How big is your garden and how many tomato plants?

[clemsonfor]

I have a row of pole beans a row of zukes and a small row of yellow squash. Problem is the last 2 years I have not got more than a few of the both due to vine borers killing them. I think I may plant a few okras when it warms up a bit more in a week or 2, this cold we have had it just wont come up but I may get them in this next week. I have 24 tomatoes. Most better boy one big boy and a few random others that caught my eye at the store. I guess my garden is 25ish by 15? its Pie shaped fat then tapers to a point. my numbers may be off but I guess its around 700sqft?

 

[troutsqueezer]

40' X 40'. All tomatoes, 60 plants, 10 varieties - mostly heirloom. Each year, eight of the varieties are new.

If you really like growing tomatoes and want to learn more about them, Tomatoville is a good forum. Lots of members, nice folks and some real experts there - literally, some who wrote the book.

Tomatoville® Gardening Forums

 

[jinman]

I've over posted about my garden escapades, so if I'm boring you, just skip my post. My garden is essentially 90' x 75', but not a rectangle. It was once a low spot that had washed out and 'wanted' to be a pond. I filled the spot to make it level and then brought in 300 yards of topsoil, manure, and sand. Some day, I hope to add another 60 yards of compost and till it in good. My garden is balanced at about 6-6.5 ph, but some of the soil binds together very well and becomes hard even after lots of tilling. After watering, I get a crusty surface. I'm hoping the compost would improve that.

For tomatoes this year, I planted 12 Super Fantastic, 12 Better Boy, 6 Bush Big Boy, 6 Sugar Sweets, 6 Sweet 100s, 6 Early Girls, and 2 yellow pear cherry tomatoes. Between the hail storms and freezes, I lost three Super Fantastics and one Early girl, so I am down to 46 total plants. I'm trying a new caging scheme this year by putting up trellis netting on t-posts on each side of the rows and tying string crosswise between plants for individual plant support. In prior years, I've used round cages made of field fencing (hogwire). It works well, but it is hard to reach through to till the ground. I have to do it with a hand tiller and it is tedius. With the netting, it is 3-1/2" tall. I can start at 12" off the ground and go up to nearly the full height of the t-post. With the bottom open, I can get in there easier to till, mulch, and string my watering tape.

In addition to my tomatoes, I have a large asparagus bed and a start on a large garlic bed. This year, I planted 540 red, yellow, and white onions, sugar snap peas, English peas, sweet banana and bell peppers, Bush blue lake beans, blackeyed peas, clemson spineless okra, zucchini, yellow squash, spaghetti squash, cucumbers, and Israel melons. Our herbs are basil, thyme, and parsley. I may plant some cilantro also, but it is getting pretty late to start it.

I've been eating asparagus and have finally let the spears go to ferns to replenish the roots. I still get a few spears now and then, but the major production is over for this year. I am pulling all the garden fresh onions I can eat at about thumb-size. Today will be the first picking of sugar snap peas. My beans are not far behind and are full of blooms. I have lots of baby tomatoes on my plants too.

I'm posting pictures of my garden in the Texas Spring/Summer thread from time to time. Here is a link to my latest set of photos there.

 

[clemsonfor]

I have planted early girl before but they don't seem to make any earlier than the better boys planted at the same time, so I gave up. I don't like the fruit as well either. I guess I should just grow them in the house for a month or so earlier but its hard with cats and moving themin and out and watering them etc.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

We have 3 raised beds; two of them 24X4; one about half that. I have 13 tomatoes, 3 tomato cages planted with cukes, about 18 assorted peppers, and one 24X4 bed filled with onions. When the onions are gone, I will plant that bed with Purple Hull peas and maybe some turnips late if space and energy coexist at the same time.

There is a family farm about 15 miles from here that raises sweet corn; we usually put up about 2 bushels of same-day-picked-right-out-of-the-field sweet corn; shuck it, blanch it and freeze it all the same day. Vacuum packed in the food saver, it's absolutely delicious. I cook a lot of the corn on my Big Green Egg; just wrap a frozen ear in aluminum foil along with some butter and garlic salt, and put it on the egg for an hour or hour and a half with what ever else is for dinner...as Grandpappy would say, "yum, yum".

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Blood meal works well on deer and rabbits. Don't know about raccoons though. Takes a while for the dogs to get used to it. If you have a dog that likes to dig I wouldn't recommend it.

I use blood meal, bone meal and Epsom Salts on my tomatoes, but I mix it in the soil below the tomatoes when I plant them. I recommended this to a friend of mine; he just spread it on the soil on top, and it apparently attracted something...I think maybe racoons...that tore up the soil and some of his tomatoes. I haven't had any problems with deer; gophers are a big problem, so I fabricated cages out of hardware cloth and plant my tomatoes in them. Haven't lost one since. Squirrels sometimes cut my green tomatoes, but only certain years...haven't figured that one out yet... but it's not normally a problem. My little Boston Terrier used to go down and pick a tomato or two when they got ripe; her successor so far hasn't developed a taste for them. Super Fantastics are fairly disease resistant, but I do encounter an occasional cut worm and sometimes an aphid or two, but that comes with the territory.

 

[Western]

My Garden is completely new this year, actually not even done yet. We moved it closer to the house. It is104'x54', yes odd, reused all old fence and pipe materials, only new wire is a 2' chicken wire that runs the bottom perimeter. We only have 15 tomatoes, Roma, Beefsteak, Cherry and She put in 4 heirlooms but dont know what kind.

Then 2 kinds of sweet corn (SE varieties) Okras, green yellow and red peppers, radish,carrots, 2 kinds of snap beans, 3 kinds of melon, cucumber, zucchini,yellow squash. And MOLES:laughing:

Haven't made any additions to amend the soil yet, will do that this fall.

 

[keegs]

They sell a real cheap plastic deer fencing at the HD. I think it comes in 4' and 7' high rolls of 50' and 100'. It looks like plastic chicken wire. I use it to extend the height of a 4' wood garden fence. It lasts about three years. Had lots of deer problems before I put up the fence. Have had no problems since.

 

[sixdogs]

What do you guys do with all your tomatoes? With our 36 plants we give and give and give them away and that's after we've eaten all we can hold. Do you put them up or give them away or what?

 

[Ted Summey]

We can whole tomatoes, can cut up tomatoes, can tomato juice and we freeze tomatoes. We sometimes dry tomatoes and we give away tomatoes. Plus we eat them at every meal.