i should be planting after saturday when its supposed to be in the low 20's. i have room for maybe 300 plants. is that 4' plastic?

I'm just now getting my first set of true leaves... I won't be first to market with anything this year.

I'm just starting main season tomatoes tomorrow. But it is fun to see these pics.

Sorry about the sideways pictures.

Randy: It is 3 foot plastic and the plants are spaced 2 feet apart in row and then the rows are about 20 inches apart ( more or less). There are 7 beds in the tunnel. I have over 300 in the tunnel .

Chardy:- My first planting of outside plantings also have their first true leaves. They will be going out about April 20th. They may have to go into a low tunnel too.

I'll wait with Randy thru this weekend. Saturday's cold snap may be the last of our nighttime teen temps for this spring. I have trouble with my wood heat alone keeping tunnel temps more than 20*F above outside lows. This will be the latest I've planted in quite a few years.

Your plants look good Jr. I noticed them on the tomato forum and immediately got plant fever. Mine can wait a few weeks since I made the decision last week to pot-up about a thousand plants. Of those I have a planting plan laid on paper to put 550 in the ground in my 30 x 96' structure. I plant a little more dense than you. I cover the entire surface with black plastic.

This is my first year with a tunnel and we have no heat. I planted 24 tomatoes on 3/18 as an experiment. Monday we got 7 or 8 inches of new snow. It was 12 degrees Tuesday morning and all is well so far.

JR- Your tomatoes look much larger than mine. Do you have heat and when
do you start getting ripe tomatoes

Compared to last year, I am a month ahead and this years date was the earliest I have ever planted out, by one day!

We don't have heat. If we did, it would have to be wood heat. I am not paying for propane. Maybe someday I will try to gain some ground and heat it. I grow all my plants in my basement and move them out to the high tunnels as the temperature allows. After this weekend, I will be moving several hundred plants out. I am tired of watering them in the basement.

We will plant the cherry tomatoes this weekend. They go in a different tunnel and it isn't ready to plant in yet.

When will we harvest, that is a good question. The last time I planted this early, I was picking a few by June 2nd. Cherry tomatoes were ready at the end of May.

These were a few of the ones I picked on June 2nd that year. I am guessing they would be earlier than this because I am planting some different varieties.

The cherry tomato picture was from June 11th that same year. I remember picking those and the number of people who were shocked that we had that many ready. It was a strange year, I was selling plants and tomatoes at the same time. It was a try it before you buy it!

My are going in this weekend in west central Illinois. ? about drip tape. I am planning on putting 2 rows of drip tape under plastic on some of them and some without plastic that I interplant with lettuce. how often do you run the drip tapes and how long? Last yeart I think my hoophouse toms suffered from not enough water. although I had toms on June 9. any advice?

I run two rows of drip tape under the plastic too. As far as watering, I use the finger measuring method. If I stick my finger in the soil, and it is dry, I water. If it is wet, I wait. In the spring, I try to maintain a constant water schedule, depending on the weather. Usually, I water for an hour or so twice a week. When harvest is near, I cut it back some.

Jay

nice jay! planting mine out on friday , at least some. I screwed up some how hardening them off and some got scald bad. Wish I knew what I did wrong. So disappointed. Peppers look good though.

If you're in northern Illinois i would check the soil temp when it is morning. If the soil temp is around 40-50 you might lose some. I planted in the hoophouse when morning soil was 45 and I lost about 10 plants to cold ground. Tomatoes like the ground at least above 55 at night.

did you have row covers on them?

Yes we use row cover. Narrowly avoid trouble last night. I saw 44 for last night,'s forecast, so I didn't recover them. Actually it was suppose to be 44 tonight, 35 for Sunday night. Oops! All looked well this morning. Heading to a high of 78-85 for the next3 days.

i finally got some planted yesterday. directly from the heated greenhouse to the unheated hoop house. it was 38 or so last night and they look fine. no row covers. planted into 2' wide irt plastic mulch from a cut in half 4' wide roll. utility knife works good for this. back to it.

looking at 85 today with a strong south wind, thunderstorms tonight and 35 overnight on Friday. Big swings in temperatures this week. This Thursday-Saturdays tasks, get the cherry tomatoes transplanted in another building and transplant 50 hanging baskets of cherry tomatoes. Finally start moving plants out of the basement to start hardening off. I finished starting 30 flats of stuff and waiting for it to germinate to move out. Spring has sprung!

Got all the plastic down but wanted to show method I've used for years. Without the boards I would sink 6+ inches into the worked soil. Main reason for boards is picking ease.

