My tomato garden

[JC-jetro]

Below you'll see my effort to raise a tomato garden. I hope it will not end up being futile. I always grow the stuff on my raise bed in town. This my first attempt at doing it in style. between the time I have spent, all the implements I bought and all the sweat equity I put in my endeavor those tomato will cost me a pretty penny say the least. All my buddies at work and friends and family already are putting early request for bushels of vine ripened stuff.


Middle busted the ground.

Put up a fence to get the cows out.



Tilled the garden

put the weed matt down, Earth Fabric




Planting tomato

 

[nolefan]

Good looking job JC! Good luck and keep us updated with pics on your progress. What variety(s) did you plant? I understand what your saying about the final cost of the tomato's. When I used to deep sea fish I figured that I would have been hundreds of dollars ahead if I had just went to the fish market but what fun is that?

 

[johnk]

JC,
Where did you get the green plastic corragated drain? I've never seen that color up here. Very nice looking job you did. Without the fence you'd have nothing in the end.. Good job.

 

[randy41]

that looks great....are you going to stake them? or cage them? what variety are they?

 

[JC-jetro]

Thanks guys. Appreciate it. I equally welcome negative criticism as I'm trying to correct my mistakes. I'm making it up as I go

NoleFan,

I planted just about any variety I could such as Rutgers, sweet cherries, several Roma, early girl, late boy , beefsteak Sp?, Celebrity, Low acid yellow variety. I Planted about 95 of them. Me and boys went to Portland to visit my sister, could not get momma to come along with us but we took a day trip salmon fishing. we came back with 6 salmons, but we had issues to keep the breakfast down and kept chumming the waters. All of that said, it was the best salmon and most expensive we had for years when we brought them back to Kansas. I will have 10 more plants of heirloom variety at home to give them more pamperment. I had to go to the creek and fetch water and that was getting old pretty quick. planning to buy a gas powered pump and a 30 gallon Poly tank mounted on my carry all. Planning to go to the Creek and suck up some water and take it to my garden site. We had plenty of rain last week to get the plants good running start.

John K:

The 4" corrugated pipe that you saw can not be easily found in family center. That is a commercial variety that is used for underground fuel distribution system. Consider that as a conduit to hold a double wall Ploy Ethylene pipe. the outer pipe is fuel leakage containment to avoid seepage in the ground. I had about 20 foot of it from one of my project last year. it comes in 250 foot roll. I ended up buying a 10 foot piece of foundation drain piping that is much cheesier that the green stuff to finish up the jobs. That should keep the critters such as rabbit to try their chompers on the tender plants. cutworms also hate to crawl up the stuff. It can help the tender tomato early on. The earth fabric is also commercial variety and can not be found in home centers. It will last many years and you just can not rip it by hand. Need a sharp knife to cut. water goes thru it but gives the weed a mortal fit

Randy 41,

Yes I will stake them using t-post spaced apart 8 foot on centers and holding a cattle panel with bailing wire. will tie the plants to the cattle panel. if you see the pic, you'll notice that I put the t-post on metal stud to keep the weed matt down bay ballasting it.

Although, things may seem a bit excessive but I like to do all the hard work in the beginning. Most of the method and stuff that I use can be used repeatedly year after year.

 

[Botabill]

Good luck with your tomatoes. There's nothing like home grown. Everything looks good that you've done. On thing may cause a problem though... the sod you tilled under can prevent the best results in the first year for a few reasons... primarily soil tilth and nutrient theft. The bottom line though is... if the crop this year isn't what you hoped for, by next year the sod will have rotted and the crop will be much better. Keep the faith Bro.

 

[JC-jetro]

Good luck with your tomatoes. There's nothing like home grown. Everything looks good that you've done. On thing may cause a problem though... the sod you tilled under can prevent the best results in the first year for a few reasons... primarily soil tilth and nutrient theft. The bottom line though is... if the crop this year isn't what you hoped for, by next year the sod will have rotted and the crop will be much better. Keep the faith Bro.

