I first amended the soil with a good all round fertilizer,leveled off the bed, then dug four holes. Into each hole I placed a handful of bone meal, two aspirin, some crushed eggshells then about 2 inches of soil.
Before planting the tomatoes, I removed all but the top few leaves, then planted them so the top of the soil
was about 3 inches below the leaves. A 'wall of water' was placed around each plant, a tomato cage pushed inside, and to finish, the cells in all of the 'walls of water' were topped off with water.
The 'wall of water' keep the plants warm, but to add a little more heat around the plants, I constructed a temporary 'house' over the four plants. I have a feeling we are going to have a short summer, so I figure the tomatoes need all the help they can get.
6 comments:
Hope you get lots of tomatoes this year. I planted mine a few days ago too, under a hoophouse. We need all the help we can get.
What a sweet visitor. I hope he belongs somewhere. He looks healthy. Your tomato set up looks great. It seems to early to plant tomatoes but I keep reminding myself it's May.
Hi Jennifer, I'm growing Siletz this year too. I started mine from seed so they are quite small still. I'm envious of your lovely big plants!
Lovely to have a cat around.
The Wall of Water you are using is very interesting - I've never seen it before. I can see how it would help warm the plants.
I started my tomatoes earlier than usual this year, covering them with heavy-duty black plastic trash bags on cold nights. Now that our weather is getting really warm, they are blooming! I hope to have tomatoes before the real heat of summer. At temperatures over 90F (July), the blooms just drop off without producing tomatoes. (I read somewhere that the pollen dies at high temperatures).
The tomato plants I have this year are Atkinson, Big Boy, Better Boy, Sweet 100, and Park's Whopper.
Happy Gardening!
Lea
Lea's Menagerie
Good for you, Jennifer! I think you are right about this summer. I can't live without tomatoes, but for the first time, I started to think of skipping tomatoes this season. Or, at least scaling down. Usually, I plant about 20 of them. This year, I'll plant just several plants. Well, I say so... Will see!
Back here in New Zzealand we grew brandywine for the first time. It was a huge plant and had giant gnarled tomatoes about as ugly as I have seen. It didn't crop heavily but there was a lot of flesh on each one , but hard to skin. Will be interested to see what you think of them.
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