I got flue pipe for wookstove today and need a water filter element yet. Plan is to plant tomorrow. My plants are asking to go in the ground

Ahh, good to be back, but its all different! I have my HH tomatoes planted out as of April 1st and my main season tomatoes starting in a grow box in the HH. I made the box out of a piece of plexiglass that came from a big screen TV and I have a lamp painted black on a timer for overnight. Its working great, but a bit small. I can fit 5 trays and some individual pots. The toms are in containers this year. The HH is in a low spot and the soil stays too cool and swampy for them this time of year. I've been building the soil up and I at least don't have standing water this year. Doing mostly smaller determinates in there for early production. Beaverlodge, glacier, sophies choice, and some black krims because they are always early for me. The favas I seeded in the hh on Jan 28th as a trial. We were having a mild winter til then, but the bottom dropped out in feb. These are doing great now.

I like how jrslick is a zone north of me, and yet still a month ahead, lol.

It's been so wet that even my high tunnel is a muddy mess. I hauled manure all day today. I hope to have it planted in a week or so. I have plants ready to go. I'm trying the orange slicer BHN-871 that you recommended, Jay. They are growing well so far.

I have one bed of the 871's and I planted some of the new 876's. They are all growing like gangbusters. I was hoping to get one more week, but I will be working on getting posts and strings up this week.

I wish I had some of your rain. It is so dry around here.

Oh wow, I didn't even see the 876 until I looked just now. I wonder if Johnny's will drop 871 in favor of the new 876. It looks like virtually the same variety.

i saw 876 in the johnnys catalog and thought what you did cole. like why? i'm glad we have jay here to check it out.

At this time, the 876 is a larger, faster growing plant (on average) I will share a few pics later (after I get home from school).

Does the 871 taste as good as Orange Blossom?

I grew one plant last year of a variety called "Heirloom Orange F1." That thing was awful; it got BER badly and the flavor of the few fruit I picked was unimpressive to say the least.

The first year I grew 871, I had lots of trouble with BER, but I had that problem with lots of red varieties, so I didn't think much about it.

I think the flavor is good. I never grew Orange Blossom the same time I grew 871, so I don't have a good idea how they compare side-by-side. I do have people come back to the market and ask for them specifically.

For me, they have been very productive. The best planting I had of them last year was outside. My outside plantings were a bust, too weedy, too much water, not enough water, but the 871's kept cranking out tomatoes. I started to think they thrived on neglect by the end of the summer.

I've been hauling black topsoil from the cow field to cover my high tunnel beds. I think I am going to be wild and crazy and not even till at all. I'll just throw the drip line back on top of the ridge of new soil, cover that with plastic, and plant. I left last year's plastic mulch on all winter. The soil is soft; there are worms and pill bugs everywhere in it. The soil I moved in includes a lot of live worms I scooped up with it.

Maybe that will be my gimmick this year, "no-till tomatoes." :)

i quit tilling in the tunnels a couple of years ago. the walk behind tiller broke and i don't miss it at all. no black topsoil here though so i just use compost.

Here's what it looks like right now.

If you've done it before Randy I guess you escaped problems but planting that way is risky. Is this your compost or do have an analysis on it?

I not only cultivate all mulch in with tractor mounted cultivator but then go over with tractor mounted rototiller to finalize the bed. You only get to do it once for the season. Now I'm waiting for tomatoes to ripen.

I got it planted yesterday. I didn't plant any hybrid varieties. The 871 was the only hybrid I had, and I couldn't do it. It's too confusing to customers to not be able to call all of my tomatoes heirlooms. I can give my 871 plants to my mom and step-dad for their gardens.

The BHN871 is a yellow determinate variety that you wouldn't want to mix with INDT. Varieties in a tunnel anyhow. I mention that because i believe not using the tunnel framework for support uses only half of tunnel advantage. I market the mixed varieties but solid yellow varieties are last to sell. I'm reducing planting of 871 this year, more 589.

I have been selling out of Cherokee Purple and Yellow tomatoes (871 and 876) and I keep increasing my plantings every year by 10-15 plants. I think I am one of the only people who grows yellow, so that may be why. They also taste good too.

I don't support off my frame of my high tunnel due to the fact everytime we get a storm here in Kansas, it could be the end of my high tunnels. High winds and tornadoes are too common. Also, I prefer to grow more determinate varieties now, to keep my size of tomatoes up. Customers want big slicing tomatoes, so I grow big slicing tomatoes all season long. The indeterminates just don't stay big enough all season. Some maybe able to do it, but for my management style, it is easier to plant another planting every month.

Jay

I planted almost all compact determinates, a lot of Taxi, and also a lot of my strongest growing variety this spring, an old Soviet saladette called Gribovskiy.

