Mighty Red Tomatoes

This is only my second year of attempting to grow tomatoes. Last year I grew Roma tomatoes and cherry tomatoes which both went okay but not brilliantly. The Roma's aren't very big and weren't as nice as I was expecting (when buying tomatoes I usually buy Roma's because they have the closest taste to home grown in my opinion). The cherry tomatoes grew well but with only Farmboy and I eating them, we didn't eat enough to really warrant growing them (and it's difficult to make use of the extras).

This year I decided to try a couple of different varieties. Mighty Red is one and the other I've already forgotten (the label is in the garden somewhere - buried in my jungle).

I have to say that I REALLY like the Mighty Red variety. Nice large tomatoes with a beautiful flavour. Not hard inside like some tomatoes can be. And the plants have produced a fabulous amount of fruit despite heavy winds knocking all my plants over (yes, they were staked but the stakes blew over too - obviously not heavy enough although the winds were particularly bad).

Things I have learnt:

* Pick the tomatoes when they've changed colour but not fully ripe. The ripen quickly and fully inside from this point and still have a wonderful taste. This way I seem to beat the bugs (or those that I haven't picked at this point have gotten eaten).

* Tomato plants go from being small and looking like they're never going to grow to being oversized bushes almost overnight. Good spacing is ESSENTIAL. I've done better with this this year than I did last year but it's still a bit of a jungle.

Things I'd like to do differently next year:

* A new type of staking.

Farmboy (my husband) has seen a neighbours set up where they use a type of wire mesh frame for their tomatoes. He has some in the she so he's going to set it up better for me next year.

* Plant my seedlings a little better spaced in time.

I planted out 2 punnets of tomatoes this year (each had 4 plants in them). I think in quantity that was about right (plenty enough to eat plus some for cooking and freezing) but I'd like to try planting them out about a month or so apart so that we get a longer harvest period. I think I"ll get about a 6 week harvest period from my plants so if I planted some around 6 weeks apart, I'll hopefully get a longer harvest period. Of course, it's always hard to tell what the weather will do. When the heat waves will hit and how long the season will go but I figure we just need to keep learning and trying different things and see how we go.

One thing I know for sure. Even if I decide to give up on this gardening caper, I'd always like to grow my own tomatoes. There really is NOTHING that compares with the taste of a homegrown tomato! :)

The Summer Garden Is Finally In

With going away and then the family health hiccups we've had, my poor garden has been totally neglected.

Last weekend, DH finally prepared the garden beds for me. We've built one of the beds up a level and topped up the second bed with compost. He also built me 3 strawberry beds.

On Wednesday I bought some seedlings and last night they went in.

Strawberries

I bought 5 more plants to bring our total number of strawberry plants to 10. Those that have survived from last year have increased in size so I'm hoping we'll do better with our strawberry yield this year.

DH used 3 truck tyres filled with compost for me to plant into. They're nice and close to the vegie garden so will hopefully get watered more there.



I bought one punnet of sweetheart plants (4 in the punnet) and a single plant in a variety I've not heard of before - Eureka. It's supposed to grow large fruit.

Tomatoes

I was disappointed with how the Roma Tomatoes yielded last year and the Diggers Heirloom punnet I bought didn't even survive. So this year I'm trying a couple of different varieties. Mighty Red and First Prize. Each came in a punnet of 4 so I have 8 tomato plants in. A couple are looking a little on the sad side so we'll see how many we end up with in a week or so.



Cucumber

Last year my cucumbers got choked out by overzealous zucchini so I've tried to give them more room this time. I planted apple cucumbers last year but the kids weren't real keen on them. This year I've stuck with lebanese cukes (which is what I normally buy from the supermarket).



Sweetcorn and Beans

I bought a different variety of sweetcorn this year called Tasty. Last year we grew a variety called Sweetest which had a combination of yellow and white kernels. I couldn't find seedlings for this variety this time so we're trying something different.



I read somewhere recently that if you plant your beans at the base of your sweetcorn plants, they can grow up the sweetcorn plant. My beans were a total flop last year so I'm giving this a go. I think the biggest problem was they struggled for water being right on the edge of the vegie patch. Hopefully this way they'll get some of the water.

Squash, Zucchini and Pumpkin

I bought a punnet of green squash plants to try this year. We quite like the small yellow button squash but it's quite expensive. I've never seen green button squash before so hopefully it tastes okay.



The only zucchini seedlings the store had were black jack and we didn't really like the blackjack zucchini I grew last year. I thought I had some green zucchini seeds at home but I don't so we don't have any zucchini in so far this year.

The pumpkins took over the vegie garden (and half the rest of the yard) last year so the plan was to plant them outside the yard in the orchard (where they can grow to their hearts content). Unfortunately, I don't have enough of the right soil out there yet so I haven't been able to plant. I did pop a couple of butternut seeds in the edge of the garden yesterday in case I don't get the chance to plant any others. The butternut plants weren't quite as big.

Why So Many Seedlings?

I usually try to plant seeds where possible and only buy seedlings for those plants that are harder to raise from seed (like sweetcorn and tomato) but time wasn't on my side this year so I've gone for more seedlings.

While I really want to learn to garden as frugally as possible, for now we have decided that we'd rather spend the money and actually grow something. There is so much more benefit from the garden than simply low cost food. We're going for freshness, nutrition and taste above money saving. Hopefully as my experience grows, we'll do better at gardening on a budget.

Cherry Tomatoes

I put in several cherry tomato plants this summer because I quite like munching on them as a snack. Well, I'm not sure if it's the variety I bought (not that I know what that is - since I'm so *good* at record keeping and all), but the tomato's are tiny and hard to pick (only hard to pick because of their size).

So I'm not sure whether I'll bother with growing cherry tomato's again.

And why is it when you type the word "tomato" over and over again the spelling looks wrong? And how do you spell tomatoes anyway? Is it tomatoes or tomato's or does it depend on the context?