How big is your garden and how many tomato plants?

[dave1949]

Funny, I just spoke with a local farmer today. I asked for tips. His response was nitrogen nitrogen nitrogen

Water when needed is good too. If the plants stall due to low moisture while the kernels are filling out, it extends the exposure time that the corn borers can get to work. You definitely want to keep it moving for taste, tenderness and bugs.

I'm sure you can find the info online, but the side dressing IIRC was to be done at around 6"-8" and again at thigh-high. I can't remember if there is a third application recommended, but I think there is.

 

[sixdogs]

Good luck with your corn! Once in a while I grow some sweet corn in the garden. I've found that it really responds well if you side dress high nitrogen fertilizer at the recommended stages--which are a little fuzzy in my memory, so I won't guess at what they are.

Four inches down and four inches to the side is what was told to me by local Ext Agent. I'm thinking 6" tall but not sure on that and I think they liked two side dressings, one at 6" and another a couple weeks later. For me, I have found a heavy dose of 19-19-19 on both sides of the plant at about 6 inches tall gives me the same excellent results as did the corn starter fertilizer at planting along with side dressed N (urea 0-0-46).


Also, we water the row with the seeds--with watering cans--to get the seed off to a good start, but rarely water after that. Unless you are deep/drip watering you are probably not watering deep and long enough and actually doing more harm than good.

 

[hunterridgefarm]

Not sure the exact dimensions on my garden. I have 1 acre set aside for pumpkin this year and 1-1 and a half acre for produce. Currently have 300 tomato plants out and staked. Better boy, beefsteak, early girl, large paste, yellow, and Brandy-wine. I am also trying some seedless tomatoes this year for people that have diverticulitis.

I still have about 600 plants under shade but only plan on planting 50-100 more.

Weather has been rough this year. Excessive rain and 2 May frost cost me to lose about 240 pepper plants and 48 hills of cucumbers. I have enough under the shade structure to replace them with but need a couple of days without rain. Everyone's garden is very late this year because of the late cold and rain.

 

[DFB]

Found this piece about tending our other garden fascinating. Don't mean to change the subject but thought I'd share it anyway.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/m...icrobiome.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&ref=magazine

Haha...my boss at greenhouse is always saying people don't eat enough dirt today!

Well started my 2013 season's direct marketing over the weekend. Flowers and veggie plants so I've got a few tomato to pop in the garden if it stops raining today. Brandywine, Celebrity, Early Girl, Super Sweet 100, and La Roma to start with. Beefstake were all gone this week
Betterboys and Big Boys we always have. And I passed over on the Jet Stars. Gosh for the first 10 years thats all we ever grew on the old fils farm to sell.

Also have some pepper plants that I salvaged this weekend too. All hot ones. Friday night tempetures dropped so low it wiped out about dozen flats of all different pepper transpalnts along with a half dozen more trays full of squash, zukes. and cukes we had out for sale.

Squash bugs are everywhere it seems. Hard to kill too. I never had many cucumber beetle problems in Vermont but totally infested with them in lower Maine. My suggestion on those on those vine borers would be to use something other than Sevin (Carbyl). Permethrins are usually suggested and Spinosad should work good too. That really works on potato beeetle.

 

[clemsonfor]

Squash bugs and vine borers are 2 different things. From what i understand the bugs look like stink bugs and just hang around the plant but dont kill it, the borers are flying insects that sting the vine and then the larvae feed in the vine then emerge, basically cutting the plant off from its water and nutirents. One way to hope to get around it is when they start making a decent vine is to cover the vine in several places following it as it grows so that it puts in new roots abouve the regular roots hopeing that if you get infested that there will be enough roots to keep the plant alive. You dont know you have a problem till one day you come home and all the leaves are wilted. the previous day there are fine.


Lake n gulf. I think your talking about tomatoe mosaic virus, its hosted on like tobbbaco and tomotes in a 2 part cycle. Plants will get that size make small friut then abort it. they will keep barely growing and flowering but the fruit have black in them and are not good. But i think there is another kind of wilt which may be correct in what you have, mine ahve always looked like the tobbaco mosaic virus when i look up symtoms. I pull the plant and burn it as it will not get better and it can spread.

As to the planters on the dock, you must have to water those things almost 2x daily in the summer!!! But a beautiful garden site indeed.

 

[dave1949]

<snip>

Also, we water the row with the seeds--with watering cans--to get the seed off to a good start, but rarely water after that. Unless you are deep/drip watering you are probably not watering deep and long enough and actually doing more harm than good.

Are you impugning my watering skills? :laughing:

As you know, you live in a natural summer greenhouse (Ohio), and I don't. I don't think I've ever heard a Mainer say they can hear the corn growing. :laughing:

 

[DFB]

SVB are really moths but they look very similar to a wasp. They lay eggs on the vine close to soil and the hatching larva bore into the plant stem. Timing is critical if your trying to spray the adults. So the effectiveness of using Entrust (spinosad) or Radiant (spinetoram) on the plants is that the hatch will ingest it while feeding and then thats what kills them. That stuff works on most all soft body pests also like corn worm borer and CPB. According to the NEVM guide SVB can winter over in the soil too. Deep plowing is suggested to bury overwintered pupae. IPM programs in the Northeast recommend using pheromone traps so you can moniter the adult population and start a spray program before crop damage gets too severe.

