Hello, It sounds very interesting but I could never try it. Not That I don't love trying things I started my own experiment thread (organic tomato magic trial redone) However With the amount of rain we get in se NY If I didn't water in dry spells all my fruit would be cracked. I'm interested to see your results though.

Good luck!

Damon

I would at least water well after transplanting to get them started and to make sure there is at least some mositure to that lower profile (just in case a good soaking rains never comes). But once established cut back and let those roots grow down to find soil moisture.

They will assuming there is some mositure there and you dug down deep enough to make it easy for them to penetrate.

daylilyfanatic- Everybody's climate and soil is different. I watered very little here last year with very little cracking. I believe that plants will adjust to their environment.

mulio- I'm not worried about soil moisture when i plant because 1 were getting healthy amounts of rain here right now and 2 if there is anything I know well about my soil it is that it retains water very well.

Hi sprtsguy,
Bone dry farming you'd want to consider experimenting with a plant that will be compact to minimize water loss & maybe a plum type too.
Be stingy with the nitrogen to keep the leaf canopy from excessive development because you won't be watering. You want just enough canopy to keep the sun burn off your fruit.
Try to feed some silicon micro-nutrient, it will act like an environmental shield & also favor shorter stem development.
To forgo watering consider pre-placement of an in ground mix of fertilizer that will provide the developed plant with standard phosphorus, potassium, calcium & trace minerals, like magnesium. The clay should allow their ions to work, but compost can not be relied on as a steady supplier.
Sorry, no personal experience in your area to recommend well adapted tomato varieties.
Mulch the area around the plants too, including the path to minimize reflected radiant heat; in case you haven't planned on this already.

If I were doing this, I would definitely plant early, early tomatoes so at least you would get some fruit before they croak--i.e. I wouldn't plant Brandywine! Something like Stupice, Kimberly or Matina.

Carla in Sac

I'm in the experimenting mode, too. I just got some old seeds from a seedbank that were labeled DRY TOMATO FROM WATSONVILLE. No one seems to have any other information about them. I'm trying to germinate a few of them now. If they make it, I'll put them in the ground here and there, and see how they do on reduced water rations.

We have a relatively high water table, but the plants will have to put roots down 20 feet in order to reach it.

jan

Hi jll,
Arid land farming usually takes advantage of it's seasonal rains to plant out into the ground & then the crop gets it's luck from weather vagaries.
Watsonville probably has a wetter season & then that tomato would have been dry farmed after getting established.
If you are in the high desert & out of synchronization with any planting rain then don't hold back on water for seedlings - water rationing would be for established root systems.
This tomato might be worth trying to harvest for seeds to plant at the tail end of your next wet weather season.
Then you can prepare the growing site before the rains for better arid agriculture.
One archaic dry farming technique is to create berms of soil on a honey comb pattern. These diamond shaped enclosures have their apex at the lower point of the land slope.
The sparse rain then runs down to the lowest point of each area prepared, where it is slowed enough for greater penetration into the soil (uphill from the dirt barrier). This keeps more water in your quadrants of honey comb planting sectors.
When it is time to plant the lowest triangle (inside each of these berms) is where to grow, because the ground will have relatively more retained moisture.
In other words, the total area available is not used to plant in. Rather the field is broken into segments (before the rains) & designed to give at least some part of each diamond enough water to grow a crop.

Thanks for the good suggestions. What happened, really, was that I got to the end of the planting out time and decided I wasn't through having fun.

The same seed bank haul that had the Dry Tomato also included Mexico, Porter, & Arkansas Traveler, all noted hot weather tomatoes. And some Goose Creek seeds from South Carolina coastal region that should have some tolerance for heat.

And then I had lost two varieties in the spring flurry, but wasn't ready to give up on them and wait until the fall planting season. Red Star succumbed after the last killing wind and Eva Purple Ball had taken so long to germinate that by the time it did I had forgotten that I planted it. I gave it away as a mystery plant. (It was only when I read that extended germination time was an EPB characteristics that I realized what I had done.)

And also, my Stump of the World seeds have just arrived in my order from Remy. So the upshot of it all is that I'm living dangerously with these late plants, but I am holding back most of the seeds just in case!

jan

I only watered a few times last summer (laziness, not experimentation) and I got a decent crop. I did lose a plant or two toward the end of the season when it was intensely hot, and think it might have been lack of water. This year I think I'll try to water if it's very dry for a week or two. I was amazed with how self-sufficient they can be, though!

UPDATE- Below is a picture of the selected bed for the dry farming. I've mulched it pretty good but will probably put another layer down soon. So far so good, but its early.

Last season I said before I watered only a few times. While last years crop was nice and very tasty it went down hill fast late in the season due to russet mites. They damage the plants to the point were the leaves and vines start to yellow and bronze and then fall off. Mites suck the life out of plants. I've learned that mites thrive in warm and dry environments. So I'm really gonna have to stay on top of my prevention treatment. I will be using Crop Guard as an environmentally safe preventative. My soil is heavy and on the clay side. Three years of amending the beds with mostly compost seems to have improved the soil really well. So while the soil has improved over the last three years it still holds seasonal water well. Last year I could dig down 6 inches anywhere in my plot in the middle of summer and find moist cool soil.

Again, this is an experiment only and I'm not claiming that this is the way to go or in any way I'm an expert at this. And because its my experiment I can bail out anytime I want LOL! Will let you guys know either way. I'm considering foilar feeding maybe once a week, not sure on that yet.