To Prune, Or Not To Prune Tomato Suckers?

I use compost as well as epsom salts either sprinkled on the roots or mixed with water and poured at the base of the plant.Some of the epsom salt packages will have the ratio of water to salt. This is also very good for peppers if you plant them.

As long as you are feeding them weekly they will love whatever you are giving them. If you are manually watering the plant, water the roots and dont' spray the entire plant. This will reduce the possibility of blight. You can check out my blog from last summer and see what my plants look like all pruned up.

 

LOL Gardenmama.......IF I plant peppers? LOL

I put in one 3 x 12 bed of sweet peppers (36-42 plants) and another bed of hot peppers with the same amount of plant. Last year because I got a new rack that goes in a grill or smoker and hold jalapeño peppers upright to make poppers with I planted 30 plants of jalapeños alone, plus my usual cayennes, chiltepins and habaneros.

Thanks for reminding me of the epsom salts. I've read about using it for years, but for some reason when it comes time to plant, I forget about it.
(Keeping fingers crossed that I'll remember this year.)

John

 

Hello Nema,
To fertilize my toms I begin with the ground that I replace each year: I use my own compost, aged cow manure, Seaweed calcium and throughout the season I feed them with comfrey 'tea', nettel 'tea' and manure 'tea'. I feed my plants every other watering--startinging after the plants have begun to flower.
Further, I spray the leaves with MgSO4 about every other week--sometimes every week.
During the droiughty periods, I mulch the soil at the base of the plants with a thick layer of comfrey leaves to conserve the moisture and of course when they break down the nutrients go right to the feeding roots.

Sorry about not being clearer with the terminology that I used.
I saw your marvelous raised beds. They look quite nice and tidy, and well thought-out.
The plants growing in them look healthy also--it looks like you are going to have a good season.
Well done.

I know what you mean about constantly learning. I learn something new or different almost every day.

 

I've been pruning the suckers sporadically on my berry tomato plant. I've been getting about a dozen or so a week. Not sure if that's good or bad, but it works for us! Also, I read that sprinkling blood meal in the soil helps them thrive, so I did that when I transplanted them to the bed.

 

Hiyah Katy--I would be careful using blood meal...there's a lot of nitrogen in that and you could get quite a bit of "green growth" at the expense of flowers and fruit.
I have never heard of using blood meal on toms. I use bone meal on mine but not the blood meal.

Keep us posted on how those toms of yours fare.

 

Gardenmama, is Epsom salts good on other kinds of plants too, or just peppers?

I was just reading about Sjoerd's comfrey tea for tomatoes. Do you make compost tea the same way, letting it steep for 4-5 weeks?

 

Last summer I would make a 5 gallon bucket of the water and espom salt mix and use it on the whole garden. Doesn't hurt at all and greens everything up.

 

Thank you! That is very interesting. I just sent that tip to my friend in New Mexico who is planting this weekend. He grows a lot of peppers.

 

Well, I've learned something tonight. Here in the Southern Arizona Desert I grow tomatoes in filtered sun. The best way to explain this to say that there's full sun and then there's the blistering Arizona sunshine accompanied by temperatures over 100 degrees which will arrive soon.

My tomato plants are loaded and heavily mulched. I cage my tomatoes because staking them would just expose the tomatoes to an ugly sunburn. However, the bottom leaves of the plants are touching the ground and some get a bit moist when I water. That's okay now. But, the rainy season starts in just a few weeks that will promotes disease in the humidity. (The leaves won't be able to dry out a few minutes after watering.)

I've realized that I can grab my gloves and shears and prune out all that undergrowth now before the monsoon season hits and save myself some headaches later on.

Interesting thread. Thanks.

 

How much epsom salts do you add to the planting holes for tomatoes or peppers and how much do you add to water for a spray?
Having never used it before, I didn't go overboard with it when I planted. I used 1 tsp per hole for tomatoes and 1/2 tsp for the peppers. it may not be enough, but without knowing I didn't want to take a chance and maybe hurt the plants.
I also saved banana peels to put in the planting holes and come planting time, completely forgot about them in the freezer. So....I'm going to try two different things with them. Half of them, I'm going to puree in my food processor with some water and pour it around the base of half of my tomatoes (Do peppers like bananas too?). The other half of the banana peels, I'm going to put in my dehydrator, dry them until crisp, the powder them in a coffee grinder. I know that by drying them, I won't get the same microbial benefits in the soil and maybe lose some nitrogen in the process, but can you imagine how much easier it will be to store banana powder thasn frozen bananas all Winter?

If you could let me know how much Epsom salts to use in the ground when planting and for a spray, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

John

 

I too, take off the sucker branches.
The first year that i planted tomatoes, i didnt do anything and wasnt really happy with the crop that i did get....the next year i was told to take off "the suckers", and wow, what a difference that made, and since then, i do it all summer, and am more then happy with my results.