covering them with an additional layer of
protection (clear plastic, row cover, or WalloWater, etc.).
Glaciers take about 60 days from transplanting to produce
ripe tomatoes (this is accurate, I've grown them for several
years and they don't take more time than that). So then, it
looks to me as if he'd have ripe tomatoes to sell from May 1
onwards.

I should add that these are not really large tomatoes
(Glacier): the ripe tomatoes are about the size of golf
balls. But the taste is good, and they're *wonderful*
compared to the grocery-store tomatoes from California, or
wherever.

Here in northern Pennsylvania in the mountains (where we
have nine months and three months of darned poor sledding!),
where our last frost can be as late as June 20, I can
reliably have ripe tomatoes by July 1. That was without the
hoophouse, but with dragging the containers of tomatoes into
the garage or kitchen on the very coldest nights. With our
hoophouse, I shouldn't have to drag the tomatoes indoors on
cold nights. (Our hoophouse was only completed late last
summer, so this spring is the first time I can try this.)


>Please tell me more about your
>twice weekly fertilization via organic (fish?) How strong is the
>weekly blast? What sort of vol? Do you do foliar as well?

I don't use organic fertilizer for my *container grown*
plants. (Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear about that.)

I use Miracle Grow for Tomatoes for my container grown
plants. I think it's difficult, in containers, to get
*enough* organic fertilizer into the soil and keep it there,
as the frequent watering tends to flush out the fertilizer.

I apply the fertilizer from a watering can, so there's some
foliar feeding involved there, although more or less
accidental.

If I were trying organic fertilizer, though, I probably
wouldn't dilute it to half strength: I'd use the strength
indicated on the bottle (jar, whatever), and I'd experiment
with whether weekly or twice per week fertilizing worked
better.


>Also, how long of a picking period do you get for these 'small'
>indeterminants?

Determinates, *not* indeterminates.

Last summer, I stopped picking the early Glaciers around
August 15, when they (like all my other tomatoes) succumbed
to late blight. I started picking them (ripe) around June
20. That's a good long stretch of time.

>These sound like very good ideas, folks!
>

Maybe not, because if your market isn't there early, it's
not much use. I.e., if you sell only at a Farmer's Market
and it doesn't open until June 1, there's very little point
in having ripe tomatoes before then.

But if you have the market, if you can sell them, then I
think it's worth investigating.

In our short frost-free season area, it's certainly worth it
to me. We ate ripe tomatoes for about 3 months last summer.
If I hadn't grown the very-earlies, we'd have had ripe
tomatoes for only about one month (possibly even less).
Without the horrid blight, I could have had ripe tomatoes to
eat for four months.... (I detest that stuff, blight.
Horrible stuff.)

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




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