22 Tomato and 11 pepper plants, spacings a little tighter than it should be on some of the tomatoes, but it should be okay.
If I’m seeing this correctly, most of these will probably not produce.
The recommended spacing for tomatoes isn’t for the root spread, it’s for the canopy. Because of this, the ones at the corners may do okay, but they will shade all other plants while the sun traverses the sky during the day inhibiting their growth.
You also have a watering problem where the tomatoes will need 4x the amount of water those peppers want, and the wetter soil will inhibit the pepper plants’ growth. They generally need to be planted in separate boxes as the soil conditions are completely different.
The planter goes more or less north/south, so the canopy may get a little dense, but there’s also determinate and indeterminate as well. It’ll get plenty of sun, I know I’ll need to do some pruning, so there’s no reason why it can’t all produce.
The watering isn’t something I’ve read about, there’s plenty of salsa garden planters and layout ideas out there. Now that being said, I don’t have the climate for peppers anyways, and wouldn’t the tomatoes drink enough water to keep the peppers not swamped? That’s my understanding of stuff I’ve read. It’s also more to do with standing water, this won’t have standing water.
I’ve done this before without issue.
Recommended is 16-30 for my varieties, it’s not too much under. And those are all guidelines anyways.
It’s counter intuitive but less plants with a larger canopy space will produce better fruiting.
The roots are strong and can support a significant canopy, but also to grow as well as they can they are greedy and need that canopy.
As for coplanted tomato and peppers they have similar water requirements when together, water for the tomato and the peppers will do fine. Just not the other way around.
You of course know what works best for you in your specific setup
Yes, that’s why I have different varieties.
Sometimes, you plant multiple plants in a small area to get many fruits instead of few big ones. If I want 4 tomato varieties with less yield so I have options, instead of a single one, that’s totally possible.
You should also prune your tomatoes to select growth sites and maximize yield already anyways. So a dense canopy isn’t an issue. The planter is over 24” deep as well, the roots are fine.
For people who just plant and forget it, those are who should be following those guidelines.
Heard. It would be neat to see what an A/B test says.
Conventional wisdom says you’ll probably double your yield by halving your tomato plants, but like I said you know what works best for you.
Either way with enough sun that planter is gonna be thic, looks good
Am I gonna be maximizing the plants potential? No, but same time, you can get a plant to focus on just a few vines instead of a dozen as well. Those fruits CAN have the same yield as an unkempt plant. But how do you “know” where that point is?
Also, it’s doubtful it’s all gonna live to fruiting or complete, our climate sucks, I probably need to cover them this week if I want to start them off on right foot -.-
Oh if you’re gonna prune these plants like one would for a Sea Of Green …. I mean you could probably fit twice as many plants in there for more fun :)
I see what you’re about, good luck.
I bet you could fabricate a fairly lightweight greenhouse lid for that thing to blow your growing season wide open.
Not entirely the intent, but with Hardening and frost and everything else, IF everything survives, I know there’s ways to manage it and still get a great harvest. It’ll be work, but what isn’t.
Hoop houses work in the spring, but the plants would be too tall for fall. So don’t want to have two systems, would rather one encompassing one.
I’m gonna hopefully build some greenhouses this year, and then next year I can modify these properly as well. We are barely 90 day frost free, so it’ll go along way with options.
I’m getting over carpal tunnel and surgeries, so I just haven’t been able to deal with a daily hoop house or other stuff, but things are looking up now.
It’s less about maximizing in volume in the way you seem to be thinking.
20 tomato plants planted too close together are going to produce X tomatoes of shit quality.
10 tomato plants planted too close together will produce X tomatoes of a slightly better quality.
6 tomato plants at this grouping would produce potentially normal quality fruits.
I’m almost positive those pepper plants won’t produce anything.
That’s just entirely not true. It’s far more complicated than that.
20 plants can produce just as much and as high quality fruit as 6, is it as easy? No. Those 20 plants would be pruned a down to 4 vines say, whereas 4 plants could have 20 or more. That doesn’t mean it makes larger fruits. It could make them smaller.
In fact, having one plant or even four with a canopy this large. Would make for many tiny shitty fruits instead of large ones, the inverse happens if the plant grows TOO large. Since there is now too many fruiting sites for the root mass.
Looks great. I’m excited to see how they do!