Loaded Up Tomatoes
We have worked with this grower for 3 years on watermelons, organic strawberries, organic squash, and now tomatoes. These are “vine-ripe” tomatoes and will be picked red instead of the usual commercial green tomatoes that are “gassed” to color them.
This central Florida grower initially used 2 gals/acre RESTORE™ in the planting water. Then at 2 weeks after planting they started injecting 2 gals/acre RESTORE™ through the drip tape and has continued that amount and frequency for the past 8 weeks, so he now has a total of 10 gals/acre RESTORE™ added to his tomato field. The owner pulled up one of the plants and showed us the massive root system driving the tremendous growth. The stalks are over an inch in diameter and the plants are extremely healthy and have a massive leaf canopy in addition to a huge crop of fruit set already. These plants are 75 days old as of 5/17/12, and they expect to start harvesting in about 7 – 10 days. They are expecting a good yield of 1200-1500 twenty pound boxes per acre.
Record Harvest!
Harvesting day far surpassed expectations producing first day yields in excess of 7500 lbs/acre.
As was projected, bean harvest began earlier than usual on Sunday, April 22, 2012, which was 66 days from planting and 9 days earlier than the normal 75 day maturity of the seed.
On Mo
nday, continued harvesting averaged 7776 pounds/acre across the farm where the beans were not grown on raised beds but flat ground leaving 10-20% of the crop still on the plant being too low for the harvesting machines to reach.
On Wednesday, where the beans were planted on beds, yields increased to 10,000 lbs/acre due to the fact the harvesting machines could get further down on the plants stripping the bean pods completely off the plants leaving hardly any waste.
In retrospect, this crop of Edamame was double-cropped over an earlier green bean crop and grown without any fertilizer input other than what was applied on the green beans.
Carbon Works signature product RESTORE™ was applied exclusively at three different times.
At planting = 5 gal/acre RESTORE was used in the seed drill with 50 gallons of water.
21 days = 3 gal/acre RESTORE was knifed in with 30 gallons of water.
55 days = 3 gal/acre RESTORE was sprayed foliar with 50 gallons of water as a foliar nutritional.
THE RESULTS:
100% germination of seed planted and 7 - 10 days accelerated maturity! And more amazingly, no fertilizer or fungicides used on this crop ever. Even the inoculate, usually applied at planting, was skipped.
Farm manager, Wade Purvis, said he had expected 5000 pounds/acre but never dreamed he would double that!
Nate Firle, agronomist and seed salesman for Legend Seeds in Minnesota, said that the normal expected yield in Minnesota on edible soybeans is 4500 pounds/acre which collaborates with what Wade was expecting.