Seven Seedlings Planted Today!

Yesterday I got off work a bit later than I have, and was only able to make a hole in the ground ready for planting, but no planting done.

Last Friday, we got over an inch of rain. This Friday, it got over 98 degrees at Pierce College. Wild weather.

Today I knew it was going to be hot again but I had chores to do. I set my alarm for 7 AM but by the time I got home it was after 9:30 and it was heating up. I dug two more holes before I started to overheat and left it at that.

In the evening it started to cool down after getting up to 95 degrees. I dug two more holes while my wife planted. The first hole was easy. I must have dug there previously. I saw crushed gypsum in the hole (added last year), the soil was good with very few rocks. The second hole, though, more than made up for the first. I hit asphalt with every shovel dig.

My wife had noticed that several of the tomato plants need additional soil. So our plan to counteract that is to dig holes, add fertilizer to the soil along with egg shells or a whole egg and place it all back in the hole. Tamp it down and fill it up again. My wife will partially dig it out again, enough to plant the seedling.

My wife watered the front yard and back yard tomatoes today. She planted Red Currant, Yellow Currant, Sweet 100 and Sweet Million in pots. Green Grape was planted in the south garden by the kitchen. Pink Furry Boar and Yellow Perfection were planted in the holes I made east of the lemon tree.

The weather is significantly cooler this evening.

I believe I am three holes ahead, meaning that I've dug and refilled three holes waiting for seedlings. I'll dig more holes tomorrow. 

Planted Bloody Butcher and Ramapo

This evening I planted Bloody Butcher in the hole started yesterday. This plant had several tomatoes growing on it. Normally I recommend that tomaotes and buds be removed when transplanting into the ground. In essence this "resets" the plant to focus on root growing. But this plant had a nearly one inch tomato, a half inch tomato and three other tiny tomatoes growing. The nearly one inch tomato convinced me that the plant wouldn't fully "reset" and just go with what I got. But I planted it a bit too deep. Hopefully the plant takes root and grows, at which point we can add soil to the base.

I made another hole in the "Far East" about two and a half feet away. I was still pulling out rocks and asphalt (you know the story, repeated it many times), but this time I decided the hole was deep enough to plant Ramapo. But I know there's rocks and debris below where I stopped. I did a better planting job on this one.

I know it's good for the garden to pull out all the rocks, bricks and asphalt but it will take years and years and years to see the results. 

Planted Black From Tula; Husky Cherry Red(2) Has A Tomato!

In my first hole tonight I planted Black From Tula in an area that abuts the backyard cutout. There wasn't much in the way in rocks or asphalt. The lack of both led me to believe I had cleared a part of this hole previously.

I tried to make a couple of holes next to Black From Tula. The first hole hit a sprinkler line while the second hole hit a wooden divider separating the backyard cutout from the dirt area east of the lemon tree. No go.

So I tried a hole in the "Far East". This area is near our backyard fence opposite our back door to the east. It's known for being quite rocky and containing a lot of asphalt. And this hole didn't disappoint -- I hit a lot of both. I got down about two feet when the sun got too low. I had worked on this hole for over a half hour. I left the shovel in the hole and called it a night. At least I'll have a jump on tomorrow.

The other item of note is that Husky Cherry Red(2) has a 3/4 inch tomato growing on it! 

Planted Five More Seedlings

Last night I dug three more holes, one in the backyard cutout area and two holes east of the lemon tree. I continued to hit significant asphalt and rocks, but the chunks weren't as big as around the redwood raised bed. Pesky, but not overwhelming.

In these holes my wife planted Black Krim, Brad's Black Heart and Nebraska Wedding.

She also planted Pierce's Pride and Sweet Baby Girl in pots.

My wife also watered the front yard tomato plants.

We're slowly but surely getting them into the ground. The upside -- the holes are deep and the debris is being removed. The downside -- it takes longer to plant and some of the remaining seedlings are getting very tall and potentially root bound. 

Planted Purple Dog Creek

I worked on planting tomatoes after work tonight. The first hole was about 3 feet to the east of Japanese Black Trifele. This was significant because I hit a lot of asphalt when I made the hole for that tomato seedling.

By the time I planted Purple Dog Creek an hour later, my five gallon plastic container was half filled with asphalt and rocks. And the sun was setting.

So that was it for tonight's planting in our garden.

My wife planted eight tomato seedlings in her mother's garden this afternoon. Here's an image from the garden.

 

Two Tomatoes Were Planted On Saturday

By the time I had posted the last update, my wife had planted two tomatoes. In the area where we cleared out the bricks my wife planted Indigo Rose and Red Boar. Apparently this area was plantable because there was a pile of dislodged soil from fishing out bricks and asphalt.

Also, my wife delivered some seedlings to friends on Saturday. I delivered tomato seedlings to my in-law's house.

No updates on Sunday as my wife, mother-in-law and I spent the day in Newport Beach.

I plan to do some digging tonight. We'll see how it goes. 

Too Wet To Plant...

Not much to report over the last day and a half. Pierce College reported 1.16 inches of rain on Friday, so the ground is saturated.

We moved a few containers around, hoping to plant but we judged that they need to dry out a bit. One of the pulp pots lost its' bottom and will be discarded.

The plants in the ground, however, look wonderful. All of them, without exception, are reaching for the sky and have a very good to fantastic green color. 

Five More Seedlings In The Ground

Tonight I dug three holes near the lemon tree and two in the backyard cutout area.

Near the lemon tree my wife planted Nyagous(2), Black Cherry and Big Bite. In the backyard cutout she planted Persimmon and German Orange Strawberry.

I hit significant amounts of asphalt in the backyard cutout. It was harder to dig because the ground was still wet.

We were busy on Wednesday, so no planting was done.

A few days ago my wife purchased some cherry tomatoes for planting in containers. 

Seven Seedlings Planted, Bricks Removed

This morning my wife planted Green Zebra, Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye(1), Pineapple, Pineapple Pig and Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye(2). The redwood raised bed received two seedlings -- Porkchop and Jaune Flamme.

My wife informed me that she ran into a brick while preparing another hole in the redwood raised bed. Yeah, yeah, whatever, I thought. I'm sure there's something there, but a brick? Nah.

I had to leave a little early at work this evening. I left at 5:15 to try to make a 6:30 meeting at UCLA. We were going to be a bit late, but not too bad. While my wife got ready, I took a look at the "brick". Well...it was a brick. In about five minutes I was able to work out that brick and a couple others as well!

We took off around 6 PM but we received a call just before we hit the freeway -- the meeting was cancelled. We quickly turned around, drove home and I worked on the bricks. Surprisingly, I kept finding bricks in the dirt! Eventually I cleared out the northern end of the redwood raised bed of bricks, but hit a patch of asphalt. I got most of it out before the sun started to set.

My wife took a picture of the bricks and asphalt pile, below.

Amazing!

3 Planted In Pots, One In The Ground, Five Holes Made

After work I had about 90 minutes of sunlight to make as many holes in the backyard soil as I could. I dug a bunch of holes underneath and next to the lemon tree -- six holes in all. I did hit some significant asphalt on the last hole.

Why the concern? It's our understanding that it will rain Tuesday evening. We wanted to get as many plants in the ground as possible before it rains.

My wife planted Taxi, SunSugar and Tolstoi in pots. She also planted Big Zebra in the first of the holes.

So only four more tonight, but we're prepped for five more tomorrow.

One thing I've noticed is a preponderance of larger tomatoes. We don't have too many cherry or "small" tomatoes. We have containers ready to accept seedlings, but we don't have the right seedlings that do reasonably well in them.