A Month Ago Today...

I transplanted my tomatoes. I grew the Brandwine and Starfire plants from seed. They were toughened up to withstand the cold nights by having been brought up in a cool environment. They were a bit smaller than I would have liked but they were very green and robust.

Four plants went into the big blue sub-irrigated planters Zak made for me while he was here. These are watered through a pipe sunk into the planter. Right now these plants are drinking about four gallons of water a day. It is very hot where they are sitting, very sunny and it has been extremely windy the past few days. They are doing their bit to clean the CO2 out of the air! I run my hands over the leaves just to catch their fragrance.

In both containers the BWs and Starfires are about three feet tall. They are very "bushy" and are absolutely loaded with buds, blossoms and tiny tomatoes, from the size of a pea to the size of the end of my thumb. They are growing so fast that the new branches and leaves seem to be uncoiling like fiddlehead ferns! Amazing progress in a single month. They are climbing over their wire cages, and I am going to have to find some additional way to support them soon. My brother just lost a big unstaked tomato to a wind storm, and I don't want that happening to these babies.

The lemon boy and yellow pear tomatoes I bought in town were a bit sickly looking compared to my home grown seedlings, but since my yellow tomatoes had not made it to the transplant stage they were the best I could lay hands on. They went into a large pot which I sat inside a larger pot which had no drainage holes. I sat the pot containing the tomato plants on a brick, to raise them out off the floor of the larger pot. These are in the community garden and don't get as much sun or heat as the Brandywine and Starfires, but they still are drinking a good two gallons of water a day.

The yellow pear and lemon boy are not quite as far along. They are about two and a half feet high and are beginning to bloom but so far no little tomatoes that I can spot.

The zucchini squash have numerous teeny squash plants forming behind buds. The watermelon vines have buds, the beans which came up are growing like crazy. The okra is still thinking about the philosophical implications of growth. It has not yet decided to actually grow. No onions have emerged, no carrots came up. A handful of radishes came up in the entire row, and all in a single bunch so that three-quarters of them will have to be pulled if we are to get any radishes.

If the two rows of okra weren't sitting there sulking about being too far north of the Mason-Dixon line I'd just dig up the bed and start again, except for the row of tomatoes at the very end. It's my year for tomatoes apparently. These plants were so small you could barely see them when I put them in, they are now 16" high and blooming like crazy.

Well, it's nice to do something right.