right now

right now

Jun 4, 2010

Annie's Granny to the Rescue!

She's done it again!  Annie's Granny read my tomato emergency post yesterday and took time out of her day to track down and link one of her pictures of pot-bound tomatoes and mentioned that hers looked like mine when that happened - she now cuts the bottoms completely out of her containers.  I was very excited when I read her comment because the one symptom of disease that my tomatoes lacked was any type of rotten looking interior tissue on the stems.  Could this be it?


Pot Surgery


Outside this morning, I felt my hand around inside the pot, it was fine at the top but the bottom 1/2 of the container felt like a solid mass.  After staring at the darn thing for awhile, I rummaged around in hubby's shed until I found the Dremel Tool.  After attempting to cut  away the bottom with this for about 15 minutes, I realized this wasn't going to work, the cut-off wheels kept zinging off and melting plastic was building up and slowing it down, ugh!  I ended up doing it the old fashioned way, with a utility knife!  I made sure all the soil had been loosened under the pots (ground) and broke up some of the root ball before setting them back down, bottomless, to do their thing.  




I now have 4 done, 6 to go!  These big square terra cotta colored plastic ones were pretty thin, but I don't know what to do about the paint buckets, there is no way I am using that Dremel tool on them, I may try actually transplant them into the ground or a bed somewhere since they are about 4 weeks younger than the big ones, and might take it better.


I certainly have my work cut out for me today - the heat index is in the mid 90's out there and humidity has me soaked, eyes burning with sweat doing this and I hope it pays off!  It looks like there was a bit of a drainage issue too, even with all the holes I had originally drilled, so if not now, the plants would have soon succumbed to being confined like that.  Only time will tell if I also have a disease, but for now I can rest easy knowing I did all I could...


THANKS, GRAN... YOU ARE ONE AWESOME AND HELPFUL LADY!


If I lived closer, I would serve you breakfast in your garden, and give you a day's hard labor while you sipped a mint julep and laughed at me...!

9 comments:

  1. Isn't Annie's Granny the best? She's given me more tips and advice than I deserve!! I'm ready to go pull a tater or two now thanks to her advice.

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  2. Granny's my goddess. She's the one who got me started to begin with. I blame everything on her. ;)

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  3. Yay for Granny!!! Glad to hear that your tomatoes are on the mend... Keep us posted and stay cool!

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  4. Girls, girls. I'm putting on my slippers and robe right now. I'll meet you in the garden in about five minutes, but iced tea and strawberry shortcake will do for now.

    Erin, you might have to get up in those roots with a sharp knife and scarify them a bit. If they've started to circle, they'll just strangle the plant. There's a really good tutorial on root bound plants and how to fix 'em at

    http://www.ourgardengang.com/containerpotting.htm

    I sure hope that was the problem, and that giving those roots more room to grow will take care of it.

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  5. Oh, iced tea and strawberry shortcake sounds divine Granny! Might have to send Hubs to the store now. :)

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  6. yes, I was preaching to the choir again here... what would we all do without Gran? And Granny, I did go up in there and cut alot of roots, I figured if anything can take root cutting and reburying, it's tomatoes! Only time will tell if it worked, but I learned a valuable lesson about container gardening tomatoes anyways!

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  7. Gran is definitely the "go to" person for garden issues. I'm wondering...why don't you just plant your tomatoes straight in the ground?

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  8. Good question! Actually, I don't have any more room in my raised beds for the tomato jungle, and since I have to plant them out in the yard I don't want dogs peeing on them! My tenant (it's kind of like a mother in law unit) shares my yard and has 2 male dogs! They don't go in my raised beds however! Plus, along the fenceline makes it easy to tie them up without cages.

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