My tomatoes 2025

[MrBig46]

I haven't been in the garden since mid-October. I'm going to go there tomorrow. So far I have a small garden outside the window:
Shrubs (determinant varieties) - Jagodka, Vspyschka, EM Champion, Sophie's Choice, Lyana Rozovaya, Maglia Rosa, Golden Nugget, Oregon Eleven, Oroma and Santiam.
Micro Dwarfs-GG'S Glory, PA'S Pride, Vilma, Aztek, Bajaja and Venus.
Vladimír

[MissS]

It will be good for your soul to get back to the garden.

[AKgardener]

Ohhh Lordy I do like your selection.. I have some of those haha especially the micro I have 24 Vilma’s going 17 have maters the rest I just started my pa pride just germinate and I’m waiting on gg glory to pop up and a new one to me shokolok or something like that yah someone is growing the same as me haha..at least some .. good luck

[MrBig46]

I actually went to the garden yesterday. It looks better than I thought. Every year I rake the leaves from the walnut trees and put them in a container that the city district office put up once a fortnight. I went to the hospital before the leaves from the walnut trees fell, so my son and I agreed to leave the leaves there over the winter. It looks good, we won't rake the leaves in the spring, we'll just run the mower over it. I hope I'll be able to mow, it'll be a good workout for me. Otherwise, nothing significant has changed in the garden in the last three months.
Vladimír

[MrBig46]

According to information from the Internet, there is a direct relationship between the sweetness of tomatoes and the electrical conductivity of the watering water. Perhaps tomatoes watered with water with an EC of up to 4 µS give the right sweet taste. I have enough time so I prepared 1 liter of solution with an EC of 4 µS. I have two fertilizers available, KCl and K2SO4. I added them to 1 liter of water until I measured 4 µS. When I then evaluated it, an incredible amount of potassium fertilizers was needed to achieve the necessary conductivity (2g KCL/l or 2.6 g K2SO4/l). Giving so much fertilizer would be both uneconomical and an excess of potassium would have a negative effect on the plants. I think that the number 4 µS originated somewhere in the south of Spain (in Almeria), where tomatoes are grown on the coast with a low level of seawater, which contains a large amount of NaCl. It is not possible to use NaCl in the garden.
Vladimír

[pepperhead212]

That EC number is what is used in hydroponics, to tell us how much fertilizer is in the water, though, like you noted, NaCl can raise it, but you don't want that for plants! And K is good, but not by itself - you always need a balance. My tomatoes get a lot of K from the potassium bicarbonate I spray frequently, as a preventative fungicide, but not too much. As for the "sweetness", I'm sure that needs a balance, and micro-nutrients, as well.

[MrBig46]

Of course, potassium will not replace everything that tomatoes need. The assumption is that the soil is well fertilized with compost, manure and complex industrial fertilizer (in our case, Cererit) with everything that plants need. Then the potassium is something extra that should improve the growth and possibly the taste of tomatoes. I found a study on the Internet that deals with determining the optimal potassium requirement for the entire season so that all parameters of grown tomatoes (taste, yield, etc.) are as good as possible. In short, the optimal K2O requirement determined by this study (the study seems credible to me) is 150 kg K2O / ha. This is just a simplified statement. I recommend reading the entire study.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... culentum_L

For the purposes of this study, I want to calculate how much K2SO4 my son should add to each watering if he only waters once a week (18 weeks) and approaches the total potassium requirement stated in the study. For simplicity, I will prepare a measuring cup for him.
Vladimír

[MissS]

I wonder what K source that they are using in this study. 300lbs sounds a bit excessive. No doubt about their findings though. I truly believe that postassium is significant to tomato production, flavor and size.

[MrBig46]

I did some work and calculated how much potassium fertilizer I would need. The bed with the 64 Dwart plants is 15 m2, the potassium fertilizer which I will use will be powdered, highly soluble potassium sulfate K2SO4.
The professional article states the need for 150 kg of potassium oxide K2O for the entire season, 150 kg / ha, which is 15 g K2O / M2. If I convert this to potassium sulfate, it is 30 g K2SO4 for the entire season. For the entire bed, I will need 450 g K2 SO4. I will divide the entire amount into several parts, the potassium fertilizer will be added to every third watering.
Vladimír

[Danny]

You might not want the walnut leaves in your garden area. Walnuts, pecans and all the hickory type trees produce a substance called jugalone that can kill other plants, especially tomatoes, which are very sensitive to jugalone.

