Tag Archives: tomatoes

I blew it with the wrong support

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tomato plant broken supportSometimes it’s not such a great idea to use just anything you have around the garden for certain things. I’ve always grown my tomatoes vertically, and mostly on supports made of 1/2″ electrical conduit. It’s always worked. Many years ago I had some of these 7 or 8′ green stake supports that I’ve grown tomatoes on-occasionally. Even though you might think they look solid enough, they aren’t. I hope you can recognize them when you see the picture. I even doubled up on the supports and tied them together with Velcro. We had strong winds that came by a few weeks ago and I came home to find this. These are just made out of a very thin and cheap layer of aluminum inside. No way that’s going to be strong enough to hold the amount of tomatoes you’ll be growing on it. Do yourself a favor-do it right from the start. Use the 1/2″ electrical conduit, place it over a piece of rebar that’s been pounded into the ground, and then you won’t have to ever worry about coming home to this….[ois skin=”below post”]

Utilizing all the space in a square foot garden

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efficiency tomato and barbados 060213Here’s a little something-this particular square has already been harvested. It held four-2 star lettuce heads of lettuce. Delicious stuff. I added several trowels full of compost, mixed it up a little, and then replanted. Since it previously held a leaf crop(lettuce), it was time to use either a root or fruit crop. I chose to put in a tomato plant-a fruit category. Knowing that it will take 4 weeks to get large enough to trellis up the vertical grow, I took advantage of the space in front of the tomato plant to grow two mini-heads of lettuce. This particular variety is called Dacine. It will be done in about 25 days. That’s good news too because it’s going to be hot here, and lettuce is hard to sprout and grow in weather that warm. I think you can see that they’ve already come up, and now I just have to keep it well watered and covered and it will be perfect. When the first frost hits sometime in September or early October, the tomato plant will be done and it will then be time for me to replant with a cool crop-another 4 heads of lettuce. By the end of the year, this one square foot will have produced 10 heads of lettuce and probably 10 pounds of cherry tomatoes.

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Gardening transition

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TWE garden transition5 -52613As I put my gardens away at the end of fall, I always get a little sad. It’s the end of something I really enjoy doing. I talked a lot about how much easier it is to garden a lot longer into the fall and even into the winter, but the change of gardening season is still a little bit of a bummer for me. As I get my summer gardens up and planted, I feel the same sadness about the departing spring. We’ve been eating mighty well around here all winter, and the spring has been equally as good. All those things that love warm weather are now in-at least a lot of them are. Gone are spinach, radishes, tatsoi, mizuna, and minutina. I’ve got a last harvest of arugula and 2 or 3 squares of bok choi left which will be gone in less than a week. I’ve still got a good supply of lettuce-after all, what good is it if you’ve got all those great tasting summer tomatoes and no lettuce? I’ll grow lettuce all summer, but it’s a lot more work to do that. I don’t mind because the quality of the food is just not equal with anything you can buy. So, it’s good-bye to spring and hello to summer. Tomatoes, lettuce, onions, carrots, peppers,, cucumbers, beans, chard, scallions, basil, cilantro, rosemary, chives, parsley, potatoes, squash, and zucchini are all in now. And more will be planted in the coming two weeks. Big news coming soon for me with my little side business.

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Tomato suckers

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sungold sucker 330By making sure you buy the right kind of tomato plants(indeterminant)you’ll be able to grow them until they get to be 7 feet tall or even higher. The second trick for growing vertical tomatoes is to pinch back the suckers. Many folks might ask: “what’s a sucker? How do I know if I’m pinching back the right thing? The sucker is coming right out of the middle of the joint that’s pictured. I’ve also heard it referred to as that which is growing “in the crotch.” It might be an odd saying but it seems to help folks understand what to pinch back. In longer growing seasons you can actually take this “sucker” and plant it somewhere else in your garden and it’ll grow an entirely new tomato plant all by itself. This is the key to grow your plants really tall by the end of the season. This particular tomato plant is from Johnny’s. The variety is Sun Gold, and it’s said to be the sweetest cherry tomato available-even sweeter than Sweet 100’s. Unfortunately, I put them out a little too soon and didn’t cover on a freeze and now they’re gone. I’ve got others growing that are close to the taste, but not quit. I hope the information/picture on the sucker helps out…

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April 14th square foot garden

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sfg 041413It’s hard to believe that this was all planted in the coldest part of the year. In just a few short weeks this will all be emptied out and an entirely brand new set of crops will take their place. I’ve really enjoyed-and so has our family-eating some different tasting(and sounding)greens that I’ve never grown before. This upcoming fall, I’ll be able to share specific information about 15 different cold weather crops that I’ve had experience with. Many of these are items that many might not have tasted much less grown, but are easy to plant. Done right, you should be able to harvest right through the winter in zones 3-6 with just a little extra effort. I don’t mind doing the extra work because the quality and taste of the food is so superior compared to store bought during these months. I’ll be able to share how each of these crops fit into the 1, 4, 9, and 16 spacings. This square foot gardening stuff-it sure is a lot of fun-and a whole lot less work.[ois skin=”below post”]