Tomato race: I'm behind
Before we get to this post, I just wanted to mention that I did a little tree planting 101 tutorial on The Design Confidential yesterday. Basically you shouldn't do anything you've ever seen a city tree planter do, but check it out if you're looking for some info on planting the framework of your yard.
Late last week, I swung by the community gardens at the YMCA to check on the progress of our tomato experiment going on there. And the news, I'm afraid, is not good.
My mom's Legend tomato (in its protective plastic partial enclosure) is not only bigger than mine, it has TOMATOES! What the heck? Although her Delicious tomato has no tomatoes on it, it too is bigger than my Delicious.
Tomatoes on my mom's Legend tomato, above, and filling up its enclosure, below.
My Legend tomato. No tomatoes here and it is slightly smaller.
A few interesting shots from other gardens:
The trellis structure in the middle is just branches tied together but I really like it. Looks arty. And the marigolds brighten it up.
This gardener put PVC pipe sections next to all his or her tomatoes to help get water and fertilizer to the root zone.
These are maybe the tallest tomato cages I've ever seen, but the holes in the wire are so small I don't know how this gardener will get the tomatoes out.
Labels: community garden, tomatoes, vegetable, vegetable garden
posted by Erin @ The Impatient Gardener at
2:36 PM
2 Comments:
I love your trellis. I want to try something like that for my garden. What did you use to tie the pieces together? Is it weather resistant.
Also, do you have any tips for pruning out of control tomatoes? I live in the south and my tomatoes are just out of control huge (no offense to your 'struggling to grow' Wisconsin variety).
PS - love your blog - have been reading since you were featured on Better After.
Hi TracyAnne,
Thanks for your sweet comments about the blog. The trellis in that picture was actually in another garden at the community gardens, but it looked like it would be very simple to make. I think the secret to making it look nice is to find some interesting branches that are a little curvy or unusual, but it would be equally functional with straight branches. It looks like all they did was stick three longer branches in the ground and lash them together at the top with twine. Then for the braces toward the bottom, they just cut branches to length and lashed them the same way to each other and the vertical branch.
As for pruning tomatoes, it's not something I have a lot of experience with other than pruning out the suckers, which I always do, but Fine Gardening has an excellent article on it at:
http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/pruning-tomatoes.aspx
And they have a video on it as well:
http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/videos/pruning-tomatoes.aspx
Hope that helps and thanks for reading!
Erin
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