Everything that's been planted in the ground appears happy and healthy, except for our last seedling that will come out in favor of a larger, stronger seedling from elsewhere. Husky Cherry Red wasn't looking too strong about three weeks ago but since then, the color has improved (darker green) and the plant has grown.
My wife bought Red Currant to plant in one of our pots in the back yard.
My wife and I had a tomato strategy session at last night's dinner. We decided on growing one (perhaps two) tray of seedling, take them in and out of the house until they're strong and put them in the ground later in the season. We don't have a space for them, but we could cut out 12 to 18 inch round holes in the grass and plant them in the holes (as opposed to the hard and slogging work of pulling out all the grass). My wife may get a hold of a half dozen pots and try growing tomatoes like the lady in Beverly Hills does. We'll need to put up the infrastructure for it.
While we've been planting tomatoes at a pretty quick pace, we still need to add “moats” around almost all of the seedlings in the ground. Also, most of the cages need work. These projects may be done in May.
In general, the plants are happier than last year's tomatoes – so far – especially where the pine mulch was laid down on the soil around the tomato plants. Paradoxically, we may not have as large a count as we had last year. We had a Red Currant (1278 tomatoes) and two Snow White tomato plants (1419 and 1110 tomatoes) in the ground, pumping up the total. In fact, those three plants accounted for over 34% of the 2009 total harvest numbers. We do have one Snow White tomato plant in the ground but the Red Currant is going in a pot, and the plan right now is to put it in to a small pot, limiting the output.
However, this is all dependent on the weather. We've had good rains this year (and perhaps some more to come) – so far so good. But if we hit 110 degrees in the valley in mid-June (like we did in 2008), the harvest will not be good.
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