April is not tomato planting out time!

Forsyth MO. - While visiting a local greenhouse (Hills and Hollows Gardens), I bought 2 four pack of tomatoes for fun. One was Better Boy, and indeterminate type tomato I've grown successfully before while the other four were MarGlobe tomatoes. A determinate variety that I later discovered was a popular heirloom tomato. I figured these starts would fit right in with the four Brandywine Pink tomatoes I was already growing from seed! The trouble was the time of year. Early April down here in southwest Missouri can still offer up some frosty mornings right through the middle of the month! So, I was gonna have to wait until near the end of the month to plant these babies outside.

MarGlobes now room to grow while they are waiting!

No problem. I have plenty of pots around my place and merely transplanted each of the starts to its own pot using Miracle Gro potting mix to fill each container. The added room will allow the plants to keep growing at a good rate while I wait for better and warmer climes. Then, later in the month when I can see that the weather has settled, I plan to plant them out into a raised bed out back. My only concerns when I do that will be the local deer that like to eat them. To that end, I plan to put metal cadges around each plant! Then, when the fruits finally mature later in the summer time, I plan to do a comparison of each in a tasting contest with some friends.

Home grown tomatoes! This year for sure!

While I've never been accused of having a green thumb, I generally do alright in the home garden arena. Over the years, I've produced bumper crops of romaine lettuce, Kentucky pole beans, onions and even some potatoes just last season. But, its tomato growing where I've consistently fallen on my face. I'm not sure what it is I'm doing wrong, but something always seems to go wrong. One year it was deer that ate all my plants down to the ground, and then over the past couple of seasons ,it's been both the deer and some hungry Japanese beetles that have left me having to resort to farmers markets in order to sate my appetite.

But this year is going to be different! First off, all the deer have been killed by hunters and not only are they not around but the tics that generally accompany them have bee absent too. That just leaves those pesky beetles and they are due to show in just a few more days! But, I'll be ready for those little critters with lots of grow cloth or as its commercially known reemay. And, any deer that might show up will have to cut their way through some chicken wire. Wish me luck!

Brandywine Time

In spite of generally cold and overcast conditions that have defined much of our spring so far, I have gone ahead and prepared a small planting of tomatoes. Here in southwest Missouri we have certainly been blessed with our fair share of rainfall lately. As of the 12^th of April 2008, we have 21.77 inches of rain so far this year. That’s against an average of about twelve inches and has been enough to flood the Bull Shoals River next to my house. It so bad that the small park next to the river is under about twenty feet of water at this time.

A good time to start some seeds, or so I thought. So how about getting some good old tomato seeds planted in a couple of starter pots! The seed I planted this date are a heirloom called Brandywine which I’m sure many folks out there are familiar with. They have won numerous awards over the years and arguably are one of the best tasting tomatoes of all time. You might say what they lack in appearance (it is an ugly looking tomato so don't let the stock picture fool you) are more than made up for in taste. Could there be a moral here somewhere?