Let's talk tomatoes. Black Gold Part 1 by Arlene Rowe.
Greetings fellow gardeners,
We seem to be experiencing a very cool spring. I am going to hold off for a couple of days before I plant more seeds. I thought this would be a good week to talk about tomatoes.
Tomatoes: Early Days
By now if you have planted tomato seeds you should be seeing true leaves and more growth. Some of you may have already planted them up into a larger container. Tomatoes do not go into the ground until the end of May. They can be hardened off in the third week of May if the weather cooperates.
Your tomatoes are either determinate or indeterminate; it should say so on the package. If you are not sure, most larger tomatoes are determinate and most smaller tomatoes are indeterminate. A determinate tomato will only produce a certain number of fruits so do not prune them heavily. They need a sturdy cage as the tomatoes are heavy and it is easy for a branch to split off the main stem. Indeterminate tomatoes bloom until the frost takes them. They produce a lot of branches and can be pruned to keep them more manageable and allow the air to circulate easily.
When the day comes to plant your tomatoes, the first step is to prepare the bed. Your tomatoes will do well in a mixture of good soil, compost, and well-rotted manure. I don’t like to add extra fertilizer at this time as the bed should contain everything they need. I like to give my tomatoes a weekly feeding of weak organic fertilizer, fish emulsion or kelp or comfrey.
If your tomato seedling is twelve inches in height, dig the hole at least six inches deep. Planting your tomato about halfway up the stem insures a sturdy plant. Roots will form along the stem that is buried and the plant is less likely to be blown over.
Cutworms are the first nasty thing to visit your tomatoes. As soon as you plant the tomato, take a paper towel or toilet paper roll, and cut it so that it is about three or four inches in height. Next split the tube so it can wrap around the base of your tomato plant. Cutworms kill your tomatoes by wrapping around the stem and sucking but the roll prevents them from doing that and saves your tomato.
Let’s talk about Marigolds
Tomatoes do very well when planted with marigolds. While marigolds have a scent that most rodents do not like that does not mean that it will give guaranteed protection. There is no plant that will prevent weeds, animals, or insects from invading your garden. What marigolds do is to attract beneficial creatures to your garden, tiny parasitic wasps, and many useful pollinators.
I am only planting four different varieties of tomatoes this year, but they are all my favourites. I am really looking forward to that first bite!
Enjoy your week and let me know if you have any questions. What follows is part one of an article on composting by Arlene Rowe.
Judith
Compost: Black Gold
(A personal view)
This is the beginning of a series of articles about composting. It is a personal view of the topic based on my (> 30 years) experience of composting.
I will cover the following topics:
1. What is composting? And why?
2. The science of composting
3. Composting methods
4. How to get started
5. Troubleshooting
I was introduced to composting when I started a garden in Alberta. I very quickly discovered why many gardeners owned or rented a rototiller and the true meaning of the phrase "Alberta cement". Although the soil was fertile, it was mostly clay which meant poor drainage in the spring, and after summer downpours , which was disastrous for any tuber perennials like irises, and baked cement like soil that made growing and harvesting root vegetables a challenge. To solve this problem would have required truckloads of sand or expensive loam. In my research, I stumbled across the concept of composting. After just a year or two of adding compost to my garden, I saw a significant improvement in the drainage. When I moved to Stittsville, I encountered the complete opposite condition: sandy soil. It drained well, but in the hot summers, my plants wilted from the heat and if there was a watering ban, there were lots of casualties. Again, there was significant improvement in the soil when compost was added.
What is composting exactly? Composting, a simple and useful practice that takes advantage of a natural process that goes on every day of every year in any forest, garden, meadow, and field, is the process by which living matter is convert to life-giving soil. Composting is the way nature recycles and reuses resources and does not need human intervention. However, gardeners have a vested interest in accelerating the process because of its beneficial properties; it produces "black gold".
What are the benefits of compost? The major benefits of adding compost to your garden are:
1. It contributes to the healthy structure of your soil by:
a. retaining moisture in the soil. The organic matter act as sponges when it rains and retains the water, so it is available to your plants when they need it.
b. aerating the soil. Yes, your plants need air, otherwise, the roots will become to susceptible to root rot.
c. regulates the soil temperature. It acts as an insulating blanket to keep the soil at an even temperature to prevent your plants from being heat stressed during the hottest days of summer.
d. supplies micronutrients. These are essential nutrients (e.g. iron, magnesium) that are needed in small quantities and are usually not found in commercial fertilizers.
2. It provides a stable base of nutrients that are released slowly to your plants. Unlike commercial fertilizers that can be readily washed away with each rainstorm, the nutrients are slowly released to the plants on an ongoing process.
3. It is free! Instead of having to send organic matter to the municipal dump, you can reuse what you have grown or bought, and save the cost of buying fertilizers.
In the next article, I shall summarize the composting process: what components makeup the process and how these components interact to create this black gold.