Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Just read an interesting article in last months organic gardener magazine bout tomatoes.
The general gist is that to get more productive plants you don't want to give them too much nitrogen, otherwise they put all there energy into making leaves rather than fruit (make them "fat") and can make them 1) Less productive 2) Fruit later in the season and it may not ripen properly.
There are a few things that you can do to combat this tho. Mainly to do with the seedlings b4 they're planted.
1) When they're in "tumbler" sized pots, put a little sulphate of potash, which will help thicken the fluid in the cells and help with disease resistance and firmer, tougher foliage and also helps induce early flowering and superior fruit set.
2) Let them get a little rootbound in the pot, as they react as if they are about to die by producing flowers much earlier than normal and once they start flowering you can't stop them and they won't "go to fat".
3) When the first little fruit start to appear put some more sulphate of potash around, or in the system, this helps to control the nitrogen uptake and dramatically increases the flavour of the tamatoes in the end as well.

My tomatoes that i planted a few weeks ago are already flowering for the reason that they were abit rootbound in there pots (purely by accident as got them from B before i read this article). I will be adding sulphate of potash to my system every couple of weeks to see what difference it makes and may do a trial in my dads dirt garden, some with sulphate of potash, some with muriate of potash and some without and see what the difference is, if any.

Cheers
Jono

interesting read....

And that's why many/most store bought seedlings bolt to seed when you plant them ...

When wanting to eat the seed, that's a good thing.

My neighbor gets good results form all vegies he grows in his dirt garden and he does a similar thing to get good fruit production. He puts seedlings in the sun withouit water untill they begin to wilt and saves them with water until they look well again, repeat process and plant in dirt. Apparently the plant switches to survival mode as it thinks it is in an unstable environment and does not know when it will get water next so fruits ASAP.

Yep thats the theory and it seems to be working too
Just need to get the bees to pollinate them now.
Gotta get rid of a paper wasps nest first tho. Can of fly spray at twilight or night will work wonders, coz they can't see at night

So turn off a bed until they wilt then turn back on again?

yeah that'd prob work, assuming that that bed only had tomatoes in it, coz it works on other plants as well. You basically want to stress them out so they think they're gonna die, so either letting them get root bound or wilting them.
I don't think i'll be sowing tomatoes straight into the bed after reading this. Grow them in pots first, maybe in vermiculite, but most prob just soil.

Oh and kuda, i would prob do it 2 or 3 times, just to make sure they get the message

Oddly, in the bed that doesn't fill as high, my tommies seemed not to be doing so well.
In the bed that fills high, they're growing brilliantly.

However the first have flowers all over, and even some fruit set, the latter have a couple of flowers. Me thinks it may be a good idea to let your tommies 'go to fat' such that they're big and strong. Then stress them out so you get a bucket load of flowers and therefore fruit.

2 other good tips for tomatoes which all probably already know:

#1 when they first sprout proper tomato leaves (one on each side if the main stem) you snip off the small bud in the middle (the main stem growth) so that the remaining side branchs become 2 main growth stems

#2 train each stem as a vine and after picking fruit strip all leaves off the stems below the fruit. This makes the vine regrow and refruit, this can be done a few times so that you end up with really long vines and fruit for up to 9 months of the year.

Thats an interesting idea kuda. Just don't wanna let them go to fat too much, the whole idea is to get them fruiting earlier, therefore extending the season so to speak.
Potassium is the key ingredient and will also help stop them from going to fat as it help stop them taking in excess nitrogen. And the potassium will make them alot stronger.
It sounds to me like the tommies in the 1st bed aren't getting enough water. You only wanna stress them so they start flowering, then just keep the water and keep the potassium up.
I bet that if you raised the water level abit in that bed they'd really take off and may even outstrip the other tommies with more fat.
But i could be wrong

Just done that Jono, so we'll see... it could also be that they're a different variety too

Yeah it could be that. I'm tryin to convince my dad to let me do some trials on his tommies in his dirt vege patch.
Slowly gettin there

The toms in my GB are flowering but the flowers keep dropping off. Do you think i need to add some pottasium (via a banana or a foliar spray)?