works for me? tomato

It's time to report on our annual exercise in futility: tomato growing. Last year, inspired by Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle I planted all sorts of gorgeous sounding plants (from a big box store, I am ashamed to admit) into too-small pots filled with garden soil. Yes, you are right, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. However did you guess??

The unhealthy plants, with the cramped roots, and the disease ridden soil combined to produce decay and despair.

But not this year. This year I ordered heirloom seeds from Seeds of Change, including the coveted Silvery Fir Tree tomato from Russia, and planted them in fresh organic potting soil, bought them their own little warming hut, and cooed over them daily. All was well, until they all wilted and died.

No, I will not be dissuaded. I ordered 8 lovely tomato plants from The Tomato Girl and was delighted to receive 5 extras. They plants are big and robust, though a bit jet-lagged which is understandable, so I followed the detailed directions exactly and let them rest up a bit. I even played a lot of classical music for them (most Chopin if you are curious). When they perked up a bit, we began supervised outings, venturing cautiously back into the land of sun and breeze. I unbundled them today and they are at this moment enjoying a spa-like soak in a bucket of Alaskan Fish Fertilizer.

As the plants begin to look stout (TomatoGirl's term) we will start to plant them. Some are going into the vegie garden with layers of newspaper and grass-clippings to prevent splash-up and the rest are going into growbags.

What's a growbag? It is a thrifty alternative to a planter. It's a cool summer here this year (that's saying a lot as I usually put on shorts at 60 degrees and whinge about the heat at 85), so I want the plants near the house so that they can benefit from the stucco's heat-retention. I didn't want to buy, tote, nor store oodles of gigantic pots, so we are trying growbags. I'll let you know how it goes.



Here are the tomatoes that I am growing from The Tomato Girl:
:: Anna Russian
:: German Pink
:: Carbon (pictured)
:: Ananas Noir
:: Sarah Black
:: Persimmon
:: Yellow Perfection
:: Clementine (thanks to Hanna over at This Garden is Illegal)
:: Garden Peach
:: Big Rainbow
:: Matt's Wild Cherry (pictured)
:: Early Giant
:: Wanda's Potato Leaf

Plus:
:: Black Bell Peppers
:: Fooled You Jalapeño Peppers
:: Black Beauty Eggplants
:: Kumari Sri Lanka Eggplants
:: Round Mauve Eggplants

So how, you may ask, is this a Works for Me post? I shamelessly lured you over here with the hope that you will share what works for you. I implore you, if you have any tomato wisdom, please share. I really really want this to be my year.


My other Works for Me posts.



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