Planted Tomatoes!

Got home and my wife was planting tomatoes! Snow White, Eva Purple Ball and Husky Cherry Red were planted in the “koi pond”. The buds on Cherokee Purple were removed.

Purchased Husky Cherry Red

Yesterday during lunch, I purchased a Husky Cherry Red tomato plant and brought it home. If time permits, my wife will plant it and a few seedlings today.

Cherokee Purple already has a blossom on it, but we'll take it off. It's too early for this plant to be thinking about growing fruit.

I'll Be Speaking Tonight

Over the weekend my wife and I turned over the plot of land against the south fence. Hard work. Some parts had lots and lots of worms, good news!

The planted tomatoes all look healthy.

The seedlings being raised by my wife look very, very healthy.

Tonight I'll be speaking out the Los Angeles Visual FoxPro Users Group in Westchester. Come on out!

Everything Looks Good...

The four outdoor tomato plants are all a deep green, no problems with the transition into the ground.

Many of the seedlings are getting a second set of leaves.

All systems go!

Seedlings!

Here's a picture of our seedlings, taken by my wife last night. They look great!

Get to Work, Little Guys!

The last thing I did before going to bed was to sprinkle the two boxes of worms over the rototilled back yard area.

Go to work, guys!

The Flag Has Dropped!

It's been a busy weekend....

On Saturday morning my wife and I went to the “Tomato Temptations” class at Cal State Northridge. The teacher was Scott Daigre, the operator of the TomatoMania web site. As always, Scott was both entertaining and informative.

After speaking with Scott after the event, my wife and I went to a birthday party for the son of our “seed lady”. The event started at ten in the morning so we missed most of the party. But we did catch the last hour or so, in time for the cake to be cut and the birthday boy to receive his present.

On the way home we picked up a crape myrtle given from a friend's house.

We went home and I began to catch up on things. The crape myrtle was planted in the front parkway. After about 45 minutes, our neighbor came by with the rented rototiller. (Oh yeah, he was going to rent one this weekend!). He was done with it and Bill, feel free to use it for about another 90 minutes, when I have to return it.

So I started it up in the back yard and let her rip...and more or less I was ice skating with it. The rototiller was skimming the surface dirt. A pin fell out with held another pin in place, which left the depth bar loose. This became a problem so my wife called the neighbor.

He came over with his two children. My wife watched the two children while we worked the back yard. We found the missing pin and reset everything. Based on his suggestion, we made it a two man job – one to break the soil and the other to run the rototiller. It worked beautifully! We alternated – one breaking the dirt in front and the other rototilling. Without his help we would never have finished in time.

After such an active day, my wife and I zombied in front of the TV for the evening.

Sunday morning we went out for breakfast and visited Green Thumb. We bought four tomato plants: Sweet 100, Sweet Olive, Cherokee Purple and Patio. Also, we bought three bags of planter mix, worms and worm castings.

I needed to do some work for my consulting clients, so my wife worked out while I did computer work. After she came back, she planted Cherokee Purple in the front yard and cleaned up the brick border surrounding the “koi pond”.

At that point I needed a break so I helped my wife plant the other three tomato plants in back yard containers. Also, I distributed the worm castings over the recently rototilled back yard. I started the internal tomato documentation.

My wife has just informed me that we have 95 seedlings growing. She's the new “seed lady”!

So there you go! I was sort of planning to rototill the back yard but didn't expect it to really happen. It did. There was no plan to buy tomato plants, but we bought four of them and they're already planted.

The flag has dropped and the race is on!

Seeds are Sprouting!

This weekend I finished preparing the “koi pond”. Also, I turned the dirt in our “corner office” plot of land.

My wife has been caring for the seedlings and they've been sprouting! Here's the totals as of Saturday morning:

First tray:

Eva Purple Ball – 2 out of 6 have sprouted.

Garden Peach – 8 out of 8.

Gardener's Delight – 6 out of 6.

Green Grape – 8 out of 8.

Kornesevsije – 6 out of 6.

Mexico – 6 out of 6.

Nyagous – 0 out of 4.

Second tray:

Oaxacan Jewel – 4 out of 4.

Quedlinburger Fruehe Liebe – 6 out of 6.

Nyagous – 3 out of 6.

Oaxacan Jewel – 3 out of 4 (another planting in the same tray).

Snow White – 6 out of 8.

Speckled Roman – 6 out of 6.

Eva Purple Ball – 2 out of 6.

Quedlinburger Fruehe Liebe – 0 out of 6 (another planting in the same tray).

Speckled Roman – 0 out of 4.

On Sunday, more sprouted. I believe the Sunday sprouts were the end of the second tray, as they were planted later than the others.

Our neighbor borrowed our rototiller but couldn't get it to work. I'll try it next week and see what happens...

Ramping Up For 2009

My wife surprised me on Friday night. When I arrived home from work, she had planted two trays of tomato seeds. We got these seeds from our visit to the TomatoFest in Carmel back in September of last year.

On Saturday, I turned the dirt in the “koi pond”.

My wife noted on Saturday that the bees seem more plentiful this year.

Speckled Romans Are Sprouting

Our “seed lady” informed us that there's around a dozen Speckled Roman seeds that have sprouted.

We aren't going to plant all of them, so if you know me and are local to SoCal, shoot me an email and we'll see about getting you one of these seedlings.