Growing Tomatoes In Chiang Mai

[Guest siamjourney]

I am trying for the first time to grow a different variety of tomatoes other than the usual ones found at most local markets. I find those unappetizing. These are called "Gilbertie Paste" (Lycopersicon esculentum). I have never been great at growing vegetables and thought of contacting a local university for advice or working with a local farmer. I am happy to pay for their time/advice.

I don't mind trying to grow some on my own but after reading some of the stories on this thread I fear I may not succeed! Has anyone ever worked with local farmers in CM to have them grow any vegetables? Based on some of the stories I've read on this thread maybe this variety won't succeed in this climate. Am I better off with one of the seed companies recommended in other posts? Starting in the rainy season and waiting three months for failure seems highly unappealing. Any advice is appreciated.

[yogi100]

If you have a garden you probably have enough space to try growing different varieties from seeds taken from Thai tomatoes and Falang tomatoes. My friend tried some Falang tomato seeds but the heat was too much and they withered. But you can try growing them under shade. If you have the time on your hands you will just have to experiment and see what seeds you can acquire. I grow vegetables from seeds in the UK in my garden but have no experience of doing so in the LOS. Some Falang seeds are not able to adjust to the heat and soil conditions in the tropics. Good luck anyway. One of the few things I miss about the UK in Pattaya is my garden and just hope my son waters and weeds my vegetable patch while I'm away.

[antony77]

I grew beautiful tomatoes in Chiangmai. I got the seeds from the UK and France

plant them late September and you will have the mature fruit in February, but they need a lot of care, fertilizing spraying, pruning etc I lived on tomato and bacon afterwords, an Italian restaurant in Chiangmai wanted to buy all my tomatoes at a very high price

[rametindallas]

tomatoes do well in raised bed, pots, and other containers that are large enough and well-drained. Tomatoes love morning sun but not after 11 a.m. Once the plants are well-rooted, change the watering schedule to a good soaking once every 3 or 4 days. This will promote deep root growth. Use a balanced (13-13-13 or 5-5-5) fertilizer applied sparingly around the edges of the container every week to 10 days. If you want large fruit, you must pinch off the suckers, at the forks, that would cause the plant to become bushy. Support the plant with stakes or other framework. Good luck,

[rodcourt49]

tomatoes do well in raised bed, pots, and other containers that are large enough and well-drained. Tomatoes love morning sun but not after 11 a.m. Once the plants are well-rooted, change the watering schedule to a good soaking once every 3 or 4 days. This will promote deep root growth. Use a balanced (13-13-13 or 5-5-5) fertilizer applied sparingly around the edges of the container every week to 10 days. If you want large fruit, you must pinch off the suckers, at the forks, that would cause the plant to become bushy. Support the plant with stakes or other framework. Good luck,

..I must be a tomato then..I do well in a raised bed and love the morning sun before 11am, but the deep-rooting bit is past me..just having a laugh. On a serious not have you ever grown "Ox Heart Tomatoes"..they are quite large, darker flesh and so full of flavour. Apparently a very old breed.

[rice555]

Hello siamjurney, if you still have the seed packet around, can you post a picture of it?

Roughly from just the name you gave, "Gilbertie Paste", that's going to be a 'paste' tom.

not a 'slicer' which are for eating. Paste tom's are higher in 'acid', more meat/less seed.

Have you read the TV Roma tom thread? You can read some of the problems members

have had trying to grow them. Another downside to paste toms is that it's 74-84 days

after transplanting before you can EAT, a long time to wait for a paste tom, a beefstake

is a different story.(beefs take 'a lot of care/work').

rice555

[Mauric42]

Most tomatoes in Thailand are terrible. Bangkok, Chiang Mai etc. Why can't anyone grow decent tomatoes here? They manage to grow nice women after all.

[WatersEdge]

Can someone in the class please explain to Mauric42 afterward

why Women are not a farm product?

This is meant to be a serious discussion about Tomato.

If Women are on your mind,

then perhaps there are forums to suit.

Perhaps if Tomatoes were more prominent in your thinking,

there would be an abundance.

For now please go sit in the back row and just listen.

[CPT]

It is still early (no fruit yet) but I am attempting tomatoes for the first time since moving to Chiang Mai. I brought both Rutgers and Marglobe seeds from the US and, so far, the Marglobes are performing rather well but the Rutgers have been slow. I only have room for two mature plants and they are in pots which is a first for me so the results may reflect my unfamiliarity with the growing method.

Rutgers is a favorite of mine and extremely resilient in the US, widely grown as a field tomato in years past. It does have a thick skin which some don't care for but the flavor is excellent. Marglobe is one of Rutgers parents and I have no prior experience with it but it seems to love the weather here so far and has its first two flowers now. I think the Rutgers is just poorly suited to container growing as the weather here is not very different from the growing season back home where they thrive (a bit damper which should be a positive). My thought process was to select varieties that are grown in the South East US as the summer heat is the same. I'll try to remember to post their progress later on.

