4 More Food with Less Water, Learn to Grow Tomatoes

More food with 90% less water - episode 4 Be a GREEN MUSKETEER reforest the world with us! Elshout (The Netherlands) April 2013 This is episode 4 of the series ‘More food, less water, with Groasis’. Groasis did these vegetable trials with the Groasis Waterboxx during 2013 in The Netherlands. The experiment has 2 objectives: Can we grow vegetables with 90% less use of water and keep the production equal? Can we replace artificial fertilizers through adding mycorrhizae (funguses) to the roots? What you see here are hotpepper-, and bellpepper plants that have been treated with fertilizer they are still in the trays They are too small to be planted in the Groasis Waterboxxes while the other plants, which were treated with mycorrhizae fungi, have already grown twice to 3 times as big as these plants. These bellpepper plants have been treated with mycorrhizae fungi and bacteria. They are just vital plants that grow much faster than the plants which have been treated with fertilizers. We want to explain about the “thief” of a tomato, why it is called a “thief”. It is taking the juices out of the plant, it competes with the main stem of the plant, that’s why we don’t want these thieves. Every leaf gets a little thief and it has to be taken out, otherwise these thieves will become this big, this big, this big. We don’t want that. We want one main stem, that’s why we have to take out the thieves. This is the “thief” we want to save, because we want to double the plant This will be the second stem on this plant We make a knot like this, turn it around, take it to the back of the plant, pull the rope through the hole like this and this knot is always able to loosen, so the plant will not be strangled then we turn clockwise and we put it behind the “thief” we have saved because this new shoot will climb this rope. In 2 weeks we will string up another rope here, which will hold the original stem of the plant this is the original stem of the plant the original stem grows much faster than the shoot we want to give the new shoot enough light, so we fasten the original stem onto another rope so the shoot will grow straight up and the original stem will grow a little bit sideways. this way we make space for the shoot to grow and give it as much light as possible. One tomato plant with 2 stems. You can imagine that the plant will climb into this rope and when it is up to here we lead the plant down again, otherwise it will break. That is why we use this hook So that every time the stem is up here we use more rope and lower the plant. And the plant keeps growing. They can produce up to 30 vines, in one season, on one plant. (Next time: Ton is scouting for insects) the insect and it sticks, so we can look at the yellow plate…. (Next time: Jacqueline shows the results of different sorts of mycorrhiza treatments) These plants received at least 50 to 60% less water, they already formed buts…. Be a Green Musketeer with Groasis, reforest the world with us! Go and see the next Episode of ‘More food, less water, with Groasis’ on YouTube Groasis wants to thank you for subscribing and commenting. We really appreciate it when you send this video to your friends! Subscribe to our news bulletin at www.groasis.com