Soil Preparation for 2013

Over the three day weekend last week my wife and I did a lot of work on our soil.

It seemed like an eternity since I was thinking about tomatoes, but the reality was it has been less than two months since the last harvest. First, I took out some grass in the back yard. However, this grass isn't for new growing ground. It's for placing an outside shed in the back yard. That point brings up another issue -- if things go as planned we will have less growing ground in the back yard for growing tomatoes. We grew 93 tomato plants in 2012. I suspect we'll grow around 60 this year. But...we'll see.

I also raked the hay off of the soil in the back yard. We highly recommend laying down hay during the fallow periods of the winter and early spring. Hay on top of the soil will hold moisture and a bit of heat within the soil. That encourages microbial growth and worm activity. In my opinion worms don't do a whole lot to your soil, but what they do only benefits the soil. And worms work for free. Anything you can do to encourage a happy environment for worms will pay off. Make it easy for worms to work for you! When the hay breaks down it is simply absorbed into the soil.

The hay was raked to the side, my wife applied fertilizer and phosphate and the hay was raked back over the soil. My wife also worked the soil in the raised beds and along the southern border of our back yard.

In the front yard we did a similar thing in the "koi pond". I raked the hay to the south side, my wife applied fertilizer and phosphates and the hay was raked back. The only difference involved moments of levity. There are at least 50 SunGold tomatoes in the dirt. I picked out about a dozen of them an tossed them into the streets.

Also, we had purchased some mulch and had it placed in our "corner office". We moved the mulch into all of the non-tomato growing areas of the front yard. The mulch had been purchased about three or four weeks prior and had just been sitting there waiting for us to move it into place. In that time it rained once or twice so it is inevitable some of the mulch leached into the soil. If I remember correctly, some mulch was left on top of the "corner office" but not the "koi pond". Now that I think of it I assume the corner office got some of the fertilizer and phosphate but I don't know that for a fact.

We worked pretty hard over the three day President's day weekend. We had heard a storm was going to hit on Tuesday and Wednesday, which proved true. So our soil additives got watered in somewhat. My wife also watered the front and back yards this weekend. Our soil is pretty well prepped for 2013. 

Added Paper Mulch To Four Tomato Plants

Not much to report today.

I took a quick look and there's nothing to harvest.

I was running late, so I did no training this morning. I made some paper mulch last night as was able to put it on four of the newer tomato plants in the “koi pond”.

Most of yesterday evening was spent sanding our soon to be patio cover. I completed the sanding that could be done with our new sander, sanding every available surface with a medium grade sandpaper. I had already gone over the puttied holes with a coarse sandpaper.

There's a couple of sections that can't be reached by the new sander. We have a mouse sander that possibly could reach the rest. If the mouse sander doesn't work, then the rest needs to be done by hand. Then on to priming. Then on to painting. Then do the same for the rest of the beams to be added to the frame. This will take a while...

Snow White Cherry, Black Krim Have Tomatoes!

Sunday morning I spent about an hour “training” all the tomato plants. While training the front yard tomato plants, I noticed Snow White Cherry and Black Krim have tomatoes.

We spent most of the day at my mother-in-law's house. She has 10 tomato plants. I was planning on doing a lot of work on them but honestly, there was very little to do. She's doing a great job with her tomato plants. We brought down two full garbage bags of paper mulch and laid the paper mulch around the tomato plants. Also, we watered it to tamp it down. But that was all.

We got home a little around 11 PM. With a flashlight I picked 49 Red Currants and 3 Husky Cherry Red tomatoes.

Husky Cherry Red, Patio Harvested

Updates have been slow lately because my laptop adapter is on the fritz. I ordered a new one off of eBay and it shipped last Thursday...but I haven't received it yet. Since I ordered it the adapter is completely dead. Until I receive that adapter, updates will be spotty.

We were busy this past Memorial Day Weekend. On Sunday we went to Downtown Disney in Anaheim and saw the new Indiana Jones movie (it was okay) with my wife's parents. They brought Boomer, our poodle, and we brought him back home. When we got home I assembled a couple of storage racks for the garage.

Monday was spent taking out most everything in the garage and putting in the storage racks. We had room for a third storage rack, so I went out, bought it and assembled it at home. By that time, my wife and our seed lady (who just happened to be visiting) had already packed most everything back into the garage in an orderly and organized fashion. The seed lady was a godsend!

