Tomato Bed Update

My tomatoes have really taken off. Many are triple the size they were when I planted them less than two weeks ago! Below I've posted pictures of several of my babies :)

Hawaiian Currant...tried to order one of these last year but didn't get one. I'm really looking forward to seeing the fruit on this variety.


Paul Robeson...not a big producer last year, but I did utterly neglect them and given the good reviews I figured this one deserved another shot.


Green Zebra...I'm not a big fan of green tomatoes, but when you have red, purple, orange and yellow tomatoes you gotta add one of these in the mix


Blood Gulch...tried to die (twice), but appears to be making a comeback!


Opalka...produced a big crop for me last year of fleshy paste tomatoes


Yellow Submarine...this one is looking a little frail still, but last year it took awhile for this potato-leafed plant to really get going and it later became one of my top producers.

Not Shown: Sun Gold, Black Plum (my FAVORITE!), Mortgage Lifter, Goose Creek


Shallots coming up! There appear to be many green stalks coming out of each clove. There are now 3 shallots that have started putting up shoots.


Mmmm....Garlic. All but two or three cloves have 6" leaves bursting out of the soil!

15 pepper plants (2 Anaheim, 1 Jalapeno, 2 Cayenne, 5 Dulcetta, 2 Ancho/Poblano, 1 California Wonder, 1 Golden Woner, 1 Sweet Chocolate)....many of these will be heading out into the tomato bed in the next couple weeks.

Elliott didn't kill any plants!

Last Wednesday I put my tomatoes, garlic, and shallots in in a hurry so that I could leave town for a visit with my mother. I was rather nervous about leaving my garden because many of the seeds I put in over the last few weeks are just now sprouting, others have been up for awhile but are still small and tender, and the process of transplanting tomatoes is pretty brutal for the poor guys and they're very fragile for the first week or two afterwards.

Well, I couldn't be happier to see my tomatoes are for the most part looking no worse than the day I put them in. Elliott reports that they were pretty wilted while I was gone, but they seem to look fine now. I put E.B. Stone Planting Compost on them today as a mulch because the ground is a bit cracked in some places. Hopefully a little mulch will hold the moisture in (and makes the bed look much prettier).

Several garlics have already broken through the surface. I suspect the others will all be up in the next week or so. No shallots or elephant garlic yet, but it has only been 5 days.

My fava beans look FANTASTIC! Many of the plants are 6+ inches tall now and growing second and third stalks. The peas (sweet, snap, and snow) are all popping up. They vary in height from 1/2"-3" right now and a few sweet peas have started growing tendrils.

More strawberry starts have grown leaves. Maybe 8 or 10 have a leaf or two on them now, and a couple of those already have multiple leaves. The larger of my two rhubarb starts also has a beautiful green leaf that grew while I was away.

Seeds are sprouting all over the strawberry/flower/vegetable bed. My sunflower seeds are up and working on their first true leaves. I have a nice row of chard developing and a number of other seeds that I don't yet recognize. Many of these seeds are probably weeds, but I won't really know until they've developed a little further. I won't pull anything for awhile for fear of pulling out something I planted on purpose.

My potted Roma tomato is looking suprisingly stocky. It is close to a foot tall now and has an impressively thick stem with dense branches. I suspect I will have a very productive plant....hopefully in contrast with my tomatoes from last year which ended up long and somewhat spindly.

Today I went to Armstrong Garden Center to spend one of my Groupons from a couple weeks back. I spent it on three bags of compost and a variety of herbs (trailing rosemary, English thyme, chocolate mint, stevia, Italian oregano), an Artichoke plant, and a half dozen seed packets. Most of these (except the seeds) will end up in pots on my porch or driveway window sill. I'm looking forward to getting those all in over the next few days!

Tomato Bed In!

I spent a few hours today digging up and planting my tomato bed (finally)! I started by double digging the area (2ft x 18ft). I only dug down about 8 inches or so because the dirt was already pretty loose and I was in a rush. I mostly just wanted to mix in the grasses and weeds that had grown and died (thanks to round-up) since last year.

Then the tomatoes went in. There are 10 tomato plants with 21 inches between each. On each plant I snipped off any branches besides the top three-ish. Before burying I dipped each root ball in kelp emulsion to give them a nutrition boost. Then each plant went into a trench with the stem placed close to horizontal and bent up at the end so the couple inches left above ground are vertical. This supposedly encourages quick root growth, but, more important to me, it allows me to have the plants come out of the ground only a couple inches from the chain link fence/trellis without cramping their roots.

Lastly, I planted patches of garlic and shallots between each pair of tomatoes. There are 6 elephant garlic cloves with 6 shallots planted in front of each, 3 patches of 7 garlic cloves, and 2 patches with 5 garlic cloves. So that's a total of 37 garlic plants (6 are elephant garlic) and 36 shallot plants. Spacing within each patch was eye-balled (again...in a rush) at about 4-5 inches. Depth was 1-2x the height of the clove/shallot. Many of the garlics and shallots were already sprouting, so I expect to see them putting up leaves (stalks?) soon.

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