Posted on 07/24/2014 9:05:23 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine
thank you for all of that info maybe that is why i have goobs of tomatoes. it’s been a cool summer here in philly. so they will still ripen without the heat? or should i start to cover them with plastic at night? I’ve got 2 1000 watters for the basement. i started these all first week in feb. i trim them so that they get branches early on. for most it worked great. you get multiple flowering tops (up to 4) per plant and they just create fruit. i have small tomatoes at over 6 feet high on the plants in my back yard. i have mostly heirlooms but the mortgage lifters i don’t like. the big reds are better not as big but much sweeter. i had a 1 lb 10 oz mortgage lifter.
Like I posted earlier, I doubt that you can produce a decent tomato crop with artificial light, though I have never tried it.
Since you have a back yard, why don’t you move your inside tomatoes outside? (If you do, you should gradually introduce them to sunlight. They will die if you suddenly move them from artificial light to full day direct sunlight.)
Research “hardening off”. You should get better tomato production and save 2,000 watts/hr. of electricity for however many hours you light them.
i use the lites for starting in jan/feb. we had some 40 inches of snow this last year so my sitting in the basement with 2 1000 watt bulbs and watching my tomatoes grow was ...... heaven. also i did this experiment by cutting the tops off them when very small to produce branches that became 3-4 plants from 1 root stock. i liked the result.
yes they are in the yard about 7 feet high inside netting to keep the varmints out. the lights are for starting the seeds in february. The mortgage lifters are easily one pound each with one about 1 lb 10 oz. the plants where huge when i set them outside for hardening and them back inside because it got too cold.
i plan om doing that. i have plastic pipe frame over them now with 1 inch nylon netting to keep birds and squirrels out.
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