Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Six Cages Made; Yellow Furry Boar Has A Growing Tomato!

Tonight we made six more cages from concrete reinforcement wire and spread them throughout the back yard. By our count, we have four more cages to go.

My wife watered the front yard tomatoes today. She finished spreading out the hay over the back yard tomatoes. There's still a bit more to do, but we're out of hay. She'll get another bundle over the next couple of days.

Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red looks good. However, Vorlon(2) is struggling and Red Boar(2) has a weak main stem.

Yellow Furry Boar has a growing tomato on it!

And we may be getting a 93rd tomato seedling in the near future.

Here's an image of the largest piece of asphalt I've pulled out of the back yard. I've placed a penny on this piece of asphalt.



 

Plants Watered, Hay Spread In Back Yard

My wife acquired a hay bale from our gardener on Saturday and on Monday began to spread it around the tomato growing grounds in the back yard.

We like hay spread around the grounds around the tomato plants and elsewhere. Hay keeps the ground temperate and more moist. And over time it just degrades into the soil. The only downside we've found is that cutworms like the environment under the hay as well.

My wife watered all the tomato plants yesterday. She spent about five hours yesterday spreading hay and watering.
 

Monday, May 7, 2012

Eight Plants Have Growing Tomatoes!

I checked the tomatoes this morning, "training" a few plants and checking for growing tomatoes.

In the front yard, SunGold has tomatoes. Husky Cherry Red(1) and Husky Cherry Red(2) have tomatoes from the backyard cutout (because they were planted in late February) and five containers have tomatoes: They include Sweet Million, Sweet Baby Girl, Red Currant, Sweet 100 and SunSugar.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Follow Our Tomato Harvest On-Line!

One of our navel-gazing traditions is the construction of our on-line tomato spreadsheet for 2012. I completed our on-line spreadsheet a few days ago. This spreadsheet totals our harvest by month, and by tomato. 

If you're interested in following along, send me an email to billand88 (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll be sure to add you to the viewing list.
 

Started Making Our Own Tomato Cages

Earlier today we bought some concrete reinforcing wire as well as some metal stakes. We're going to build our own tomato cages! We had used up all the tomato cages we own but were short about a dozen.

We watched the Los Angeles Kings sweep the St. Louis Blues, ate an early dinner and went about building cages. The first thing we noted was that our tools couldn't break the reinforcing wire without a lot of trouble. So back to the hardware store to get the appropriate tool.

It was still a struggle, but after the fifth cage we were starting to get the hang of it. Concrete reinforcing wire is pretty strong! The trouble comes when you try to wrestle (and wrestle is the operative phrase) the wire to where you want it to go.

Several plants have tomatoes. Perhaps I'll take an inventory tomorrow of the plants with tomatoes.