The rest of my list:
Mountain Princess
Titan Red
Cole
Ballada
Little Bells
Red Kaki
Oranze (orange slicer from Hungary)
Qinyai Huang (orange Chinese slicer)
Peping Chieh (red Chinese saladette)
Huang Se Chieh (yellow slicer)
Ten Hung Tan Chieh (red slicer)
Cosmonaut Volkov

Only the last three are indeterminate. I just planted them because I like them so much. They are from my saved seeds from last year. The rest of my seeds I got from Internet swaps.

I'm using the word 'heirloom' to mean open pollinated, which is the loosest definition of the word. By this definition, anything not a hybrid is an heirloom. I am most interested in the old Soviet and Chinese varieties. They were created with yield and production in mind.

And I agree about indeterminates not staying big all season. That was my experience with a high tunnel of Big Beef last year.

Jay - How do you know when to cull a plant and replace it? I've never done that before.

I just cull plants, I don't replace. I do multiple plantings of tomatoes. Usually I do 4 or 5 plantings. This year looks like it a may be a five planting year. March 15, April 15 May 15 June 15 and July 1. The first planting is over 300 plants, then about 250, 150, 100, then a small 50 plant planting.

I then cull/pull out the first planting in the big high tunnel around the end of August to get winter crops transplanted in. The April and May plantings are outside. The June planting is also outside in a movable high tunnel space and then I will move a building over them a few weeks later, and the last one is one row in a stationary tunnel. I will let all these plantings die a natural freeze death.

Jay

I pulled the trigger and planted my first outside tomatoes yesterday. I put them into a low tunnel. As an experiment, also transplanted a few in my big high tunnel (replace ones that died), in the low tunnel and finally outside. I am going to track the number of days to tomato and try to get weekly pictures to see how they compare. It will be an interesting experiment.

I am experimenting with FL 91 and Polbig in the high tunnel, Low Tunnel and outside. Cherokee Purple and BHN 589 in the lowtunnel and outside. I think I know the results, the high tunnel will be the earliest, then low tunnel, then outside. I am more interested in seeing how much slower the low tunnel and outside will be.

Jay

I think your answer is going to depend on the weather, which has been anything but dependable. Last year, I barely had any spring at all. It went straight from cold to hot. In a year like that, the advantage of growing under plastic is minimized. But with a warm winter and early spring, that advantage would be maximized.

Maybe you all should look into fertilizing plants to keep production. These plants should be producing some ripe fruit in four weeks and then continue until December.

Sure I have other plantings but even with them I keep picking well after frost.

Fl 91 is a good choice. Also give Fl 47 a try. Even these det. varieties produce over a long period if cared for.

They keep producing up until the freeze in the tunnel, but I need that space for winter crops that is why they have to come out at the end of August. We do fertigate.

Another reason I tear them out is with the hot summers, blooms don't set well in the high heat, so sometimes I tear out plants that don't even have tomatoes on them or they are really small.

Tomatoes in 4 weeks, that is very good. I don't even see any set on. Are there?

You'll have to do your own math but I just read another article in a farm magazine where it was restated that no other crop gives the return in a greenhouse like tomatoes. I doubt that winter greens even come close unless you get phenomenal prices for them. But lack of fruit is another issue and there are things like shade cloth that will keep temperatures moderate.

I posted a pic further up the post of green fruit. Just about all 180 cherry/grape types have tomatoes. A few larger fruited types like Big Beef, Sweet Seedless have some forming and they will be a few weeks later.

tomatoes have good return only if you have the market for them. my market is flooded with tomatoes in august and while i can sell some then i can't sell as many as i can in late june/early july. and i think that baby ginger can give returns comparable to tomatoes in a tunnel.

barrie2m , may I ask where you are located?

Your crop is looking great!

My peppers are doing great , and the tomatoes are coming along. been a good spring here in N.IL. will get onions and broccoli in and will take a chance and seed green beans. turning cooler next week, mid 50s and mid 30s at night.

Jay, what is your fertigation regiment? On the recommendation of Morgan County Seed, I alternate Calcium Nitrate with 4-18-35. I have also used other all-in-one tomato fertilizers as well. Sometimes I get what I think is a magnesium or iron deficiency. Maybe I could work in some epsom salt if the problem is magnesium. I was including the tomato fertilizers mostly for their micronutrients.

I use Calcium Nitrate. My soil is off the charts in P and K so I don't use 4-18-35. Other than that, I use my soil test to dictate how much N. I also put down a healthy dose of compost and work that into the soil.

these are taken today. the first 2 are heirlooms in one tunnel and the other 2 are hybrids, mostly bhn589, and san marzanos, in another tunnel. i'm almost finished now with driving stakes for the hybrids which will be weaved.