tomato update

these babies are definitely in the class that farmer fred and bill bird have produced. they arent leggy, they are lush, rich green - not induced by excessive nitrogen - but deep green indicative of a strong well built plant. scroll down a few posts and compare their size today versus when i first transplanted them into the 1 gallon pots.

keith - the seed guy - is still working on wave two of the tomatoes, but these babies have just skyrocketed since i transplanted them into 1 gallon containers.

some topsoil and dr. earth is all i have added to these pots. 2010 is going to be a good year.

this one is for chris j.....

its been awhile since i have posted, primarily because not a whole lot has happened in the garden. at nearly 1900 foot elevation, even planting on farmer freds bday (april 28) is a chancy option - but my tomatoes are percolating along and i have some pictures for an update.

my seed guy - keith - has done a good job this year, although we lost our first batch of seedlings; keith bought seed warming mats and that solved our problem. in the off season, keith worked on soil mixes (he rolls like that) and believes he has a good soil that allows good growth - organically. looking at those seedlings, i would say he is right. i will get them in a couple weeks and start hardening them off and hopefully they will be in the ground the first part of may.

some garden activities that have occurred - i have been pulling out burr clover that has popped up in the beds and i did land a bunch of blue berries and some more fruit trees. i will check the digicam to see if i have pics of those tasks to put up here too.

the 2010 growing season has begun

the word on the street is my tomato seeds have been planted. today, officially, is the start of the 2010 growing season. next stop, the official planting day - farmer fred's bday - april 28th. this year we will use some walls of water and hopefully pull in the growing season. at nearly 1900 foot elevation, i face some challenges that the flatlanders dont. i will be cutting back on the numbers this year to 24 plants - 2009 had 41 plants and it was way too much. as a reminder, here is the first string for 2010.






gregoris altai
early girl
matina
big beef
cabernet
big raspberry
champion 2
costolto fiorentino
nyagous
sioux
super fantastic
black zebra
crnkovic
black from tula
chreokee purple
sun gold
sweet gold
mr. stripey
better boy
bella rosa

ordered my 2010 tomato seeds

2 weeks ago i was in newport beach (the oc) enjoying a nice week of vacation - with the family. one of the essentials i took on the trip was my 2009 tomato growers supply catalog. they are on my list of favorite catalogs every year and this year i was determined to purchase something from them.

as noted in my previous post, i have selected the varieties i was going to purchase. with the hard part done, i hit their website, selected the tomatoes of choice - paid via cc and was done in all about 10 minutes or so. 7 days later - my seeds were in my mailbox and now in the hot fist of my seed growing friend 'keith'.

last year, i purchased my seeds from totally tomatoes. i had no issues with my tt seeds - but contrasting the 2 companies; i find that tgs was a better overall experience.

tgs has a better interface for their website, web interaction seemed faster (perhaps a better server on the backend) and delivery from tgs was almost 10 days faster. seed varieties are comparable, so based upon web interaction - i gotta give the 2 thumbs up to tgs.

how many tomatoes, is too many?

lets be real - tomatoes are the only reason i really vegetable garden. dont get me wrong, i really like other vegetables and appreciate each and everyone i grow. but - tomatoes are the real deal and the end all be all of my vegetable gardening experience. if i could not grow tomatoes, it would be difficult for me to muster the enthusiasm for vegetable gardening that i have today.

i cant wait until i get my first - home grown, vine ripened - tomato every year. in fact my first tomato is usually picked a bit sooner than optimal - because i cant wait any longer for my first tomato. once i get that out of my system, i look for optimum ripeness of my 'maters.

so what is the point of this non-sensical post? it goes back to a conversation i had with my wife. i was pontificating (its been awhile since i could work that word in sentence) on what would be the maximum tomato plants i could grow in my new garden. i was thinking about 100 plants. but really, given space for tomato cages and room for growth - i dont think 100 plants is truly feasible.

But!, my real point is - i want to plant enough tomatoes that i can supply enough for me for the entire season and have enough to give out extras to friends and family. i would rather have an abundance of them and throw the extras in the compost pile - then to come up short.

this years tomato math is a little different, as my friend 'keith' - who is growing my seeds, will have to be supplied with tomatoes - and at the same level as i expect for myself. i was originally planning on growing 24 plants - 9 more than last year - but is that going to be enough?

will i have to go from 24 plants, to 30 plants? i know i will have enough room, but is 30 even enough? i have some work to do, determining tomato layout in the beds - how to stagger the plants within the bed to get the maximum number of plants i can in a given bed. i'm probably going to start looking at 36 plants - that should be enough.....

yeah, right.....

2009 seedling update

'keith' continues to work hard on our seedlings and he sent me a recent update. as you can see, they are coming along just fine.

'keith' rigged up a pretty cool frame to hold the grow lights - he's keeping this rig on a low budget and i believe he has done a dandy job.

i might even be able to get something like this going some years off - when we get the den cleared out.

2009 seeds that we have started

as i mentioned in a previous post, i usually buy tomato starts. primarily for 2 reasons - 1, i am not setup properly to do the seed thing and 2, i could be sure of getting the varieties of tomatoes i wanted. that changed in 2008. i looked for and could not find 'sweet million' cherry tomato and i found sun gold. knowing that i absolutely had to have sun gold in the garden for 2009, wanting to try sweet million and finding a sport of sun gold - sun sugar - i had to ensure my 2009 garden had those varieties.

enter a new hire at the firm where i work. lets call him 'keith' to hide his true identity. soon after he was hired, 'keith' and i intersected on some computing work and in general conversation between troubleshooting we found that we had a shared interest - nay, not an interest - a passion for gardening!

we talked shop - garden shop - and soon found we could help each other out in our gardening endeavors. his gardening space is near zero for the short term, but he had seed starting gear. i have an abundance of space - and no seed starting gear. so a plan was hatched. he would be the seed starter guy and i would grow the plants this year keeping him well equipped with tomatoes throughout the summer.

my order to totally tomatoes rocketed off - across the ether, via the internet and 10 days later we were in business. 'keith' quickly got to work and we had plants shortly there after. as you can see, he has a pretty sweet setup and thanks to his wife's high tolerance for his garden geekiness (my wife has the same trait) we will be ready for transplants in late april.

these are the seeds 'keith' got going

• sungold cherry tomato
• sunsugar cherry tomato
• sweet million cherry tomato
• jet sonic medium size tomato (free pkt)
• gemini sweet bell pepper
• lilac sweet bell pepper
• purple beauty sweet bell pepper
• a pepper variety similar to a hungarian pepper (free pkt)

a big shout out to 'keith' for his help and eagerness to raise these seeds. stay tuned for seedling progress.