Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Nope, not mushy. They look pretty healthy I think, just small. They still look almost exactly like the pic I posted in this thread a few posts back, just a bit bigger. I haven't put any additional fertilizer on them since planting, could that be the problem?

Well, for better or worse I transplanted most of them. I left one in, and repotted three. I think maybe it has to do with those sucky coir pot seed starters. Guess I'll see what happens.

aubade-yep, give 'em some seaweed. maxicrop is awesome. also give 'em some mycorrhizae. you can get it from a few products. myco is a beneficial bacteria that clings to the root hairs and forms a symbiotic relationship so they uptake nutrients more efficiently.

plant success comes in granular, tablet, and soluble. granular can be sprinkled in holes or around base of plant:
http://www.wormsway.com/detail.aspx?t=prod&sku=PSG450

Rooter's is cheaper:
http://www.wormsway.com/detail.aspx?t=prod&sku=RM400

My tomatoes are a total fail. They haven't grown any more, the original leaves fell off, and now the 1st set of true leaves are curling.

Why does everyone say it is so easy?! Wah.

oh aubade, i'm sorry. try, try, and try again. every year of gardening has been a learning lesson. this year i'm having a heck of a time with getting peppers started, and tomatoes seem to be doing well. do you keep a notebook of what you're doing? you mentioned you used coir--did you rinse it? coir is really salty and that could have killed the plants. the pics looked like you started them in jiffy peat pellets, which is peat moss.

i'm sold on super starter plugs. it's a product we sell here at work and i honestly truly believe in them!
http://www.wormsway.com/detail.aspx?t=prod&sku=SSSP355

they are made from composted tree bark. i personally buy the Sunleaves Float n' Grow, and top it with a short humidity dome. It is amazing how fast those seeds germinate!

I used one of these kits from burpee that I bought at lowe's or somewhere like that locally:
http://www.burpee.com/seed-starting/gro ... 211&trail=



I've used them a couple times now and they never seem to work well. I'm done with them. So much for eco friendly.

But then the weird thing is, I grew a second set in plastic cups with organic jiffy seed starting mix, and those didn't do well either. They all sprouted well, but never progressed much past that stage.

I tried not to water them too much, had them no more than an inch under grow lights in a sunny window too, with the lights on from about 7 AM to 10 PM every day.

I never did get around to fertilizing them, so that is one thing I guess I'll change next year. Maybe get some sort of bottom heat going too, since they were in the mudroom which can get a little chilly. (although I thought that should only have been a problem during germination, so I had them on top of the fridge then. I didn't think it was ever lower than 60, 65 or so in the mudroom...but it is all I can think of to change next year.)

I guess at this point I'll just have to buy a plant or two from a nursery and just hope they don't get diseased again this year. Shoot.

Unless you forgot to poke holes in the plastic cups, your problem was probably a fertilizer issue - too little nitrogren will have your cotyledons and then the first true leaves turning yellow and falling off. Fertility with seed starting and other potting soil mixes you buy can be really variable. I pretty much garden veganically, but I had a problem this year too (I wasn't able to make up my own seed potting soil this year and bought some instead), so I ended up giving my starts a boost with some Peter's fertilizer I've had lying around for about 10 years. It perked them right up.

I did poke holes in the cups, and the leaves did turn yellow and fall off. So it sounds like fertilizer was my problem! If I give it to them now, do you think it is too late to save them?

Mine are dying too. But I... oh this is embarrassing! I realized I planted then in compost mulch... not even actual soil! So yeah. Kinda dolt-ish. Also, no grow lights or bottom heat to speak of. Just a sunny window. I think my cuckes are bad too... There is the long stem coming up, two cotyledons... and then right in between the cotyledons instead of a set of true leaves... just a bunch of yellow flowers. That seems really off to me! Like... er... they shouldn't be flowering before having leaves or anything right? So odd. Only thing that is doing well is the Cosmos start that I put in regular soil while I was at work.

Ok so tonight I discovered there are a TON of volunteer tomatoes in my garden, despite my best efforts to clear them all out last season. They are already a lot bigger than the ones I tried to grow from seed inside. The thing is, they definitely had some kind of disease last year, so does that mean these volunteers are doomed to repeat the disease? Or should I just try to grow them instead of buying starts to replace my failed indoor seedlings?

Yay tomato threads indeed!!

Mine were a total disaster last year and i'm positive they had blight. How exactly do you use Actinovate? Do you spray the ground before you plant or do you spray the actual plants? both? The tomatoes we did get to eat last year from my garden were delicious and I want to have a better season this year with them.

we suggest a one-two punch by soil drench and applying it to the foliage. it comes in a little bread yeast like package and looks like powdered coffee creamer.

I've had really good results two years in a row starting tomatoes in cans. I save all my cans from diced tomatoes, beans, sauce, etc, and peel the labels off. The sun warms the metal and keeps the soil pretty warm so I don't need grow lights or anything.

WELL AREN"T YOU SMART

Just sharing my experience...

Psh, I was saying it was awesome, jeezzzzz!

I can't even believe how much my seedlings have grown since I gave them fertilizer last week. They are literally twice the size! I'm hoping they may be plantable afterall - they are early tomatoes, so being a few weeks late might not be too bad.

And at least now I know what to do for next year!

that's awesome, aubade. i'm pretty sure we're going to have a long growing season this year.

Thanks!

so we had major blight here last year, i didn't get any tomatoes, granted i couldn't keep up with the prairegrass that kept invading my tomato bed, but the rain was constant last year and most people got a really low yield on tomatoes. We are on the edge of zone 4/5 here and have great black soil but our tiny odd yard this year means we had to opt for a couple of 8x4 raised beds because the only sunny spot was too close to the house otherwise (old house, have to assume led paint leeching into soil). I was told to avoid blight to sprinkle with eggshells (can get them from my husband), lay down newspaper and cover it with grass clippings, that the blight would splash up from the soil (its some topsoil and lots of well rotted leaf and stick mulch. I put the tomatoes in a week ago and haven't done it yet. I also have no money for products, any other dyi ideas?

Cook the shiitake out of your compost. Seriously, cover it up with some plastic and let the heat get rid of the bacteria. Actinovate is a bacteria that acts as a fungicide. Are you rotating your crops, Jildez?

ill cover this compost pile in the next few days. When i said we had blight, i meant locally everyone had it, it rained everyday last summer. we moved last september (after moving into the old place the january before), so i haven't had a garden in the same place since i moved to Iowa, but i plan to rotate if we stay in this house! I hope that the need to rotate for 3 years will convince my hubby to build me another garden bed.

Here's a couple of links about tomato blight. It starts in the soil and works systemically through the plant:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... light.html

I like the second link better:

http://knol.google.com/k/gardening-tips ... treatment#

Perhaps Dandylion can shed some light on this subject.

OOOh, I really like this site for diagnostic purposes:
http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/min-def/tomatoes.htm

What do you guys use to keep tomato worms away or get rid of them once they've already shown up, aside from going out and plucking them off your plants 3x/day.