Tomato Planting Day

All bar two of the Tomato seedlings were planted out today a BD Fruit day.

Beefsteak
Health Kick
Roma
Kotlas Purple Cherokee
Palmwoods
Red Fig
Thai Pink Egg
Broad Ripple Currant
Black Russian
Kumato
Amory Orange
Jean Flame
Money Maker
Rouge de Marmande
Black Krim
Tigerella
Cherry

Jean was feeling the heat and being tired commented on the amount of work involved. The only response is "why are we planting so many more Tomatoes than we can possibly eat?" To which I got "well we certainly give it a good shot and I like some variety". Being a promising year we should get an early start to the harvest which will be a month before most people in this area. As usual there will be plenty of give aways  to friends and neighbours.

TIP: After each seedling is planted we pull off about half the foliage. This reduces the transplant shock especially on a warm day. The other alternative is to shade each seedling with an upturned pot to reduce the light during the day for a few days.

1/3 foliage removed to prevent wilting

Also planted were the remainder of the Capsicum seedlings. Some in the Tomato bed and some in mounds. Everything was watered in well with Seasol.

Capsicum on its mound

Progress was made in the completion of this Summer bed. All the planned mounds had composted cow manure added and some which were needed for Capsicums had the chicken litter added and were covered with mulch hay. The full length of the irrigation pipe was installed and tested and more weed mat added. Slowly the entire bed is nearing completion. Only a bit more weed mat to separate the mounds, Chicken litter on the mounds, the three tiered trellis over the Tomatoes and finally the protective electric fence.

Progress on the mounds

There are 30 mounds for vines and other. Sometimes out of laziness we have put more than one vine into a mound but this year we will not as only enough seeds have been planted to match the number of mounds - some discipline at last.

When planning the Tomato season we  planted an extra couple of seeds of each variety just in case there was not 100% germination. Well there was 100% germination and now we are looking for a home for a large number of good sized seedlings. Some neighbours are going to get a surprise.

The first Artichoke of Spring peeping out