Part 8

Open-bed Plant Growing

With favorable conditions and careful methods, good plants can be grown in open beds but they must be grown and used where the season is long or be grown in the south and shipped north.

Soil should be free of disease and nematodes, of good physical character, full of humus and nutrients.

Seed may be sowed a week or two after "average date of last killing frost" which may be learned from county agent or weather bureau. Further south planting times are gauged by the time tomatoes are to be set and by experience as to safe or reasonably safe sowing dates. Rows are usually a foot apart, more or less. Good plants call for sowing thinly, 6 to 12 seeds per foot, but several seeds per inch are not unusual. One may expect a million plants per acre with close planting or 40,000 plants per pound of seed.

Southern Plants

Many millions of tomato plants are grown in open fields in the south to be sent to home gardeners in small parcels on seedsmen's orders, to be sold to commercial growers or to be delivered on contract to canners.

A suitable climate and soil, good seed, freedom from disease and insects and good handling and packing are all required for satisfactory results. In far too many cases, these requirements have been sadly neglected and a good deal of distrust has been engendered. Here, as in buying seed, one must discriminate among good and poor growers. Canners who order in millions can send men south to investigate and supervise with good results.

Georgia now has a certification service for plants that helps greatly to build up and maintain high standards.

Growing Early Plants in the North

Varied programs of plant growing are in vogue in the temperate and cooler regions. A simple cold frame with or without transplanting may be employed. Seedlings may be started in hotbed or greenhouse and then transplanted to cold frames to finish the job. Some sow seed early, transplant once in the greenhouse at 1-1/2 or 2 inches each way and then again to cold frame with wide spacing say, 4 x 4 inches or using pots or dirt bands.

For this method, as much as twelve weeks may be allowed but if space permits, excellent results may be achieved in seven or eight weeks transplanting but once to pots or to 4 x 4 inches in flat or bed.

The Place to Grow Plants

For northern climates, greenhouses are practically required. Canneries or other large growers, have wide houses similar to those used for winter maturing crops. A market gardener may have a little house of 10' x 20' to 20' x 60' or larger as needed. If one does not object to some inconvenience and discomfort, a hotbed may be used--heated with hot water or electricity, or as in years past, with fermenting manure. Cold frames may be covered with glass sash as in the case of hotbeds, or cloth may be used. There are also materials consisting of wire cloth filled with cellulose film. Special mats of straw or of quilted burlap may be used for extra cover and large growers often employ coarse manure, straw or marsh hay.

Many a tomato gets its start in life in a small flat in a kitchen window--perhaps, in a cigar box. Such seedlings may then be carried forward in hot bed or cold frame.

Beds, Flats and Pots

Growing plants directly in ground beds in the greenhouse and directly in the soil in the hotbeds or cold frames, is rather common. However, the use of flats or plant boxes in plant growing offers a number of advantages as compared with planting in the bed. Transplanting can be done at benches under conditions of comfort and convenience which make for efficiency. Moisture can be more precisely controlled and flats can be shifted if some plants grow faster than others. Plants can be moved with more dirt on the roots, and this is a great advantage when plants are sold and hauled some distance, though, of course, pulled plants are handled more cheaply. On the other hand, the first cost, and the maintenance and storage of the flats must be considered. Flats may be set on the ground in the greenhouse without use of benches.

Flats are of many dimensions, ordinarily six to ten per sash or about 18 x 22 inches or 13 x 18 inches outside measure. They may be made of lumber from used boxes, but they ought to be uniform in size and made to fit beds without loss of space. The more durable kinds of wood, cypress or chestnut are preferred. Some growers make the bottoms of the flats of square-mesh galvanized screen (hardware cloth), about five or six meshes to the inch. This allows roots to penetrate the soil of the beds, permits root pruning by shifting, and there is no wooden bottom to rot.

Some growers use clay pots for plants which are receiving special care. Their cost is an obstacle though they are used repeatedly. Such pots also hold less soil for the area occupied than flats or square dirt bands.

Paper pots are used to some extent. Organisms decomposing the paper may use and so render unavailable some of the nitrogen of the soil thus hindering the growth of the plants. This may be corrected by seeing that abundant nitrogen is present in the soil either when made up or by later application of nitrate sowed upon the soil while plants are dry or applied in solution in watering.

Dirt bands of veneer are used and are very satisfactory. Blocking as practiced by many growers is a cheap and effective way of attaining much the same results.

The Blocking System

When the cold frame is prepared for the last transplanting, two inches of fairly well-rotted manure is laid down and two or three inches of prepared soil is placed on top. Plants are set about four inches apart each way. About a week before field setting, a butcher knife, or a hoe which has been straightened and sharpened, is run between rows both ways. This cuts the roots whereupon the plant at once begins to form new feeders within the block thus reducing, to some extent at least, the damage which might be caused by transplanting. The method is also used with flats.

Soil

Soil for plant growing should be free of disease and nematodes, friable, not readily forming a crust, receiving and retaining moisture well, but drying off quickly on the surface after watering and well supplied with nutrients. A sandy loam base with good humus content is desirable. It may be prepared, beginning a year or two ahead by growing and plowing under well fertilized green manure crops. Or a compost heap may be prepared with successive layers of soil and manure or other humus making material. In either case, it is usually mixed a time or two by shoveling over or by passing through a shredding machine or a coarse screen.

If trouble is likely to be experienced from damping-off fungi, the soil may be heated to 200 deg. F. and held there for an hour, using oven or electric or steam sterilizer. Seed may also be treated with red copper oxid or semesan.

Seed and Seed Sowing

Tomato seed runs about 125,000 to 150,000 per pound. An ounce of seed is usually depended upon for plants for an acre. For growing seedlings, seed may be sowed up to 100 or more per foot of row. For a maximum number of strong seedlings from a small amount of seed, thinner sowing is desirable. Rows are usually about two inches apart, and a quarter of an inch is sufficient cover. The seedlings break ground in a week or ten days.

Uniformity of depth of rows and of covering is important. Otherwise, seedlings will come up unevenly and there will be considerable waste.