[rossomendblot]

When I was looking at how much potassium to add to the 8-6-11 vegan fertiliser I use to make the NPK more like 1-1-2, which (along with 2-1-4) is what a lot of tomato fertilisers seem to be, I found that most fertilisers' application rates would deliver between 0.8 and 1.2 grams of potassium per plant per week. So if I were to fertilise between June and September, each plant would get between 12.8 and 19.2 grams of potassium. That would translate to 25.6 or 38.4 grams of K2SO4, or for your 64 plants, ~1600-2500 grams. However, I am adding that extra potassium in combination with N and P. Haifa have application rates of 800-1000 kg/ha of K2SO4 - https://www.haifa-group.com/tomato-fert ... mendations

The soil in that study seems really low in nitrogen, so I wonder if the extra potassium was causing issues with uptake of other nutrients above 150 kg/ha. The yields they got were also tiny - the best plant only produced 1.39 kg of fruit!

[MrBig46]

I know from my own experience how difficult it is to adapt the soil in my garden so that the tomatoes grown have the same quality as they have in their homeland (Pienollo tomatoes from the Vesuvius region, Ramallet tomatoes from Mallorca). I have been trying to do this for more than ten years and I must admit that I am only partially successful. I can hardly apply some of the recommendations from Haifa (Israel) to me. I have been growing those 64 tomato plants on an area of ​​15 m2 regularly for more than 5 years, I am satisfied with the harvest, I have enough tomatoes. The fertilization with potassium sulfate should add something to improve the taste.
Vladimír
PS.:About ten years ago, I read a thesis by a student at Mendel University in Lednice, which compared Start F1 tomatoes fertilized with different amounts of potassium sulfate. If I remember correctly, the results were similar to that study.

[MrBig46]

I now have two walnut trees in my garden, each with an area of ​​about 64 m2. No plants are doing very well on this area, even though I always rake up all the leaves in the fall and put them in containers provided by the local authority. I don't see any problem in letting the leaves fall and shredding them on site with a lawnmower in the spring. As for Jugalon, it should disappear in one season. According to new findings, walnut tree leaves can also be added to compost - in two years the negative effect of jugalon will disappear.
Vladimír

[rossomendblot]

Yeah I just thought it was interesting that 150kg/ha seems like a lot, but when you look at fertiliser guidance from other sources they use way more since the farms are pushing the limit of yields and have longer growing seasons.

[MrBig46]

My micro dwarf seedlings outside the window. I'm quite happy about this, I'm having some fun.
Vladimír

[MissS]

They are all off to a good start.

I love your cup holder. What a great idea so that they aren't all falling over all of the time. That would make them easy to lift and move too. Thanks for your good idea!

[MrBig46]

A picture for those who would like to do this.
Vladimír

[Danny]

I now have two walnut trees in my garden, each with an area of ​​about 64 m2. No plants are doing very well on this area, even though I always rake up all the leaves in the fall and put them in containers provided by the local authority. I don't see any problem in letting the leaves fall and shredding them on site with a lawnmower in the spring. As for Jugalon, it should disappear in one season. According to new findings, walnut tree leaves can also be added to compost - in two years the negative effect of jugalon will disappear.
Vladimír

Yes, after 2 years or so, a hot compost pile should eliminate most if not all the jugalone from the dead leaves of the hickory family trees, but the roots, and all parts of the trees also make jugalone as well as a self protection against competition.

I once had planted a current tomato plant, variety called "Everglades", and always thought nothing short of a hard freeze could kill the current types, but the pecan trees made it dead in less than a week. For me, corn and squash families seem to do well near the pecans, also lettuces and alliums. Any of the nightshade family died quickly near the pecans for me. YMMV.

[MrBig46]

Bush tomato seedlings for planting in a glazed cold frame in early April.
Vladimír
pic hosting

[MrBig46]

Next week I will start sowing dwarfs. So far I have seeds of 47 varieties and to fill all 64 places for plants I will have to grow two plants for some varieties. Yesterday I went all over the city to buy new pots. This was the first time after the operation that I went on such a long journey by public transport with several transfers. I managed it just fine.
Vladimir