While reorganizing things in the garage, we discovered some fish emulsion bought last year for the tomato plants, but never used. I'll need to research this to see how it is used. Our seed lady told us that dogs and cats love this stuff, so it may be difficult to use appropriately with our dogs in the back and the feral cat in the front. We'll see.

I showed the seed lady around the front yard tomatoes. On her own, she noted that Garden Peach looked a bit odd.

I've been picking Red Currants every day, mostly in amounts of two or three. Yesterday we picked our first Husky Cherry Red. This morning, my wife picked our first Patio tomato. We have another Taxi that is close to maturity.

On Saturday I did cut off the lower branches that were hitting the ground on all the tomato plants. I made more paper mulch but never distributed it. I did put worm castings on a few plants, including Garden Peach and fertilized the container plants again. I think I gave some fertilizer to Garden Peach as well.

I watered the front yard tomato plants last night and the back yard tomato plants this morning.

I haven't noticed any new tomatoes but I haven't been looking too closely.

Watered Heavily; Heat Wave Coming

I heavily watered the tomato plants this morning in preparation for the coming heat wave. It was time to water, since the last watering was Saturday. In fact, some of the container plants were beginning to wilt.

Other than that, there isn't a whole lot to say. In the backyard, Olga's Round Yellow Chicken, Black Krim and Carbon look good. Jeff Davis looks strong for only being in the ground for a few weeks. Kimberly seems a bit behind the others but still looks healthy. I planted Kimberly about three feet from the lemon tree trunk and I might have planted it near a major root or something.

In the front yard, all the new plantings look healthy and strong. I did a lot of tucking for Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter, so perhaps it's having a growth spurt. The most mature tomato on Red Currant is not reddish orange. Overall, I estimate about 250 – 300 tomatoes on Red Currant at the moment. Remember, these are smaller than cherry tomatoes and grow in clusters, so this amount isn't surprising at all. Aunt Ruby's German Green and Big Rainbow are getting tall but have no tomatoes. When they do, though, the plant will support them well.

This heat wave will be the first test of the paper mulch.

I expect growth spurts from all our tomatoes!

Backyard Zhezha is growing!

I put additional paper mulch on the front yard tomatoes and lightly watered all of them.

The backyard Zhezha is now growing and off of the “endangered species list”. Purple Russian continues to look poor.

Husky Cherry Red and Red Currant have their bottom leaves yellowing a bit, but that's a sign that they're heavily into making tomatoes. It's expected behavior. Except for one tomato plant, they all look good. Lots of blooms and growth, but no tomatoes on plants that haven't already been mentioned.

I'll put additional paper mulch on the backyard tomatoes over the next day or so and then relegate it to a background task.

Paper Mulching Completed

On Monday evening, I had a little over a half an hour between work and our computer user group board meeting. In that time I completed the paper mulching. All the tomato plants have paper mulch around it. I plan to continue to add it to the plants as necessary.

I noticed that the Patio plant has been in the ground for 70 days. The estimated maturity is also 70 days. The tomatoes on the plant are still green and are not near maturity. But the 70 days is just a guideline, and we planted this tomato very early in the season (February 26). Also, the plant was clearly stressed in the April heat waves.

Taxi has an estimated maturity in 65 – 70 days. This was planted on March 1, and so is now 52 days old this morning. I thought I saw a slight darkening of one of the tomatoes last week – perhaps it's maturing.

Prairie Fire looks quite good.

Not Much Happening...

Not much happened today so far.

I watered the recent plantings and the container plants, leaving the “veterans” unwatered. I'll expand the time between waterings.

No new tomatoes noted on plants not already mentioned.

I paper mulched a couple of tomatoes and pulled some of the paper mulch away from stems...but that's all. Lots of other chores to do today.

More of the same...

Yesterday and today I paper mulched 13 tomatoes in the back yard, leaving 10 to go.

I didn't plant Old Ivory Egg this morning due to tactical reasons – the gardeners were going to thin out the lemon tree this morning. If a falling branch took out one of the tomato plants, I'd replace it with the Old Ivory Egg. Fortunately, nothing happened.

I keep searching for tomatoes on new plants, but none so far. Lots and lots of blooms, though.

