Tomato Tip

When I pick tomato plants from the nursery I look for ones that have been slightly stressed so they have started flowering. Young pampered ones, when they hit your nice rich bed, will start producing lots of leaves and wont bother flowering until further into the season. The stressed ones that have started flowering will love all the food and keep flowering. Take note though, tomatoes don't need, or like, a lot of nitrogen so stay away from chook poo and stick to cow or sheep. Watering them in with some seasol will help them along and a good sprinkle of sulphate of potash will keep them flowering and toughen them up a bit. Here's my Tigrella that not only has flowers but tiny tomatoes as well. I also trim off the lower leaves and plant the seedlings much deeper than their existing soil depth in the pot. Most plants hate this but tomatoes will send out new roots from the stem.



Sprung Spring

I planted up the first two beds with summer crops on the weekend. This bed is where the potatoes were. This is mostly herbs, coriander, dill, parsley, lemon basil and oregano. There's also some leaves - chicory, mizuna and something called land cress. There's an eggplant tagged Thai Eggplant. I thought these were small black ones similar to the ones I grew last year. Though they may end up being small, green ones like these. I'll found out in a few months I suppose.

I've planted two different types of beans to climb up the black meshing, Blue Lake and Purple King. These will hopefully serve two purposes. To supply beans, obviously, and to provide some afternoon shade for the soft herbs. My back yard gets cooked in summer so with any luck this will work.

The next bed has the first of the tomatoes for this year. A sweet Bite cherry tomato, a heritage type called tigrella and a roma. There's also sweet basil, purple ruffled basil, marigolds and an eggplant called Japanese Long Tom. This is more like what I was after with the Thai Eggplant above. I've also planted beans around the wire for the same reasons above.

Last Spuds

Well, I over estimated the spuds. I ended up with 7kg. I must have dug up the richest square foot before. A bit poor but enough for a few meals. Bangers and mash tonight!
A bit more vigilance slug-wise on my part next year and I should be well sorted for mash, chips and... um...more mash.