[stevehaigh]

tomatoes do well in raised bed, pots, and other containers that are large enough and well-drained. Tomatoes love morning sun but not after 11 a.m. Once the plants are well-rooted, change the watering schedule to a good soaking once every 3 or 4 days. This will promote deep root growth. Use a balanced (13-13-13 or 5-5-5) fertilizer applied sparingly around the edges of the container every week to 10 days. If you want large fruit, you must pinch off the suckers, at the forks, that would cause the plant to become bushy. Support the plant with stakes or other framework. Good luck,

i was under the impression toms need at least 8-10 hrs sun per day. i have mine in full sun all day and they are happy.

one money saving tip for you all; don't throw away the suckers that grow between stem and leaf. wait until they are about 6" long and then cut of and plant in potting soil in the shade. add a bit of vit B1 to help roots start and you will get new clone plants of the parent in no time for free

[WatersEdge]

stevehaigh,

I am just now potting several hundred tomato from sprouting trays to large bags

and want to be ready to root the suckers by the Vitamin B1 method.

The concept is new to me,

Can you please elaborate on the details?

That is,

How much Vitamin B1

purchased in what form

applied how and

in what concentration?

[rice555]

Hello WatersEdge, sorry to butt in here, there's 2 Thai rooting compounds

that are around Bt. 50. The small jar is powder, the large one liquid.

Pruning/suckering depends on the type of plant you are growing also. Det.'s

don't need as much pruning that Ind's need. It also depends on OP or Hyb.

Some modern Hyb's don't need any, as per the seed Co's growing info.

Pruning doesn't make you grow larger fruit, it stops vegative growth which

is not needed which helps with the plants growth and fruit development.

Cluster toms have fruit removed from each cluster to make the them grow

larger and uniform. Years ago I worked thinning apple and pear trees in OR

to help increas fruit size, it's the same principle.

If you've ever seen pictures of 4-6 Lb. toms, 1. they were Ind. plants. 2. there

was only 1-2 fruit on the plant during the growing cycle.

It helps when someone asks a plant question, to give more info. Name, Ind/Det,

OP, Hyb, cherry, paste or slicer. All toms don't grow the same.

rice555

[WatersEdge]

Hi rice555,

"Butting in" to provide the information shouldn't be a problem.

Most helpful.

Thanks kindly for being so presumptuous.

I'm hereby completely out of my league,

and need to back study the unfamiliar terms.

Fortunately I'm frequently called a tech geek

a term of endearment or an accusation

depending on the company

Det => Determinate => produce terminal blossoms

Ind => Indeterminate => produce sub-terminal blossoms

OP => Open Pollenated

Hyb => Hybrid

Thanks for burying me in a steep learning curve.

My best learning comes from hanging with smarter people.

Perhaps I will sprout root!

I'm also snatching twigs from Neem Trees on the highway,

to accelerate the introduction of my own Neem forest on farm.

I've buried some in potting mix,

some more in straight peat moss,

and yet another in a plastic bag peat moss capsule tied about a girdled branch

while still on the parent tree.

I'm assume that your recommendation on these products are useful for all vegative rooting?

[rice555]

Hello WatersEdge, they should work on most anything. There a lot online about how-to's,the only

thing to remember is to put(Exotic/liquid) what your going to use in a small container, 'do not use

out of the bottle', do not pour excess back into the bottle so it doesn't get contaminated.

I had some success with cuttings, but more work taking care of them(cuttings from trees), I'm going

to do air lairing this time.

With tom's, the usual is to plant 10% extra, much easier to grow from seed, and a lot less work. Your

plants will all be at the same growth stage with the same feeding requirements.

What verity of tom's are you growing?

rice555

[WatersEdge]

A small package of commercial seed was handed to me

Big tomatoes is all the picture shows, and the rest is in Thai.

But it seemed that every seed sprouted,

and took off with vigor very evenly

so if the finish is like the start,

then I'm doing well.

Just bought more seed from Kantar Chiang Mai

and have the Cherry seeds in the sprouting tray.

With the price of tomatoes very high in the market,

I expect to have expensive tomatoes on the vine,

just as the price crashes.

[rice555]

Hello WatersEdge, I got the the rooting compounds to do some bushes/trees that are in the yard

here to move to the farm, some of the plants aren normally found in nurseries.

I have only tries a few cuttings, but didn't take very good care of them, they died.

I plan to try again, but with air lairing instead of cuttings.

Most all rooting compounds have Indole Butyric Acid. Clonex is very popular in the area we can't

talk about on TV.

The two thai brands should work doing tom's, good luck.

rice555

[Guest siamjourney]

Sports Update! I started this thread and thought I'd give you a quick update.

