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  • From: "Beth Spaugh" <lists AT rhomestead.com>
  • To: "'Market Farming'" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] broken tomato plants
  • Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 06:50:57 -0400

Advice please. I remember why I did not put down landscape cloth in the hoophouse last year. I did this year to reduce disease, but the little stakes didn’t hold well in the hoophouse soil and I have a couple of dozen plants broken off at the soil line. Of course most of these are expensive greenhouse types, but a few Big Beef also broke. So, do I let them put out a sucker and train it, or replant with the leftover plants that weren’t as nice? Bottom suckers tend to not have good attachment, but when they are the only lead maybe they are better? The “good” plants, like those that broke, are setting first flowers. In some cases I could just let a sucker (I think I pruned most of the suckers off through the one below first flower already) grow on a neighboring plant, where there is a neighboring plant (or move plants around to spread them out) and go with two leaders, or plant the leftovers that are not nearly as vigorous. Let’s see that is 4 options so far:

  1. let a sucker grow
  2. make a neighbor into a 2 leader plant
  3. move/spread plants out to make 2 leader plants
  4. replant with less vigorous plants

 

5th option, fill in with some absolutely phenomenal Rose heirloom plants, but that will make data collection more difficult and I really want to keep some records to base future planting decisions on.

 

Thank you.

 

Beth Spaugh

Rehoboth Homestead, Peru, NY

Farm Fresh Food Club CSA - http://rhomestead.com

Garden fresh vegetables, organically grown, and pastured chicken, duck, and geese

 

"How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used." - Wendell Berry

 

"Without power over our food, any notion of democracy is empty." - Frances Moore Lappe

 




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