My tomatoes are growing like weeds. Which makes sense, considering where I planted them.
I started my tomatoes on St. Patrick's Day, Saturday, March 17. A bit early, in retrospect, and maybe too early. I started Roma plum tomatoes, Early Boys, and Better Boys. Maybe some of the seeds I used from two years ago had lost their potency. A lot of things could have gone wrong. In the end, more than half of the seedlings died before I transplanted them to the first window planter. After several weeks in an East-facing window, I transplanted the survivors again in early May to hardening-off pots on the front porch, where they received plenty of sun and got used to the fluctuations of outside weather. After several weeks of growing big and strong, I deemed four plants big enough to be transplanted into the garden.
The Weed Garden
The first four went into the Weed Garden on June 2. This is a place I first had tremendous success with two years ago. It's in a shady spot on the edge of our yard, behind a garden swing, a rose bush, and a lilac tree. It is bordered on the East by the neighbor's solid plastic fence, is open on the North, and is shaded on the other two sides. It receives full direct sunlight when the sun is high overhead, receives dappled sunlight some of the time, and is in shade some of the time. Before I began planting there, the spot was overrun with fast-growing weeds, which seemed to come up even faster once the fence was put in. I reasoned that the fence reflected the sunlight impinging on it, giving a boost to anything growing there. Last Autumn I had laid down a thick layer of mulch, most of which broke down into the soil over the Winter and Spring. I loosened the soil where I wanted to plant the tomato plants in four spots about eighteen inches apart. I buried each plant, which stood eight to twelve inches tall, to about half of its height and then surrounded them with a mulch of straw left over from when it provided Winter insulation to the outside cats.
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| June 2 |
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| June 2 |
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| June 4, two days after transplanting |
I took another set of photos on June 26. By then the straw mulch had started to sprout, so I covered it with a layer of grass clippings to suppress that growth. I had supplied the plants with eight foot plastic-coated steel stakes. Each plant was now about three feet tall.
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| June 26 |
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| June 26 |
Before heading out on July 4, I took another set of photos. By now the plants were all about four feet tall.
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| July 4 |
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| July 4 |
Note the supplemental six foot wooden stake propping up the secondary growth (with developing tomatoes) on the first plant.
The Composter Garden
Three of the hardening-off seedlings needed some extra time on the front porch nursery. Two of these were destined for another weed-rich patch of unused garden: the space next to the composter. Hidden in a shady corner of the yard, the composter (a twenty year old Toro model) spends most of its time quietly digesting the fruit and vegetable scraps, egg shells, peanut shells, and occasional shrimp or lobster shells from our house. I will occasionally remove a few shovels of finished compost from the bottom for use in the gardens or to serve as a starter for a new compost batch. I have noticed that the soil around the composter is as rich and crumbly as the stuff that comes out of the composter. Which stands to reason: the same bacteria, fungi, and worms that digest and break down the stuff in the composter find their way in and out through the soil around it. After all these years the soil is rich with worm castings left by satiated worms as they exit the smorgasbord within the plastic walls of the composter. Weeds like to grow there, enjoying the rich soil and occasional sunlight. For years I have been laying down a suppressing cover of grass clippings, smothering the weeds and contributing to soil fertility. I decided to see if this, like the Weed Garden, would be a good spot for tomatoes.
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| June 26 |
June 26, about a week after I had planted this pair of tomatoes and surrounded them with grass clippings. Each is a little over a foot tall.
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| July 4 |
July 4. The plant in the back is nearly three feet tall, the one in the front over two feet.
The Cellar Window Garden
This was a long shot I took two years ago that paid off. Working again on the principle that where weeds will grow, tomatoes will grow, I experimented with one tomato plant in the north-facing garden under the cellar window. This location gets direct sunlight only for a few hours at the end of the day in the middle of the Summer, and is in shade for the rest of the day and the rest of the year. Despite all that, the lone tomato plant grew tall and strong and was very productive. This year I decided to give it another shot. Once again, I had to tear out a bunch of established weeds, including more than a few Rose of Sharon, to make way for the tomato plant.
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| June 26 |
June 26, about a week after transplanting. Coming along nicely.
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| July 4 |
July 4. About double in size.
Each of these tomatoes is covered in blossoms, and one already has developing fruit. I think most of the survivors are Romas, but I suspect the one with fruit is an Early Boy. We will see what develops!
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