The seeds I started got "leggy" quickly in the planters near a window with a bit of sun but not much good light. I was warned of this here:

http://faq.gardenweb...5135020413.html

I've got a new batch growing under 2 florescent lights indoors and they are growing slower and hopefully stronger.

I transferred the first batch of about twenty-five 4 cm tall plants to 12:" pots, buried deeply in soil, and put them up on my roof (city life, not country life) where they get better light. I also made a clear plastic "roof" so they wouldn't get destroyed in a rainy season CM downpour. So a month later they are only about 6-8 cm tall and I'm going to thin them out tomorrow AM. I'll take the best ones and put each one in it's own plastic pot. the leaves look like they growing nicely. I bought 15 more pots today and more soil for tomorrow's transfer.

They are not growing like crazy (I've applied a small dosage of fertilizer twice during the month) but as they famously said in a Montey Python movie...."I'm not dead yet". I'll just be patient and see how they do and keep a light attitude. This is fun...first time growing tomatoes and I'm doing it from seeds in Thailand during the rainy season! I hope I'm not torturing them!

Questions:

1) I assume it's bad to have multiple seeds growing in one 12" pot...the roots won't grow well?

2) If I have too many extra plants for the number of pots I have what really happens if 4 plants grow in one 12" pot...disaster?

3) After the rainy season I plan to remove the plastic roofing protection. Should I allow direct sunlight then or filter them with a green awning or something?

4) During the cold season in Dec/Jan will I have new problems to worry about?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[furyrider]

Can someone in the class please explain to Mauric42 afterward

why Women are not a farm product?

This is meant to be a serious discussion about Tomato.

If Women are on your mind,

then perhaps there are forums to suit.

Perhaps if Tomatoes were more prominent in your thinking,

there would be an abundance.

For now please go sit in the back row and just listen.

I know there is nothing better than biting a nice juicy plump tomato but I thought women were meant to be eaten to.

[drtreelove]

stevehaigh,

I am just now potting several hundred tomato from sprouting trays to large bags

and want to be ready to root the suckers by the Vitamin B1 method.

The concept is new to me,

Can you please elaborate on the details?

That is,

How much Vitamin B1

purchased in what form

applied how and

in what concentration?

As a former nurseryman and landscape manager in the 60s and 70s I sold and used hunderds of gallons of Vit B-1 for planting and transplanting. But in the 80s when I studied with a senior plant pathology professor from UC Berkeley who had done considerable research on this material, I was convinced that B-1, as he stated "... might make you feel better, but it does nothing much for the plants" . Since then there has been much more research that has debunked the myth. So use it if it makes you feel better, but the rate is not too important.

Breaking the Vitamin B-1 Myth

Does Vitamin B-1, used and touted by customers and retailers for over 50 years as an aid to help plants overcome transplant shock, really work? Or are its "results" a myth? Research performed in recent years by U.C. Davis, Sunset Magazine and others, reveals that Vitamin B-1's restorative powers have indeed been exaggerated.Sunset's study, published in their magazine, tested the truth of B-1's claim to aid root regeneration and to bring better top growth. Using fast-growing annual marigolds, the magazine tried six different treatments. Four had vitamin B-1 in them. One had Vitamin B-1 alone, one had B-1 with phosphorous, and the other two had B-1 with 3-10-3 and 10-10-15 fertilizer respectively. The fifth treatment was simply a 10-10-15 fertilizer and the sixth was plain water.

After two weeks, new leaves and growth had occurred in all marigolds except for those given Vitamin B-1 alone; they had no growth. The marigolds that were given fertilizer alone were flowering after four weeks. The others took two more weeks to bloom. After six weeks, those same fertilized plants were bushier, greener and had more flowers. The real clincher was that the plants that were given pure water did better than those given B-1treatments! Sunset's obvious conclusion was that Vitamin B-1 appears less effective than plain water in regenerating a plant's root system after transplanting.

Almaden Valley Nursery takes pride in the fact that our own in-house tests revealed the same results two years prior to Sunset's tests, and we discontinued selling Vitamin B-1 more than eight years ago...

Growing tomatoes organically, with high soil organic matter content is what convinced me of the superiority of organic methods. Even forgetting about the environmental factors, pesticide and chemical fertilizer issues that many people are concerned about; it's largely about the taste of the product for me, and tomatos are one of the best examples. Try the same tomato seeds with chemical methods, or heaven forbid - hydroponic, and then try growing with over 5% organic matter (10% or more even better) and taste the difference.

[kenallday]

Can someone in the class please explain to Mauric42 afterward

why Women are not a farm product?

This is meant to be a serious discussion about Tomato.

If Women are on your mind,

then perhaps there are forums to suit.

Perhaps if Tomatoes were more prominent in your thinking,

there would be an abundance.

For now please go sit in the back row and just listen.

sorry but my women is indeed a farm produced product