At last I have tracked down some more round pots to add to my troughs for my tomatoes to live in!!! I have also got hubby to wire the bean canes in place to stop the avalanche happening once the plants start fruiting...Between both sides I have room for 24 indeterminate tomatoes then the determinate tomatoes (14 I think) will go into individual pots or into the troughs in front of the indeterminate ones.
I have aded some "cow dung pellets" to the compost in the bottom of the troughs -just need to add some more compost and then they are all ready to go -once Im brave enough to set the tomatoes out.
10 comments:
Wow! Looks great! But just wondering? How many tomatoes do you guys eat? That will be enough to feed the blooming town! lol!
Hi Becca
I can eat tomatoes all day -well home grown ones anyway ;-) we have salad every day -quite often twice lol
I also roasted and froze loads last year and used them to make pasta bakes -they were gorgeous, so this year Im hoping to get even more in the freezer -hence the 40 plants :-O
That set up looks amazing.
As I'm always on the lookout for snazzy new ideas, I was wondering why the tomato pots were in the troughs. Do you put more compost in there to nourish the roots or is it to do with stability and watering?
My garden will soon look like yours - mum's plastic greenhouse in now in situ on my patio because she was depressed that it blows away in her garden. That's her happy again. We've also got tomato buckets lined up like soldiers around the rest of the patio. May just have room for a chair or two!
Hi Cheerfulness
The way I do tomatoes is just a twist on the old way of planting tomatoes called "ring culture" -
I fill the troughs with compost then cut the bottoms off the pots and sink them into the troughs a little then when I plant out the toms I sink them so that the first "true leaves" are just above the compost -then all of the stem that is underground will grow lots of roots -so you end up with sturdier stronger plants -plus they aren't as leggy so are easier to support.
Then you water the tomatoes into the trough-it makes the water roots dig down deep to find water(so again -stronger roots) -but when you feed them you put it in the top pot as tomatoes have feeder roots just below the surface ;-)
You see it done this way a lot -where you sink the pots straight into grow bags -I just use troughs as its tidier and I can squidge more onto the patio lol
Hope that rambling makes some sort of sense ;-)
It makes perfect sense and also answered the question of 'what ring culture is?' that I'd been hearing but hadn't got around to googling. :o)
I haven't got any spare troughs or alternatives to use this year but I think I may well take that route next season - sounds ideal.
Hi there,
Just wondering how big those pots you have for the tomatoes are. I'm trying to figure out what's the smallest I can get away with in my attempt at an indoor (i.e. in front of the big sitting room window) vertical garden. Have a few different ideas to try and am not sure some of them would give enough space for the roots.
Thanks.
J.
Hi moonwaves
Those pots are 8" across -but with the bottoms cut out so the roots can go into the trough below ;-)
They are a bit smaller than the other side -but its a case of what I could find out here that was cheapest ;-)
What tomatoes are you planning on growing? only you can get some small ones... I have some called Vilma (or Wilma if they are in the uk yet) and last year they only grew about 8" tall and were very compact -Im doing those again this year and some other bush ones too -once I run out of space for all the tall ones which need my fences etc I start sticking short ones everywhere lol
If you are growing indoors -just in case you don't know-ignore me if you do .... once you start to get flowers on -just flick the canes every time you water them to help pollination -its not always needed but it's worth doing "just to be sure"
Thanks for the tip. I vaguely remember my brother telling me something like that before. It's good to be reminded.
I'm just growing old seeds which I had left over from last year (some maybe from the year before) - wasn't sure I'd get anything from them but they're taking off now so I really need to get them into bigger pots - have loads of seedlings squished in togehter because I didn't really think they'd grow and then they ALL did!
I have tumblers, yellow brandywines and St. Pierre. I was also in Cologne at the weekend and they had a big flower market on and I couldn't resist picking up one 'meat' tomato plant - it's just so much further advanced than my little seedlings and will be interesting to see how it goes. I will be hopefully getting everything sorted by the end of the weekend and will post photos on my blog in case you're interested.
Hi Moonwaves
How spooky -I have grown all my tomatoes from seed -BUT then I was out and spotted a couple of varieties I didn't have - and so got 2 of each @ 50c ... one of them is "fleische" -which is German for MEAT -so we may have similar ones there ;-).... these are much bigger than my own -but we will soon catch up ;-)
Im doing pink and yellow brandywine too -they were lovely last year.
I have a tomato fetish -20 varieties this year ...but Im looking already for new varieties I want to try next year lol...
Last year I tipped some seeds from a plum tomato from the supermarket into a little pot of compost and ended up with 12 plants that gave huge amounts of fruit....
Im going to save seeds from all my fruits this year even though I have seeds left -so if you want to do some swapping next season let me know...
Do you have a link to your blog?
I hate to miss anything ...
livingthesimplelifeiwant.blogspot.com is me. Haven't posted a lot recently - still haven't potted on my seedlings either but am going to start on it now.
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