You are right. At home I compost 100% of plant matters, including all veggie kitchen waste, grass clipping, leaves and you name it. The quality of soil is great with bunch of hummus and decayed stuff.Earth worms just love it. after the end of the season I'm planning to scoop bunch of straw and rotted cow poop and till in the garden site and were planning to sow some perennial rye for winter ground cover that I can till it in in following spring. I will build up the soil and reckon it will take me a few years. I use no chemical fertilizer or pesticide other than tobacco juice and bit of a dish soap in the few concoction I make to keep the bugs away. Sure would love to command an army of preying mantises but recruitment and retention been rather difficult.

 

[jinman]

That's a good lookin' tomato patch there JC. You've done a lot of work as you said for that first-year garden. Next year will a lot easier because you won't have to build fence and do as many support tasks.

Did you sort your tomato plants by determinate and indetermine types? I stayed away from Celebrity this year because I actually prefer the smaller tomatoes and bigger ones are more prone to cosmetic problems. The Celebrities I grew last year did not produce nearly the pounds of tomatoes as the Improved Porters. This year I tried to grow all indeterminate types. We'll see how it goes. I'll also try to keep my watering constant. I've got my fingers cross right now that we don't get a hail storm. All my tomato plants are about 2 ft tall or bigger and a hail storm would be really damaging. Last year I put plastic pots around each plant, but this year we didn't do that, and the plants got beyond the normal cutworm danger without being hit.

I think you have room on one side of your weed cloth for a few peppers and some squash. Do you have plans for anything else but tomatoes? I can just see lots of stuff growing in that nice little narrow patch.

 

[JC-jetro]

That's a good lookin' tomato patch there JC. You've done a lot of work as you said for that first-year garden. Next year will a lot easier because you won't have to build fence and do as many support tasks.

Did you sort your tomato plants by determinate and indetermine types? I stayed away from Celebrity this year because I actually prefer the smaller tomatoes and bigger ones are more prone to cosmetic problems. The Celebrities I grew last year did not produce nearly the pounds of tomatoes as the Improved Porters. This year I tried to grow all indeterminate types. We'll see how it goes. I'll also try to keep my watering constant. I've got my fingers cross right now that we don't get a hail storm. All my tomato plants are about 2 ft tall or bigger and a hail storm would be really damaging. Last year I put plastic pots around each plant, but this year we didn't do that, and the plants got beyond the normal cutworm danger without being hit.

I think you have room on one side of your weed cloth for a few peppers and some squash. Do you have plans for anything else but tomatoes? I can just see lots of stuff growing in that nice little narrow patch.

Thanks Jim, it means a lot coming from you as I have been following your posts and your green thumb

I like to harvest as much and as long I can so indeterminate is my choice. I don't know what to do with all the tomatos if I had determinate variety and bunch of yield all of the sudden. I have plenty of "early request for free bushels of tomato" so celebrity should help me on that. I kind of like Romas a lot as I cook them a lot in all kind of sauces as they are meaty. I do have plans for other stuff also. At home, I'll have plenty of peppers as I grill buckets of stuff with olive oil and balsamic vinegar as anti pasto and all in my family love it. I'm going to have things that do need to be picked up daily such as okras that I will plant them in town. Also planning to plants some grape vine along the fence to have a more natural looking fence. i also like to have a few grapes but mainly grape leaves to make some dolomatas ( stuffed meat and rice in grape leaves..Greek cosine). I'm planning for a few watermelon, cantaloupes plants and few gourds. Hopefully I plant a few pumpkins for the kids for Halloween also. I will learn and adapt as I try this new garden. In town, I used to get a good yield each year but loosing my sun exposure as neighbor's and my own trees shade the sun for a good yield. I do all sort of herbs at home that requires daily harvest. We love eggplants but they are so finicky that I have to plant them at home. my garden is 15' wide and 150' long. I still have 70'x15' left without the weed block and will populate it all. it has been so wet around KC that make it difficult to plant. I had a couple days of relatively dry that allowed me to put all the tomatoes in. Hopefully I get good result and will post a few pics.