Tomato Seeds Sprouted; Tomatoes 101 Class

Most of our tomato seeds have sprouted, though they sprouted late. We're rather excited about a few of them. However, these are not being raised with a grow light so we don't know how effective these seedlings will be. It's my thought that we'd save a seedling of each type and give away the rest.

We've had a medium sized trash can of bark and chicken manure for quite some time. I suggested to my wife that I dump and rake this material into our back yard tomato growing ground and let the rain wash it in. My wife agreed so I did just that. The whole process took only 10 - 15 minutes. I didn't turn it in to the dirt, just laid it on top.

Saturday morning, Stephen Baldonado did the CSUN tomato class ("Tomatoes 101"). Scott Daigre had been doing it for years (10 years?). Scott has done a great job with the class and frankly, I expected Stephen to be a step down from Scott.

I was wrong. Stephen wasn't just good, he was quite good.

Scott would provide a flurry of information and his presentation you couldn't help but not get excited for the tomato growing season. Who needs coffee when you have Scott to amp you up on a Saturday morning?

Stephen isn't Scott, but who is? Stephen came prepared with a computer and Powerpoint slides (Scott knows his stuff but his peripatic style makes it appear as if he just wings it) and had a good, smooth flow. He was working off of an outline (good!) to make sure he hit his points.

The only downside to Stephen's presentation is that he went over his time allotment. He was about 15 minutes over and he still didn't get to how to handle "critters" in your tomato garden. Now I know why Scott is amped during the class -- there's too much information!

On a scale of 1 - 10, 10 being best, Stephen gets a 9 at least. This is his first time with this material at this event. The time issues will handle themselves. Either he'll cut something out or we'll have the second coming of Scott Daigre. Either way the problem will resolve itself.

Per Stephen's presentation, I'll try to take out as much of the bark I just put in. The chicken manure won't be a problem as these were locally raised chickens grown in a loving environment. You see, I learned something!

There was plenty of rain so I'm sure the chicken manure leeched into the ground. And our backyard tomato growing area has a little bit of the "compost paella" look as explained in the last post. 

Compost Project Finished; Tomato Seeds Planted

Catching up...

I deconstructed our large passive compost bin a few weeks ago. This involved taking out everything within the chicken wire fencing and making three piles. 1) Stuff that shouldn't have been in there in the first place (mostly pine needles) 2) Stuff that still needed to be decomposed and 3) The rest.

"The rest" involved good compost mixed in with decomposing stuff that was too small to filter out. My best description of the remaining compost was "compost paella".

This "paella" filled up at least a dozen cartfuls of material. Four of the cartfuls were put in the "corner office", three in the "South Garden" and the rest were spread among the raised beds. The spread in the "corner office" was so soft that our outdoor cat was leaving paw prints in the dirt!

After we processed all the compost, we stopped using the approximately seven foot in diameter chicken wire fencing and made a two foot in diameter chicken wire fencing for composting. It will be much easier to handle now. The #2 pile was added back to this fencing.

The composting project (for now) is finally done, done, done.

My wife started tomato seeds this year. Most of the seeds planted were from Wild Boar Farms. As of now they haven't germinated. 

Raised Bed Made; Tomato Seeds Planted

Over the weekend we've put together our raised bed. It looks quite nice. I'll post an image or two after we've prepared the “soil” and planted seeds in it.

Over the last three days my wife has been planting tomato seeds. We had to get the pulp cups, the soil, spray bottles (for watering), masking tape and the popsicle sticks (though the first batches we bought were colored and the color came off on your hand...gotta return them for plain popsicle sticks to write on). Then my wife did the tedious work of filling a couple hundred pulp cups with soil and planting seeds in each of the two hundred or so cups.

From what I understand, my wife is growing six of each of these varieties:

Aunt Ruby's German Green
Bicolor Cherry
Black and Red Boar (I think it's Black and Brown Boar)
Black Krim
Black Sea Man
Brandywine (Red and Yellow)
Brown Cherry
Cherokee Purple
Chocolate Stripes
Crimson Cushion
Coyote
Eva Purple Ball
Fantom du Laos
Garden Peach
Gardener's Delight
Green Grape (cherry)
Green Zebra
Gold Nugget (cherry)
Indian Stripe
Jaune Couer de Pigeon
Kang Bing
Kornesevsije
Mexico
Negro Azteca
Nyagous
Oaxacan Jewel
Quedlinburger Fruehe Liebe
Snow White (cherry)
Speckled Roman
Sundrop (cherry)
Sweetie (cherry)

And the Encino Tomatomania event will be held March 26-28 of this year.

See you there!