Weekend Planting: Tomatoes and Roses

Remember those little tomato plants we started from seed? Well, after taking almost two weeks to harden off (cool and rainy weather slowed that process down a bit), they were finally ready to go into their permanent locations this weekend:


Here are 32 Roma tomatoes. They are bush varieties that will later will get cages to support them. The ones in the foreground are Monica; the ones in the background are Bellstar. To the right you can see a cookie sheet with several pots of extra plants. I misread our plan and started enough seeds for 32 of each variety, rather than realizing the total of 32 would mean only 16 of each variety. We have plenty to give away — if you are nearby and want some, let me know! These varieties should work in a (big) container with a cage, I think, if you are pressed for space.


The long, narrow row in front of this bed has 32 more tomatoes. These are planted closer together because they are our vining types. We will add a frame from which we hang twine that we will train each vine along. If we are diligent about puling suckers and keeping just a single vine winding up the twine, this will be enough space (this is a method suggested in The Square Foot Gardener and used by us with success in the past). In the foreground are Rose and farther down the row are Moskvich. 

Speaking of Rose tomatoes, I also planted real roses this weekend. My rosa mundi plants arrived a couple weeks ago, but they need to be hardened off before we could plant them. It is on the right:


This is one side of a bed that has a "doorway" to the patio bisecting it. The other side is a mirror image of this, so from the center you have a row of lavender, then rhubarb, and then the rosebushes. Lavender and roses are a classic combination from Medieval times onward, but the rhubarb isn't exactly a typical flower companion.


Still, I think rhubarb is really a beautiful plant, with its outsized leaves and bright red stalks. The color should work with the flowers. I think we'll get a chance to see the color combination in action at least briefly this summer, as there is a lone bud waiting to open:


Hopefully the transplanting hasn't shocked this single flower out of commission and we get at least a taste of what is to come as this bush matures.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What to Do With an Unripe Watermelon

Image
Back on the first weekend of August we were so excited to see how big our watermelons were getting. We checked all the signs of ripeness: good sound, firm skin, yellow bottom. So Kirk brought one in: And we sliced it open: Shit. This is not meant to be a yellow watermelon. It only even looks that way in the photo because of the lighting — it's really white throughout. It's Sweet Favorite, and it's supposed to be red.  After the huge wave of disappointment rolled through the room, we all took a bite anyway.  It's not sweet, but it's not sour or bitter, either. It tastes like watermelon, just without the sugar. Kind of like a watermelon-flavored cucumber. It's too big to let go to waste, and we felt obligated to wrap it up and keep it in the fridge until we figured out something to with it.   Dish #1: Watermelon Kachumber Kachumber is an Indian salad that is normally made with cucumber. Here we used some of our unripe w
Read more

So Where's Everybody From?

Image
I don't have any new garden pictures or updates for you today. I have to say, it's getting kind of hard to get a good photo during the one hour of waning daylight left by the time I get home from work. These are the darkest days now, as we hurtle toward the solstice. Without any photos for me to share with you today, I thought it would be a good time to ask: Where're y'all from? If you have never kept a blog of your own, you might not know that the writer of one gets a bunch of stats about who has hit on the webpage. Most of it's not very interesting: I don't care how many of you use your iPhone vs. a PC or what browser you use to surf the web. The one interesting part, though, is the map . Blogger keeps track of what country readers are in when they check out my page. It's fascinating! Here's my readership map for November: I figured my readers were mostly my Facebook friends, and I know where they are. But now my list of countries is gettin
Read more

Last Weekend of Winter

Image
It's the last weekend of winter! Next weekend we'll be beyond the equinox, and the days will be ever-so-slightly longer than the nights.  We still have snow on the ground, lots of wind, and temperatures in the 30s, but we plowed ahead with our almost-spring garden chores anyway. Here's what we did this weekend: 1. Got the chickens out on the raised bed where to prep the soil for planting greens: 2. Poked around the greenhouse tunnels to harvest the last veggies: parsnips and a couple leeks, plus a few leftover fall cabbages for the chickens (which they were very  excited about). We do still have some spinach, mache and kale left as well, but not much. 3. Improved the maple sugaring set-up by building a bigger firebox: Kirk used leftover bricks we had lying around to make a floor (so as not to ruin the bricks on our patio), then got nine cinderblocks to make the three walls of the firebox (solid side toward the fire). He also picked up some steel
Read more