to pluck. or not to pluck - that is the question.

well, farmer fred says to let them be. my grandpa, told me to get rid of them. my personal experience leans me towards grandpas advice. what am i talking about? its whether to remove tomato flowers when the plants still havent been planted - i.e. still in pots; getting trucked into the garage nightly and out of the garage morningly (is that a word?).

pa told me the to take them off as it will probably stunt the tomato plants growth - let the plants focus on the roots. a few years ago, i missed a flower on a plant and it was a tomato about the size of a quarter before i saw it. i decided to let it go, that particular plant didnt do much until that tomato was harvested - after which it zoomed up in height and still got a decent crop from it.

what can others glean from this? well, my experience relates to only 1 plant, thats about as small of a sample as one can get - and with a sample population of 1 - the bell-curve is bit whacky - so your milage may vary. but i will continue to pluck those puppies, until the plants actually hit the dirt. sorry fred, but pa wins out on this one.

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.....

2006 in a nutshell

thats right, my garden layed unattended from january 2006 until spring 2008. well, for the most part.

2006 saw my first attempt at growing tomatoes in my future garden area. i wanted to test the area and see what it could do. i had good luck in cameron park and figured diamond springs wouldnt be an issue.

wrong!

as previously mentioned, the soil in diamond springs is whitish, porous and of volcanic origin. its pretty porous, easy digging in the winter, hard as concrete in the summer. undaunted, i planted my first 6 tomato plants in the new garden in may 2006. i used the existing soil, with no amendments. i wanted to see what the soil could do and boy was i disappointed.

i approached the watering like i did at the old house, about 2 times a week with heavy deep watering. turned out to be grossly insufficient for the type of soil i was dealing with at the new house. 2006 turned out to be a learning curve year for me - it also got me thinking what i could do to improve my future garden - hauling in tons of amendments to fix the soil that was there, was not an appealing solution. i needed to noodle on a feasible fix for my poor soil conditions.