Tuesday, April 27, 2010

34 Tomato Plants in the Ground


Since we've been married, we've never quite had enough tomatoes. Usually tomatoes are the epitome of garden bumper crops, but they've been disappointing for us, especially the past two years since moving to our new house. Last year all the ones we planted from seed died and we had to replace them with ones from Lowe's which apparently all carried a tomato blight which in turn killed all the new plants before the fruit ripened.

This year will be different.

Austin got an early start and planted the seeds about 5 weeks ago, aiming to have respectable seedlings by beginning of May. Instead, these seeds decided to outdo themselves, and became monster tomato plants within a few weeks. They became so tall we had to put them in a cardboard box so that they wouldn't topple over before they could be safely planted and staked in the garden.

Our last frost here is about May 1st, so we really didn't want to set them out until then, but by the beginning of last week the tomato situation in our sunroom was getting ridiculous. Finally, this weekend, with no frosts on the long term weather forecast, Austin took the plunge and put them out.

He filled up a whole garden bed with them, and still has 6 plants reserved in case a few die. I thought he should plant the remaining 6 anyway; I mean, what's there to lose? He thinks I'm insane. 34 tomato plants should be an amazing amount of tomatoes if all goes well. You can see by the picture below it really is a lot of tomato plants.

And this is Austin protecting the plants tonight from an impending frost.

This is Tucker helping Austin water the tomato plants (yes, Tucker's trying to poke a screwdriver into the stream of water).