Experimenting with Tomatoes

Out in the stores and garden nurseries, tomato, pepper and squash plants are for sale.  It's much too early to put them out yet, but they're for sale because people want them.  Lovely warm days like today make you think it's safe, but you really need steady 10C nighttime temperatures for them to be transplanted outside.

We are in a nice warm spell and have more and better on the way so I thought I'd make a little experiment with my tomatoes.  Today I started getting my tomato bed ready and am planning on planting out the tomatoes in a couple of weeks if the weather is nice then.  The bed was turned over and I placed the 6' poles in the bed where each tomato is going to be seated - 10 in all.  Each pair was joined across the top with curved plastic water piping.  I dug a good-sized hole beside each pole and put a cup of my homemade fertilizer in each, mixing it in well with the earth, then watered each hole.

Planted and ready for its hotcap

I picked one of the bigger Health Kick plants for the experiment.  Another the same size will be the control and be planted beside it when the time comes.  I removed the bottom seed leaves and planted it fairly deep - just to where the seed leaves would have been - and then filled around it.  I topped it off with a hotcap which will stay on until the weather is reliably warm.

Protection in place for the experiment, the rest of the bed waits a couple of weeks

I've already performed this experiment once this year.  a couple of months earlier, I seeded celery which I'm growing for the first time.  Half a dozen plants were set in March.  The rest of the seeding remained in the potting shed until a couple of weeks ago, when I set out another half dozen seedlings.

Victoria Celery

The difference is very obvious.  The plants on the left were the latest to be set out, while the plants on the right, seeded at the same time, have been delayed by their cooler environment.

Totem Strawberries

In the rest of the garden, the strawberries are now flowering.  A week ago, I gave this bed a good watering with diluted fish fertilizer.  Next month we can expect to harvest juicy delicious Totem strawberries.

Looking up into the pink dogwood tree

Cherokee Chief pink dogwood is coming into full bloom.  This young tree has struggled against deer predation until a few years ago when we enlarged our fenced area and brought it into protection.  This year, it's going to be gorgeous!

Update May 12th - It's only 9 days later, but the weather's been so nice I decided to go ahead and plant the rest of the tomatoes.  Night time temps are above 10C.  The control plant in the potting shed is taller than the one planted out early, but the experimental plant is much sturdier whereas the plants in the potting shed are starting to get a bit too lanky.  If the weather turns cool, I'll cover the tomatoes with Remay cloth for protection.