Your 2025 Garden

[Nomadicus]

Do you have a brand name for that? The only weed block fabric I've ever used was horrible. It broke down in sunlight, ripped and disintegrated, so it was a single season thing. And then getting it off the ground...? It made a horrible mess.

Was it a woven or more like a black paper fabric? I have the solid that is not woven and it was awful. Learned the hard way on that one.

 

[Nomadicus]

We used that black paper type of film in TN a few years back and weeds and grass grew right through it the first season.

 

[NanaK]

I can see how a weed block fabric could slow soil disease from infecting the plants. I've never used it for tomatoes but I have in other areas.

I had the same experience with grass growing through it making it hard to remove. I also had slugs and snails hide under it and come out at night and chew on my plants.

Your experience could be different in your location.

I just mulch my tomatoes with any leaves, pine straw or coop shavings that haven't broken all the way down. I try to keep them pruned about a foot from the ground so rain doesn't splash soil up to leaves. Still, heavy rain always starts the leaf spots on the heirlooms. Hybrids tend to do a bit better but we love the heirlooms.

I only grow about 8-10 indeterminate tomatoes. It would be difficult for me to keep 100 plants pruned.

Wishing you much success!

 

[R2elk]

My soil needs calcium! A lot of blossom end rot on the tomatoes. The chickens get all their egg shells, so I'll be buying bone meal. I think I might crush the oyster shell I bought for the chickens and see if that helps too. The ladies really prefer their egg shells.

You need to add gypsum. Be sure to get the garden variety and not the cement variety. Blossom end rot needs not only calcium but also sulfate. The sulfate needs to be in the proper form too. My well water has lots of sulfate in it but it is in an unusable form.

Gypsum is calcium sulfate dihydrate. It is readily soluble. I sprinkle it around the tomato plants when I plant them and give another dose about every month of the growing season because I am on a sand dune. Everything leaches through the sand quickly and must be reapplied. In a clay type soil, one application per growing season may be sufficient.

 

[Nomadicus]

I can see how a weed block fabric could slow soil disease from infecting the plants. I've never used it for tomatoes but I have in other areas.

I had the same experience with grass growing through it making it hard to remove. I also had slugs and snails hide under it and come out at night and chew on my plants.

Your experience could be different in your location.

I just mulch my tomatoes with any leaves, pine straw or coop shavings that haven't broken all the way down. I try to keep them pruned about a foot from the ground so rain doesn't splash soil up to leaves. Still, heavy rain always starts the leaf spots on the heirlooms. Hybrids tend to do a bit better but we love the heirlooms.

I only grow about 8-10 indeterminate tomatoes. It would be difficult for me to keep 100 plants pruned.

Wishing you much success!

In our younger years with a dinner table filled with with kids that like to eat we would plant 300 plants for our use and local sales. We basically operated a farmers market in our driveway. We would buy 150 bales of wheat straw every July and pick them up in the field behind the baler and store them until the next spring for mulch. With help from mostly the two older sons we somehow got all the work done. We only had two crop failure years out of more than 10 from extreme weather. One year it was the heat and one year it rained until our tomatoes all split. What we didn't have was a lot of any kind of diseases. The year of the heat it was over a 100° a day for over a month and nothing pollinated. One of my older farmer friends talked of remembering the summer of 1934 when folks were sleeping on their porches to escape the heat and how the water hole for livestock dried up and the livestock died in the fields. I used to prune heavily the indeterminate tomatoes but now only partially. For our canning I've taken to planting determinate varieties to get a lot of tomatoes coming all at once so we can assemble the crew and be done with it. We will set up the 14 qt jar canner up on the outdoor camp style gas range that I can watch over at the younger gals take care of prep and storing the finished jars. This is a five family operation this year. We will install a drip system so we can deliver water just to the root zone under the mulch/weed barrier. I'm going to just get one roll and examine it before buying enough for the entire project.

 

[R2elk]

So jealous of your longer growing season. I won't be able to even think about my garden until April

I don't get to plant cold weather crops until May 1.

 

[Nomadicus]

We can start planting some things within 10 days now and I'm antsy.

This is a short video about the woven weed barrier. I don't always agree with the approach this couple takes as I don't have an online image to maintain. I don't have money to waste trying to prove a point. No revenue stream from making videos. I've watched them making huge mistakes before the end result was shown. But when they are right they are right and I think what they are doing is right with controlling weeds and preserving moisture. The raised beds in this video are nice but I question the cost effectiveness. I do like them. I think now the woven fabric has been duplicated and is available at the two big box stores for such materials. I've been to the home site of Grower's Solution they refer to and it is a great place to shop. While living in TN they were located in the next town over from us and we got to visit inspite of being in lock down. They do have awesome green houses and this weed barrier is what is used inside the greenhouses for weed control on the floors rather than things like roundup. I hope some may benefit from what they are saying. I made the same mistakes buying weed barrier from a local home garden supply in TN and it was a disaster.

 

[Nomadicus]

The brand mentioned in the above video is now available from Walmart:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/DeWitt-Sunbelt-4-x-300-Woven-Weed-Barrier-Landscape-Fabric-Ground-Cover-3Pack/269943678?adid=22222222264452500903&wmlspartner=wmtlabs&wl0=b&wl1=o&wl2=c&wl3=71124903336685&wl4=dat-2326223007351242:loc-190&wl5=42526&wl6=&wl7=52879&wl14=dewitt ground cover weed barrier&veh=sem&&msclkid=fecf32193f5a18f961c95562cde3e316

And it is available at Home Depot:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Dewitt-...pe-Fabric-Ground-Cover-DWT-SBLT6300/311741292

 

[NanaK]

This is a five family operation this year.

There is power in numbers.
I am pretty much a one woman show.
DH helps with picking and shelling. He still works full time.

This is a short video about the woven weed barrier.

I've seen some of this couple's videos. They usually give good info. I also like they show their mistakes.
I like the raised beds they did but I think that is too expensive option for me. I believe they sell at a market too. That is a nice greenhouse they built.

 

[Nomadicus]

There is power in numbers.
I am pretty much a one woman show.
DH helps with picking and shelling. He still works full time.

I've seen some of this couple's videos. They usually give good info. I also like they show their mistakes.
I like the raised beds they did but I think that is too expensive option for me. I believe they sell at a market too. That is a nice greenhouse they built.

That's what we went to look at when we visited Growers Solutions. They are very nice. Way more cost effective than the glassed in ones now even though the tops need a new cover every 3-4 years. They do show their mistakes which gives them more credibility in my book.