Please somebody Help. On August First I will be moving to the Waverly, New Johnsonville area of Tennessee. Unfortunately I cannot take anything with me. especially my beautiful roses. After stopping at a nuresury near Nashville I was shocked to see the prices of even old varieties. I was told that's because they don't do well there because of blackspot and other funguses. I was there from the 4th to the 18th of May and although it wasn't hot but just a lot of thunderstorms, It was stifflingly hot to me. so I'm going to have to get used to the humidity. My sister and brother in law Told me they can't even grow good tomatoes. They come out flavorless.

I need  some expert advice from sombody in that area. I dread the idea that I'll have to give up gardening. 

 

Well, I hate it too but it is so hot and humid this year especially, that here in east TN I grew everything in 5 gal buckets so I could move them out to get morning sun then back in after. This works great for me but you may not be able to do so. Oh yeh, FLAVORLESS, WHAT? Mine are great even with the heat and humidity.

Thank you so much. and I'm glad to hear that your tomatos are good. How about roses ?

I'm in Chattanooga and tried roses for the first time this year. I've always been wary of them because I heard they took alot of work. Mine are beautiful and trust me I've done very little other than water and dead head.  It's been very humid here (I grow tomatoes too and they're delicious) and the rain has been either all or nothing. My roses are growing like weeds and have blooms all over them. 

Oh thank you so very much. That's wonderful news. This week is my moving time. By the way I'm moving to the Waverly, New Johnsonville area.

Sorry I know nearly nothing about greenhouses.

Dave

dear fellow gardener soon to be in Tn.,

You can still  grow lovely roses here in my zone 6b,I ORDERED FROM JACKSON AND PERKINS.I grew tomatoes for the first time and

everyone said that they tasted great,I used bone meal ,perlite, earthworm castings and miracle grow..I hate the clay,but i am learning to amend it anyway...

So sorry you were given such bad information about growing beautiful roses tomatoes anf about anything else you want..if you want to put in the effort. No matter what part of TN you are in you will find such a wide variety of green, colorful flowers and delicious vegetables that will flourish. Look at the beautiful mountains and hills of TN how can you not be excited about all of the possibilitiies! Biggest problem I have is keeping the deer away from nibbling on my roses! happy gardening!

Are you getting settled now? Have you got any roses started yet? I've been working on planting bulbs and perenialls this fall and hope to get my roses started in the spring. I'm near Centerville. How do you like this crazy weather? :=)

Hey people in TN, we people new to gardening in TN could sure use advice and guidance from you experienced TN gardeners. I'd love to talk to you about what to expect in the way of pest. I'm being overrun with grubs. Is this common to TN? I live way out in the country and it's hard for me to find nursuries to find out what grows here.

Betty2

Hi RodeoDave

I'm a transplant to East TN myself.
Just dropping a line to let you know that Grainger County Tomatoes are World Renown as offering the best and most flavorful tomatoes.
Soil conditions vary greatly here, sometimes within only a few blocks. You can go from loose sandy soil to solid clay to rock all within a mile or less.
And due to the hills and valleys, we just happen to live in one of the better micro-climate areas, except for the scorching 3PM sun.
The family that owned this house had several Floribunda roses along the northern sides of the structures that never gave them a single problem, other than keeping them trimmed down.
I had planted a 4 foot x 6 foot bed of Yellow Sweetheart roses shortly after moving here, and they did just wonderful. Had to move them to add a room addition and they didn't like the move none to well. The Springeri that was planted between them although dug out and cemented over, managed to get some shoots to find their way out from under the concrete slab and we now have a small bed of that in a corner, so some yellow sweethearts will go back whenever I find the time to get yet one more task on the Honey-Do list done.
Despite the fact it does freeze here, with Jan & Feb being the coldest months, I have Golden Angels Trumpets that do come back every year.
TTUL
Gary

Hi Gary,

I'm glad to hear that your roses are doing good. I'm planning on planting roses next summer.

I may have goofed. I was listening to gardening program this morning, and they were saying how long it needed to be cold for bulbs. I kept them in the refrigerator and hope they were there long enough.

Stay warm,
Betty2

Hi Betty

On average, we have everything the same here as in St. Louis, only about 10 degrees warmer overall. Which of course means the ground stays warmer and snow melts almost instantly, until it gets super cold like right now 27 degrees outside.

Bulbs do great down here, you'll see them even in highway medians in some areas, unattended for years.
We have new tulips and iris, plus several jonquils and naked ladies that have come back every year for over 20 years before we moved here.

One last thing, regarding another one of your posts.
When planting tomatoes, ALWAYS wrap the base of the stems with brown Kraft Paper or equivalent, as cutworms are quite prevalent here.
Or keep them in their starter pots until they harden up a tad.
That being said, in a garden plot setting I've not had trouble with cutworms. The appear when I plant using fence rows on staked plants like tomatoes. I quit using stakes 40 years ago and used horse fence to weave the tomato vines through. Now, due to olde age and lazyness, I just use the perimeter fence itself, hi hi....
It helps block other plants from the sun too, as sun scald in my area is almost certain around 3PM when you can fry and egg on a block of ice.

TTUL
Gary

Hi Gary,

Thanks for the info about the tomatoes. I would have used the stakes if you hadn't told me.

We're SW of Nashville. Where are you?

Betty2

Hi Betty

I'm in South Knoxville, TN at the top of the hill on the North face of one of the taller foothills.

