tel: 512 280-1192 Thursday, March 6 2014
Nursery Notes: a new shipment of pottery has just arrived. All on
sale - 20% off (except for Talavera). Lots of spring veggies, for
$1.50 to $1.99. Flowering hanging baskets $14.99 - 19.99. Herb
plants - $2.59 to $3.59. Great selection of fruit trees: $34.99 each.
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Coming this Sunday: An Intro to Raised Bed Gardening 2 p.m.
March 9: Learn all about construction, soils, plant choice and irri-
gation from resident veggie expert Dwight Littleton. (free)
Save your dryer lint for your feathered friends (such as the
painted bunting, above) as they build up their spring nests, suggests
Diane Winslow. Place small handfulls in branches of trees for them
to steal away to line their nests. 'It works, and it's fun to watch.'
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Weed and Feed Warning. Austin's Grow Green team urges gar-
deners to choose organic products to fertilize their lawns and stop
weeds - and to boycott Weed & Feed - with its poisonous atrazine,
known to disrupt endocrine systems and hormones. Corn gluten is
organic, and does the same thing: boycott weed and feed
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Central Texas Gardener: Take a new look at lawns with Habiturf,
developed by Mark Simmons at the Wildflower Center. On tour,
see how volunteers at Commons Ford Prairie are bringing back the
birds, bees and butterflies to this popular park. Sat. noon, 4 p.m. or
Sun., 9 a.m. www.klru
by Amanda Moon
Last year I finally decided to take my own advice and keep a garden
journal of tomato experiments that my mother and I perform each
year. We’re always on the look-out for ‘new’ varieties and old heir-
looms, and new ways to boost production year after year.
By keeping records we are able to make adjustments each year with-
out starting from scratch. Trying to remember from one season to
the next what worked and what didn’t is never a sure bet, especially
when we planted more than 60 tomato plants last year.
And not only did I keep a journal. . . I did the plant-nerd thing and
drew a full map of the garden, enabling me to keep track of the loc-
ation of each variety. I’m relieved that I did this, because we ended
up with such a bountiful crop of beautiful red, pink, green and yellow
tomatoes of all shapes and sizes. My freezer is still full of tomatoes!
We began our experiment by buying our tomatoes early. We didn’t
plant them in the ground, but put them into one gallon containers
between the middle of February and the first of March. They were
set out in two phases.
The first were the 4” tomatoes which we purchased in February
that had grown out enough to plant by mid-March. The second
group were grown from seed and were not ready to plant until mid-
April, which was too late we’ve decided. We had not planted the
seed until late January and the tomatoes were not ready for an
earlier planting.
This year we’re buying all of them as we missed the window again,
which leaves our choices up to the mercy of other growers.
The bed for the tomatoes had been worked with chicken manure
for several years and was pretty light and workable. We planted in
rows and added a handful of turkey compost and TomatoTone to
each planting hole.
A few of the smaller plants were eaten by rabbits or rats, so we
collared their replacements with tin cans the second time around.
Tin foil around the stem base works too. Two weeks after planting
we applied Hasta Grow and Superthrive as a foliar feed and then
top-dressed with more TomatoTone at the one month mark.
We watered the plants three to four times a week with soaker hoses
and we got lucky with the first tomatoes (mid-March planting) and
it was still raining, which helped make a huge growth difference
over those planted in mid-April. As the heat intensified, we in-
creased the watering to keep them in production and finally stopped
altogether in early July and let them go.
Planting early does not mean ‘plant and walk away.’ Unfortunately
on several nights we had to get out there and cover the plants with
buckets and frost cover. By leaving the cages off the first month
we were better able to protect the young tomatoes from late winter/
early spring weather.
It takes two people to get the cages on, but it was a small price to
pay for ease of wind and cold protection early on. We always pro-
tected when temperatures dropped below 40°F, especially if any
wind was forecast.
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AMANDA'S TOP CHOICES: Lemon Boy (my favorite, a
large yellow), Porter (smaller red), Pink Ping Pong (rare smaller
pink heirloom), Sun Gold (yellow cherry), Arkansas Traveler
(medium red/pink), Green Zebra (smaller green/yellow), Home-
stead (medium red), and Cherokee Purple and Black Krim (dark
purplish popular heirlooms).
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We’ll be planting most of these again this year as they were so
amazing. We actually had fruit on the smaller tomatoes – Green
Zebra, Porter, Ping Pong, Cherokee Purple and Sun Gold – into
July.
We found that the Roma/ Paste tomatoes did not really do much
of anything until it got hot. The San Marzanos put out malformed,
inedible fruit until the temperature were consistently in the 80’s.
A couple of varieties that left us unimpressed were Ruby’s German
Green (fruit spoiled too fast after picking) and Mortgage Lifter
(zero production even though planted with the earlier group).
This year our tomatoes are bought and growing out in gallons and
the garden is tilled. We will be adding horse manure, rotating the
tomatoes to another part of the garden and sticking with the fertil-
izing routine we set in place last year.
However we will install a new watering system. The soaker hoses
failed in the back part of the garden and some of the tomatoes were
lost prematurely, so we’re putting in new removable PVC water
lines. The hope is that we can control the water easier and direct it
straight to each plant instead of watering the plants and the paths too.
We are also adding another half-dozen or so new varieties to experi-
ment with in the hopes that a new favorite will emerge for next year.
Until then. . . Happy Gardening!
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