Saturday, August 9th, 2008
It’s getting to that time of the season when I am starting to notice a bunch of tomatoes hanging from my tomato plants. I am also noticing some yellowing of the lower leaves. We have been eating a nice number of small and large tomatoes, pretty much daily. We use them for everything, but mainly salads.
I have been noticing these plants getting thicker, meaning, lots of leaves. I always knew that there comes a time to prune tomato plants, but never quite knew how, when or why.
I decided to so a search today for “pruning tomato plants” and came to a great website. They go into detail all about what I wanted to know. You can visit that website here.
After I read up on all I needed to do to my tomato plants, I went outside to prune them. I think I did a good job, but one always wonders if one took too much off. We’ll soon see, I suppose.
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Friday, July 18th, 2008
Do you know how many people search for “When to steak tomotoes?” I bet a lot. Well, I think I spelled it correctly.
I was driving down the road today and noticed that the neighbor had a bunch of tomato plants growing in buckets, just like me. His buckets may have been nicer, but mine are doing just fine. I don’t even remember where I got them, but let it be known, five gallon buckets are wonderful things.
I have been reading that staking tomato plants is mainly to keep the tomatoes off the ground to avoid fruit rot. Since I am growing the plants in 5 gallon buckets, what’s my reasoning? Well, take a look at the photo to see…
As you may have noticed, they are getting very tall. I started off with little three foot bamboo stakes, but have moved on to 7 foot posts. Every day I look out there, the plants have gotten just a little bit taller. Just to let you know, I also tied the posts to the railing on the porch. When I slid the post in to the bucket, I noticed that it was loose and could easily fall over.
A few weeks ago, before I started staking the tomato plants, one of them fell over. Not the bucket, but the plant itself. Anything can cause that…the weight of the plant, a hard rain, wind, etc… I caught it just in time and started tying them up with soft string I had in the garage. I keep it nice and loose so I don’t do any damage. I bought a new garden hose yesterday and noticed that it came wound in long twist ties. I used them just a few minutes ago as even more straps.
I think many people look into this topic way too much. They ask all sorts of questions about what to use and how to do it. How’s this…just stake your tomato plants so they don’t fall over and use something that is long enough and won’t do damage to the plant.
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Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
I was looking at one of my earlier blog posts yesterday and came across the one I wrote about getting tomato plants. I was shocked…yes shocked, at how small the plants were when I got them.
I would say these plants are between 3-4 feet tall right now. Here, take a look…
I think they all have tomatoes hanging from their branches at this point.
Some of the plants started falling over the other day. I didn’t have them tied up yet and I guess they were getting heavy. I did a little online research about when to stake tomato plants and came across a conversation all about the topic. Someone was talking about when a tomato plant gets to be four feet… I thought, “Four feet?” I am afraid that my stakes are only about three feet, so I may have to get the big guns out in a while.
You may also notice that the buckets are different now. This was an unexpected event. One day, I looked outside and noticed that the bottom leaves of the plants were getting yellow. After a bit of ridiculous research, I decided to transplant the plants in larger buckets. During the transpant, I noticed the roots at the edge of the dirt, right up against the bucket. Ever since I changed buckets, the yellow branches turned green again.
The reason I said “ridiculous” research above is because sometimes research on the internet is. I search for “yellow lower branches on tomato plants” on some search engine. I came across the most wild recommendations from all sorts of fools. They were saying that the plants had a blight, a bacteria, a fungus…all sorts of over the top things. Not one of them said anything that might actually be the problem. I guess that’s the way it is when you start looking across the internet for compex solutions to simple problems.
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Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
If you call a porch a garden, then that’s what I have.
I told you that we bought some tomato plants the other day. We put them in a bucket that we had here. Well, they have been taking off so nicely, I decided to get some more. I figured buckets will work ok. My mother used to get the biggest tomatoes from a couple of 5 gallon buckets.
Check ‘em out. They grow fast too. I have a few different kinds there, so it should be exciting. Now, I just have to find out if these plants are related to the current salmonella issue.
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Thursday, May 29th, 2008
We made a visit to Home Depot yesterday (we are going to be buying from Lowe’s from now on). I wanted to go shopping for shrubs. Maybe I can just cut this, and the following posts short. You can just read all the other ones about shrubs I have written through the years.
I had a bunch of stuff on my list, but mainly items from the garden area. Here is what I got:
- 1 Blue Hydrangea
- 4 Holly bushes
- 2 Rhododendron
- 1 25 lb. bag of grass seed
- 2 Tomato plants
and some other stuff. Maybe I’ll write about that later.
Laura picked out the Hydrangea and made sure it was blue. There are a few others around here, so it should fit right in.
There are a lot of areas I need shrubs. I really like shrubs at the ends of driveways. I don’t know why, but I do. Therefore, I needed shrubs to put at the end of this semi-naked driveway. I put the Holly and Rhododendron there. There is room for a lot more though.
I also did some seeding yesterday. I went through the whole bag in about two minutes. The spreader settings needs to be high, so it really shoots out fast. I raked the seed in some bare spots in the lawn, and just spread it out on the areas up near the road. If the birds eat it, I’ll just get more.
What’s really exciting is our new tomato plants. These are hybrid something-er-others. They are supposed to produce nice big tomatoes. I like tomato sandwiches, so I am hoping they come out nicely.
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