Sunrise on my little acre is about 1 hour 15 minutes after the official sunrise.
And although sunset is still at the official time, we still have sunshine when all those below us are in the dark, hi hi.....
Although we are on the top of a hill, we are still considered being in the Valley.

On the tomato stakes. Growing up on a farm where tomatoes were staked, dealing with rotted old stakes and splinters since they were always rough cut, when I got older and had a little say so anyhow, I installed a permanent system that was very easy to use and still do it the way grandpa wanted it done, just a little more modern is all. Rather than staking, I installed tall Cedar Poles wired together in the same fashion one would do for building a Saran House (screened in greenhouse) except I had more poles at the ends of the long runs. Cable was stretched over the poles the same as for Saran House construction. The cables were used to drop knotted heavy cotton twine. As the tomato plants grew, just as you would tie them to the stake, you simply tied them to the vertical knotted twine hanging down from the cables. The cotton twine would last the entire growing season and was biodegradable, meaning after final harvest, we could just cut all the twines up at the cable, then plow everything under. Come the following season, nothing was left of the twine to get tangled up in the tiller blades.

This method caught on in our area and then elsewhere, so that today, they make little plastic clips that clamp to the twine and have a larger ring for the tomato vine to grow within. I haven't seen that method used down south here much though, they still stake on the commercial farms.

I was always told that trying to use metal stakes or metal fencing that the heat of the sun on the pipes or wires would injure the tomatoes.
Well, I've used Horse Fence now for at least 30 years and never had a tomato plant injured yet, not even down south in our hot 3PM sunshine.
As the plants grow, I simply walk down the rows pulling the tender young new leaves through the fence to the other side, weaving them through the holes in the fencing.
Horse Fence is similar to standard 4x4 or 6x6 wire fabric, except the vertical wires are wound instead of welded. And the spacing decreases about 1/2 inch from the top down for each row. So by the time you get to the bottom of the fence, instead of 6x6 you have 2x6 holes. I usually start the weaving process about the 3rd row of fence holes up. It's 100 times faster than having to tie to stakes!

The fencing stays up year round, then in the spring I just run a tiller down the fence rows, about 4 inches away from the fence poles.
This of course tosses much of the soil out of the single line hole. I then add peat and organic mulch into the hole and rake the dirt back in over it, then run the tiller back in the opposite direction leaving the dirt piled outside the hole as naturally happens until I set the plants by hand, then scoop the dirt back in over and around them, and finally run the soaker hose along the outer edge to form like a border between grass and tilled.

Come fall, I run down the rows with a weed whacker to sever the plants so they will dry out, making them lighter to pull off the fences and add to the compost heap. Or, before I lived inside the city limits (I didn't move, the city did! hi hi, we were annexed and our taxes doubled), I would just hit a match to them, and let the ashes make potash in the soil.

If you have a fenced area for pets, plant the tomatoes on the outside of the fence so they don't get trampled.
Or if you have the fence around a garden to keep the fur babies out of the garden, plant them on the garden side of the fence, hi hi.....

TTUL
Gary

Hi Betty

I just jumped back in to give a link to the particular clips I was talking about.
This design is not exactly like the ones we used, but very similar.
The Twine is Pinched in the Hinged area of the clip and the Vine is held by the closed loop (circle).
These are for using Twine hanging down vertically from an aerial cable run horizontally overhead.

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-6245-t...count.aspx

They are NOT compost-able but are reusable for many years.

It also refreshed my memory somewhat as to what we actually used.
The reason we had knots tied in the vertical line was that we did not use plastics at all.
We used scrap pasteboard or heavy business cards cut lengthwise into three strips.
A hole was punched in each end, much smaller than a paper punch hole, using something similar to a leather punch, and a small slit added from about the center of the card, outside edge diagonally to the hole. One end of the card was slipped over the twine, wrapped around the vine and the other end slipped over the twine. Cheap and biodegradable, so could be plowed under and not have to be collected first.

I do something similar using old mini-blind slats, to write the variety of tomato on, that can be clipped over the wire fencing.
Just cut a mini-blind slat about 3 or 4 inches long, make a paper punch hole on one end, then using a scissors, starting on the edge about 1/2 way down the length of the mini-blind slat, make a scissors cut from the edge diagonally to the center of the paper punch hole.

-----------------------------------------------   Ignore Periods, placed them to make the image come out right.
|.................................................... O |  O = Paper punch hole
---------------------------A------------------   A = Starting point of scissors cut, O is ending point of scissors cut.
It won't let me draw a diagonal line, connecting A to O, hi hi.......

TTUL
Gary

Thanks Gary. I'm definitely going to give this a try.

Betty2

I have a vacation home in Perry County just about 50-60 miles south of where you are. Whoever told you tomatos are tasteless in this area definately gave you a bum steer, I would attribute it more to the variety then the area. I have grown about 20 different varieties and haven't found any that wouldn't produce, but have had problems with sun scalding and blossom end rot. Once I identified the problem of blossom end rot, I was able to eliminate the problem by pouring the lime to the plants. I also have a home in Williamson County, (just south of Nashville), and though only about 90 miles away, the soil is quite a bit different but the sun is the same, so tomatos either place suffer on those 90+ degree days.
Check the Co-Op in Waverly or New Johnsonville, they will be able to help.
Try Celebritys for the best acidic tasting tomato that seems to do well in most areas of TN & KY. Plant disease and heat resistant varieties for better production.