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Sunday, July 31, 2011

Tomato Update-

I do love the taste of a freshly-killed tomato, its warm, firm body still screaming for mercy as you sink your teeth into it. We've got great soil for tomatoes here in the Valley, but I've struggled a bit finding the best way to grow them. I'd always used stakes, but then the blight hit here 2 years ago, and stakes can harbor blight unless you basically nuke 'em clean. Last year we tried pots, and the plants all died in mid-July.

This year I tried, for the first time, making a frame from which to grow them up strings. This is a commercial method- you tie the string at the top, tie it around the base of the tomato, and twirl the tomato around the string as it grows.

Here's how that's working-

May 11th
Tomato plants planted in the bed
(three days before the tornadoes ran through the Valley)-


July 6th-


July 28th-
No ripe tomatoes yet, but the plants
are LOADED with green tomatoes.
I think I have found the perfect way to grow tomatoes.