Hello From Toronto Ontario

Hello everyone,

I live in a two story apartment. This summer, I tried some square foot planting in a tiny, space behind the building. My space is concrete underfoot, about 12 ft long and, just my arm span. I get full sun there from 10AM to about 4PM. I made three planters; 1 foot wide x 4 long and 6 inches deep and put them along the wall. The other space is on my roof. I only put one planter of the same dimensions up there because I'm not certain of how load bearing the roof is. I used all heritage seeds.

Mistakes I made:

1) I planted too much in my boxes :-P... I pretty much knew this but, I did it anyway because that is the deliberate foolishness humans will sometimes do.

2) Next time, I will plant the tomatoes in deeper boxes. I knew this from watching a video on deep planting tomato plants, and I planted them in 6 in deep boxes anyway... figured I'd give it a shot. They grew but, they would have been much better off planted deeper.

3) I saw goat manure on sale at the hardware store next door and, although I thought it wasn't a great idea, I bought it anyway and mixed it in with my organic, no poo, mix. I'm pretty sure this is what brought me bugs. The bugs did not destroy any of the fruit but, the leaves of the tomato plants had to be pinched drastically to get rid of tiny dinner guests...or something. Pinching a lot of the tomato leaves resulted in a lower yield.

Overall, I'm happy with my 1st attempt at the square foot business. I got some delicious tomatoes and some yummy crispy beans and some mmm purple carrots, etc. I ate them ALL off the vine, out of the soil... I am searching for an allotment or community garden space in my city for next year. I want to plant lots!

Peace!

Greetings and Welcome to the forum!

My guess is you had lower yields because you may have had small root system. The bugs may have been coincidental with the adding of the goat poo, but my guess is that poo helped out your plants.

To encourage more root growth you can lay the stem of the tomato plant horizontally rather than planting it deeper.

Hello BluEwe, Just seen that nobody loves EWE ..... as there are only two posts against your name.

Can you send us a few pictures of your beds , they are worth a thousand words at least.

From what I recall of Toronto the year after the big freeze folowerd by 44 oC it was very very hot and dry even between shaded areas near the Eaton centre .

Perhaps the fact that your beds are in sun for the hottest part of the day has some bearing on your cropping & pests getting the better of a weakened plant .. Did you try to shade the beds?

In the UK normally when the first truss of the tomato plant has formed tiny pea sized tomatoes you can safely cut off the leaves that are below it as the rest of the growing plant abover it will make the photosynthisis work OK .
Once you get to around five trusses tall that you have taken the lower leaves from nip out the top growing tip but leave the leaves on below and above the top set truss.
This will allow your plant to develop all the trusses of tomatoes rather than waste energy continually growing new flowers and new unwanted leaves.