Picking orange tomatoes
My youngest daughter has been very excited waiting to pick our tomatoes. She picked a green one a couple weeks back which I informed her that she needs to wait until they turn red, guess I needed to be more clear about “dark” red, since yesterday when we went out to our garden the first thing I heard was “I picked a matoe” which she is proudly displaying below.
Tags: cheap, tomato plants, vegetables
Something is coming out of my compost bin!! – Update
16.4 years ago compost, tomato
The volunteer tomato plant that has been growing out of my compost bin definitely looks healthy but given its rapid foliage growth and no fruit I guess I don’t need to do any soil tests to confirm my compost is high in nitrogen. Note to self, don’t grow tomatoes in pure compost.
Tags: cheap, compost, outdoor plants, tomato plants, vegetables
Ok, so now where did the the cilantro go?
16.4 years ago cilantro, salmonella, tomato
Well I wrote a couple weeks about my surprise of the missing tomoatos, last week I went back to my favorite Mexican restaurant at work and noticed cilantro has also been removed as a choice of condiments. Going back to my desk I discovered that cilantro and peppers have been added to the list of produce that has been reported tainted with salmonella. With the whole law of supply and demand maybe I should start selling my cilantro and tomotoes at the local farmers market.
Tags: cheap, cilantro, pepper plants, tomato plants, vegetables
Preventing tomato blossom end rot
16.4 years ago blossom end rot, tomato
If you are lucky you may have never seen this gross looking anomaly on the bottom but if you are like the rest of us you probably have seen this disorder especially on your first fruits of the season. Fortunately with some precautionary measures you should be able to minimize the effect of this on your harvest.
There are three primary causes for tomato blossom end rot; inconsistent watering, calcium deficiency, or abundance of nitrogen in your soil.
Calcium Deficiency: In most cases calcium deficiency is not the culprit but with minimal effort you can be proactive to eliminate it as a possibility. If you remembered to through in some egg shells and some Epsom salt when you planted your tomatoes you should be good, if you are like me and was too excited and forgot it is time to supplement. There are a few remedies out there including powdered milk, egg shells, Tums, or even some bone meal tea. I personally go the egg shell tea method, which simply requires taking some egg shells soaking them in water overnight and applying to my tomato plants. If you do this method you will want to prevent spread of salmonella make sure you bake them in the oven for 10 minutes at 200 degrees. One bonus is this also makes the egg shells break up much easier. The best time to apply this egg shell tea is when you baby tomatoes are just starting to form since this is the time your little fruits are sucking up as much calcium as it can find
Inconsistent watering: I have an entire post on watering your garden but the basic idea is to not to drown your roots but watering too often, but not wait until they become completely dry either. Without water your plants have no means to get needed nutrients including the calcium mentioned above. For me this is the most common cause of of my blossom end rot usually after going on a week vacation with no plan for watering my garden while I was gone.
Too much nitrogen: From my experience if I have too much nitrogen I normally get tall plants with no blossoms until the nutrients in the soil balance out. Where you can get into trouble is side dressing (supplemental fertilizing during the growing season) your plants if you do this make sure you provide a balanced fertilizer such as compost tea or commercial brand that is specifically for tomato plant and follow the directions on the box. Plants much like ourselves can only absorb so much nutrients from the soil so we need to make sure we are providing what the plants need at that time in their growth cycle and remember when it comes to fertilizer more is not better in most all cases it will be worse.
Tags: cheap, compost, outdoor plants, tomato plants, vegetables
Something is coming out of my compost bin!!
16.4 years ago compost, tomato
Noticed this plant before thinking it was a weed growing next to my compost bin, but today I noticed it was actually growing out of a small slat in my compost bin. After a little more inspection I realized the distrinct tomato plant look and smell. Guess I was wrong to think those green tomatoes I threw in last fall were too immature to have viable seeds…
Tags: compost, garden seeds, outdoor plants, tomato plants
First tomato of the season
16.5 years ago tomato
Well it is official I have my first official red tomato of the season this morning while watering. It was from a hanging basket my dad gave to me for Father’s day called "Tom’s Tumbler" which should cascade over providing lots of cherry tomatoes.
I also noticed some of my "Early Girls" were also starting to produce so fresh garden salsa should be coming soon.
Tags: led, salsa garden, tomato plants
