May 14, 2017

Tomatoes Were Finally Planted on May 10th

Yay! Planting the garden has finally commenced. Wednesday, May 10th was a nice cloudy day with rain predicted in the next day or so. Perfect time to start putting plants in the ground. That morning my husband tilled the garden again to work in the rabbit manure and azomite rock dust we just spread out over the whole area.

First up. Tomatoes and more tomatoes were planted out 2 feet apart. I started out planting deep and amending each planting hole with crushed eggshells, used coffee grounds, and a handful of worm castings. But that was taking too long considering rain was in the forecast, so with my husbands help we just started putting them in as fast as possible.
The 2 beds in the front contain Brandywine, Black Brandywine, Dark Brandywine, and Yellow Brandywine. Brandywine usually does very well in our hot sticky climate ripening before the end of July.

You can see we have already started putting up the tomato cages. The galvanized steel cages are 54 inches tall which will be staked with 6-feet-tall bamboo poles held on by zip ties.
The powder coated cages in the back are 42 inches tall and were purchased off of a friend. There's a path down the middle of the garden leading to the greenhouse so each long bed was split into two.
Fat Cherry forming tomatoes.
Black Cherry also blossoming and forming fruit.
Sungold hybrid with little itty bitty cherry tomatoes forming.

 Brandywine with its distinctive potato leaves flowering.
Granny Cantrell's German Red tomato.

Tomato plants were started from seed March 12th. Normally they would have gone in the ground at the end of April but the wet rainy weather was against us this year. So they are much larger than usual, which means I won't have to worry about bird predation. Woohoo! I can usually count on birds destroying half the tomato plants that are set out in the garden, instead there are now lots and lots of extra tomato plants... My husband says he'll visit some neighbors tomorrow and see if they want any.

Just about every variety has blossoms or tomatoes forming. I really think the greenhouse has hastened the growth and maturity of the plants. Since this is our first year with a greenhouse, we'll find out at the end of the season if that will affect overall yield.

6 comments:

Sue Garrett said...

We will be getting a greenhouses ready in preparation for planting our tomatoes this week. We do grow some outside but more often than not they are hit by blight so we tend to grow most of ours inside. At one time we could grow tomatoes outside with no problem and no blight but that was before the allotment site was so well populated with people growing tomatoes.

Phuong said...

I know Michelle uses mycorrhizae on the roots of some of her vegetables, I wonder if that would help with a blight problem.

norma chang said...

All your tomato plants so healthy and pretty soon you will be harvesting tomatoes. Yes greenhouse does hasten the growth and maturity of plants.

Phuong said...

Hi Norma,
I'm so glad spring planting is almost finished. It's such a busy time of year. The tomato plants definitely seem early this year which is very exciting.

Dave @ HappyAcres said...

Your tomatoes are looking good! You're ahead of me, I have about half mine planted. And my Sungold is blooming but no tfruit forming yet.

Phuong said...

Hi Dave,
Sungolds are amazingly fast, you'll be having tomatoes in no time. All my cherries are setting fruit at the same time. Although Sungold is definitely producing more blooms.