Also, I'll be backing off on the watering now that the paper mulch is mostly in place.

Opossum In The Backyard

I went directly from work to Home Depot, bought a dozen four foot wooden stakes, worked out at the gym, drove home, gave two of the stakes to my neighbor across the street and put in five of them into the ground for additional support for some of the back yard tomatoes.

When we got back from dinner, I made some paper mulch but didn't put it out in the garden. Our dogs found another opossum in the back yard and dealing with the dogs, the opossum and animal control took up the rest of the evening.

This morning I watered the tomato plants a bit lighter that I did last time. I didn't notice any new plants with tomatoes but I didn't look too closely.

Last year on this date, we harvested our first tomatoes of the season, two Sun Gold Cherry tomatoes.

On a side note, perhaps one is wondering why I'm going all out now with the paper mulch, stakes, fertilizer and whatnot. In essence, I'm trying to get “out in front” of all these chores and details before I spend a majority of my tomato time “training” and harvesting the tomato plants. It turns out that I don't do as well as others in the heat of the summer so I'd simply rather do these things now then fight it later.

On the ToDo list: Plant Old Ivory Egg (probably Saturday), finish adding paper mulch to the backyard tomatoes, landscape the area around most of the backyard tomatoes (I'll do this as I add the paper mulch to them), add more stakes as needed, then as time goes on replenish the paper mulch as necessary.

It's Old Ivory Egg!

Last night I took a closer look at the tomatoes while adjusting the branches to lay over the cages where appropriate. The color for Purple Russian does look better. The backyard Zhezha looks like it may have even grown. Arkansas Traveler is so tall, it's nearly as tall as Yellow Brandywine – Platfoot Strain. Salisaw Cafe is the best plant grown from seed at the moment.

Oh yeah, I keep forgetting to mention that the new growth on the Patio container plant looks greener than the rest of the plant. It is looking better.

Three more plants got paper mulch. The front yard is done and one tomato plant in the back got paper mulch.

The other news is that (sigh) it looks like I have one more tomato seedling to plant. My wife kept the OIE/Tula seedling until she heard from the person that grew it from seed, and gave away the rest at her work. Later in the day, the seedling lady chimed in to say she's almost certain that it's Old Ivory Egg. My wife says “Plant it!”. So we discussed some planting location possibilities.

We were both tired, though, and went to bed early.

Paper Mulch Added, Micro Tom Has A Tomato

I shredded today's, yesterday's and Saturday's newspaper in my shredder and spread it around the tomatoes in the front yard. It was tedious, and the shredder shut down for about an hour – it may have gotten too hot – but I think the shredded paper will help.

I put the shredding around the lip of the bowl, keeping at least one inch between the stem and the shredding.

I'll do that with each newspaper until I've covered all the tomatoes. As the shredding tamps down due to water, I'll probably start over and do it again. This will also force me to landscape some of the areas around the tomatoes, especially the ones in the back yard.

The high here in the last three days has been in the mid to upper 90's. As noted previously, the plants have grown. Red Yellow Cap and Gregori's Altai appears to have doubled in size in a week.

Micro Tom has a tiny little tomato on it. The plant itself is about the size of an egg (actually an egg is bigger - no joke). Red Robin has a second tomato on it.

My wife may fertilize some of the tomatoes that are blooming this evening.

Below are pictures taken of Red Currant last evening.

This plant took off weeks ago and it about four feet tall! In the first shot you can see some of the paper mulch laid down around the tomato plant. Also, it probably isn't noticeable in the shrunken image but there's at least five tomatoes visible in the lower left and center.

The second shot, taken from the opposite side, shows hundreds of blooms on the plant.

In the shot below, taken March 10, shows Red Currant on the left and Husky Cherry Red on the right.

Watering, Paper Mulch

Now that everything is planted, there isn't much to do until the seedlings get about 2 to 3 feet tall. Of course there's watering, which I did this morning. Right now I'm watering every other day but will soon cut it to twice a week.

As time permits, I'll run the newspaper through a shredder and use it as a mulch for the tomato plants. We've done this with the container plants in the front, but I'd like to continue it with the plants in the ground. We read or heard somewhere that this could help the soil around the tomato plants keep a bit cooler during the summer months.

I believe it'll be tedious and a bit messy though.