Hope you have good luck in controling it

 

[sixdogs]

Are you impugning my watering skills? :laughing:

As you know, you live in a natural summer greenhouse (Ohio), and I don't. I don't think I've ever heard a Mainer say they can hear the corn growing. :laughing:

Yup, you actually can hear the corn growing down here if you go out at night. It squeaks. And, when we are picking, we eat corn on the cob right out of the garden too, without even cooking. Now, as a former Maine-e-ack, I know what my best crop was. What is it? OK, now---this is a test---What is every Mainer's best crop?

 

[dave1949]

Yup, you actually can hear the corn growing down here if you go out at night. It squeaks. And, when we are picking, we eat corn on the cob right out of the garden too, without even cooking. Now, as a former Maine-e-ack, I know what my best crop was. What is it? OK, now---this is a test---What is every Mainer's best crop?

Rocks.

You are killing me. :laughing:

 

[sixdogs]

Rocks.

You are killing me. :laughing:

Well, you win. You don't win anything but you win. :laughing:

We, well mostly our crew, picked countless tons of rocks when we lived in Maine. I used to wake up screaming. Down here, someone will complain about picking up rocks in the garden and they come back with five or six. Huh?

 

[wyeguy]

100x100 ft. 35-50 tomato plants depending on the year. Lots of canning stewed maters & just juice. Also make a lot of salsa, and piccilli (relish) from green maters end of season. Lots of other stuffing the garden, too. I hang small pieces of smelly soap (like Irish Spring) on posts to deter deer. Have to put the soap in small wire "cages", otherwise the raccoons and possums eat the soap. I also regularly pee on the posts. All this is really effective for the deer, and helps with the coyotes who favor my cantelopes.

 

[hunterridgefarm]

I hang small pieces of smelly soap (like Irish Spring) on posts to deter deer. Have to put the soap in small wire "cages", otherwise the raccoons and possums eat the soap. I also regularly pee on the posts. All this is really effective for the deer, and helps with the coyotes who favor my cantelopes.

I tried all of this and several other things. Now use a double type fence. I peed around the garden so much that when I would go to the grocery store and walk into the produce section I would automatically unzip my pants.

 

[bp fick]

Not precise, but garden is a bit over 1/2 acre this year. I've got 150 tomatoes in pots. Intended to put out 40 or so tomorrow, As we've had days of 80 degree weather but now they are calling for frost warnings for Thursday/Friday. Not that unusual, but a pain. I used to fight the late frosts with covers, buckets, cloth, but now I just leave them in the grow pots until June 1st. I plant with a full sized Ames shovel. :laughing:

If it gets to where I need a TLB to plant the tomatoes, I'll retire.

We also use the 7' plastic deer fencing. It's never failed and we have horrendous deer pressure.

 

[clemsonfor]

Good luck with your corn! Once in a while I grow some sweet corn in the garden. I've found that it really responds well if you side dress high nitrogen fertilizer at the recommended stages--which are a little fuzzy in my memory, so I won't guess at what they are.

ammonium nitrate when you start it somewhere in between and when it tassles

 

[DFB]

Well, you win. You don't win anything but you win. :laughing:

We, well mostly our crew, picked countless tons of rocks when we lived in Maine. I used to wake up screaming. Down here, someone will complain about picking up rocks in the garden and they come back with five or six. Huh?

Geeze and here I thought Vermont had an exclusive on rocks

 

[KenB2920]

Geeze and here I thought Vermont had an exclusive on rocks

Lol, I literally have enough rocks to fill up a large swimming pool.

 

[dave1949]

Geeze and here I thought Vermont had an exclusive on rocks

Lol, I literally have enough rocks to fill up a large swimming pool.

I blame the Canadians for sending their rocks down here. They send cold air too. Bad neighbors. :laughing:

I bet there are around five miles of rock walls on my 150 acres. About 2/3 of the perimeter has rock walls, then there many walls that separated the old pastures, or were piled in rows where the ground changes from usable (more dirt than rock) to not usable (more rock than dirt). I can't imagine the sorry life the early settlers had dealing with rocks and huge trees with no excavators, dozers, tractors, etc. Many of the rocks in those walls are heavier than can I lift alone by hand.

And they keep coming up to the surface over the years from frost heaves, that's the basis for SixDog's joke about every Mainer's best crop--it's truly our most reliable crop.

 

[keegs]

Meh....early New England settlers and it easy ....the Irish of the Aran Islands built their topsoil on scoured rock outcroppings by harvesting and composting seaweed. Now that's some hard farming Dave.

 

[dave1949]

Meh....early New England settlers and it easy ....the Irish of the Aran Islands built their topsoil on scoured rock outcroppings by harvesting and composting seaweed. Now that's some hard farming Dave.

Now which is heavier, rock or seaweed? :laughing: And ... they didn't have one tree to contend with. You ever try to compost rocks and grow something on them? :laughing:

 

[DFB]

And they keep coming up to the surface over the years from frost heaves, that's the basis for SixDog's joke about every Mainer's best crop--it's truly our most reliable crop.

I always said to my ex when we farmed together that all we need to do is sell rocks and if we got a dollar for every for rock we picked we'd be rich!