Not much of an update today. We didn't plant last night – I actually worked out at the gym, something I hadn't done in about two weeks.
Only thing to note is the front yard Speckled Roman seedling isn't looking as good as it was when it was planted. The color is turning a light green.
The last couple of years I've used a spreadsheet and two documents (Front Yard and Back Yard Tomatoes, listing details) to track our tomato harvest. Last year, I put it on line for friends and colleagues to see if they were so interested in the daily (and MTD and YTD) figures and tomato details.
If anyone reading this blog is interested in following along our the 2009 tomato harvest, send me your email address and I'll include you in the shared list of followers.
For those local to the west San Fernando Valley, we have tomato seedlings available. Email me for details – we'd like to get all the seedlings to good homes.
And five more seedlings are in the ground: Black Cherry, Berkeley Tie Dye (yay!), Cuor de Bue, Amazon Chocolate and Orange Blossom.
I caged all the new plants.
On my ToDo list: Staking all the new plants, adding the seedling tag information onto my documents, and preparing the yearly spreadsheet. But the first priority is to get the seedlings in the ground.
I believe we have 40 seedlings in the ground. We have four additional seedlings to plant (outside of the ones we grew from seed) and room for some more. It looks like we may be at 50 plants this year, give or take a few.
In the evening my wife and I planted five tomatoes in the back yard: German Orange Strawberry, Tiger Paw, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Garden Peach (I believe) and Speckled Roman. Speckled Roman was from our “seed lady”.
My wife reacquired Berkeley Tie Dye from a friend who hadn't planted his. What a sweet gesture!!!!
The only seedling that we grew that survived Friday's vandalism was Mexico.
If all goes well my wife will be planting more seedlings today.
Yesterday we spent most of the day at our friend's house, Elizabeth (Liz) and Ricardo.
I was hired at a consulting gig about five years ago, in essence to put out a fire – a project had gone bad. Ricardo was running it and it was implied that since he's heading the mess, it's his head on the chopping block. Will you run it?
When I got there and looked at what was happening, it was worse than what was explained and what I imagined. Nothing was usable. Once I got the lay of the land, however, it was clear to me that Ricardo was trying to row as best he could in the right direction and that the developer was the problem, not Ricardo, the project manager. Trouble was, after about four weeks I was rear-ended (not my fault at all) for the second time in about a year and that set me back a couple of months – which set the project back further. Anyway, Ricardo and I became friends when it became clear that the person who brought me aboard was just as much as the problem as the original developer.
Looking back at his reminds me of growing up a teenager in Orange County – but I digress.
So we went over, had lunch, caught up on things and helped to dig them a garden. We dug out a 9 x 12 plot of sod and moved it to a new location. A previous 9 x 12 plot had been dug, so two were available. In these two plots we planted 11 tomato seedlings. Other vegetables were planted by Liz.
Afterwards we had a fabulous dinner. A fun time was had by all! A few pictures from yesterday are already up on Facebook.
Before we left, we did get Husky Gold planted in a container.
Red Currant is looking better. In all the excitement on Friday, I forgot to write that the purchased Red Currant didn't look healthy. My wife indicated it was the best looking one available, and I totally believe her. However, the seedling was yellowing and had several dozen blooms on it. In essence, it had been on the shelf for much too long.
When my wife planted it, she indicated it was very root bound – in other words, too much root in too little a space. She picked off all of the blooms, watered it, and then we just hope for the best.
As of today, all the yellowing has disappeared. The plant is completely green, though a fair amount of it is light green. But that's better than yellow! The seedling is clearly improving. Go Red Currant!
