BillsBayou
Chumono
This year I'm going to be growing tomatoes to test a couple of of soil amendments. @Joe Dupre' is the one who gave me the idea to use tomatoes to test amendments. We were talking about something else when he mentioned how much he loved Cherokee Purple tomatoes despite the relatively few tomatoes he gets from each plant. I got to thinking that plants that produce few tomatoes will produce few or none if they're not happy. Let's torture tomato plants!
Tomatoes should be a great plant for testing soil amendments. If one soil holds fertilizer better than another, I should get bigger plants and more tomatoes from soils with higher CEC values. I've ordered tomato seeds for "Cherokee Purple", "Aunt Lucy's Italian", "Ethiopia Roi Humbert", "Healani", and "Tiny Tim" from TomatoFest.com. I've never used them before, so I have no idea if they're a good company. I'll start the seeds in peat and transplant to the soil mixes when the plants are a few inches tall.
I have Haydite, Diatomaceous Earth (DE), Red lava rock, Black lava rock, Akadama, Clinoptilolite, and Pine Bark. The permutations are going to be too great for me to do this right, so advise me if you don't like the following test soil mixes:
50/50 Haydite/Pine Bark (my usual bonsai mix)
100% Haydite - I suspect these tomatoes will not do well
50/50 Red/Black lava rock - Not holding out too much hope for these either
100% Akadama - If it's good enough for bonsai, it should be good enough for my tomatoes
100% Clinoptilolite - To compare against Akadama
33/33/33 Clinoptilolite, DE, Lava
Ideally, each group would have 20-30 plants. Yeah, no. I don't have the room. I'll start out with as many plants as I can manage. I only have one bag of Akadama, so that limit's the test. However, I really don't want to find that Akadama is the best because A) It's expensive, and B) It's imported and I want domestic alternatives.
Everything will be getting the same amount of water every day.
I'll be fertilizing weakly weekly. Half-strength organic fertilizer. There's a small organic nursery nearby and I'll be talking with them about what they'd recommend for this test. If plain hadite or lava rock has a low CEC value, I want the fertilizer to be used up before the next feeding. Plants in substrates with higher CEC values should still have plenty of fertilizer by the time I'm adding more the following Saturday.
The goal is to have a wide spectrum of results. I want some populations to barely survive while others to show great results. If everything survives then I learn nothing. In the past I learned that bare rooting and transplanting dwarf kumquats on a hot summer day makes them happy no matter what I soaked them in. While on the other hand, you get better looking basil by using plain water because adding Superthrive made the basil look even weaker.
At some point, and to the horror of my wife, I'll bare-root the plants to compare root balls.
Feel free to comment, I hope to begin as soon as I get my seeds.
Tomatoes should be a great plant for testing soil amendments. If one soil holds fertilizer better than another, I should get bigger plants and more tomatoes from soils with higher CEC values. I've ordered tomato seeds for "Cherokee Purple", "Aunt Lucy's Italian", "Ethiopia Roi Humbert", "Healani", and "Tiny Tim" from TomatoFest.com. I've never used them before, so I have no idea if they're a good company. I'll start the seeds in peat and transplant to the soil mixes when the plants are a few inches tall.
I have Haydite, Diatomaceous Earth (DE), Red lava rock, Black lava rock, Akadama, Clinoptilolite, and Pine Bark. The permutations are going to be too great for me to do this right, so advise me if you don't like the following test soil mixes:
50/50 Haydite/Pine Bark (my usual bonsai mix)
100% Haydite - I suspect these tomatoes will not do well
50/50 Red/Black lava rock - Not holding out too much hope for these either
100% Akadama - If it's good enough for bonsai, it should be good enough for my tomatoes
100% Clinoptilolite - To compare against Akadama
33/33/33 Clinoptilolite, DE, Lava
Ideally, each group would have 20-30 plants. Yeah, no. I don't have the room. I'll start out with as many plants as I can manage. I only have one bag of Akadama, so that limit's the test. However, I really don't want to find that Akadama is the best because A) It's expensive, and B) It's imported and I want domestic alternatives.
Everything will be getting the same amount of water every day.
I'll be fertilizing weakly weekly. Half-strength organic fertilizer. There's a small organic nursery nearby and I'll be talking with them about what they'd recommend for this test. If plain hadite or lava rock has a low CEC value, I want the fertilizer to be used up before the next feeding. Plants in substrates with higher CEC values should still have plenty of fertilizer by the time I'm adding more the following Saturday.
The goal is to have a wide spectrum of results. I want some populations to barely survive while others to show great results. If everything survives then I learn nothing. In the past I learned that bare rooting and transplanting dwarf kumquats on a hot summer day makes them happy no matter what I soaked them in. While on the other hand, you get better looking basil by using plain water because adding Superthrive made the basil look even weaker.
At some point, and to the horror of my wife, I'll bare-root the plants to compare root balls.
Feel free to comment, I hope to begin as soon as I get my seeds.
All jokes aside, sounds like a tasty experiment.
Always plant 2-3 seeds per pot to maximize the chances of having at least 1 per pot but SNIP OFF any extras leaving the strongest. Way easier than separating multiple seedlings.
