Planting weekend - May 29
Today’s the day we put plants that we started in March in our basement in the garden. Last year we made the mistake of putting out 120 tomato plants on the Saturday before Memorial Day…two days later was a full moon, and a killing frost (see my post further down the page). Not repeating that mistake this year - it looks clear from here on out temperature-wise.
Lots of helpers today - Savocas, Cairns - mostly working on getting the tomatoes in. Tomatoes are heat-loving plants, so we plant them in solar mulch (the black plastic in the picture below). That heats up the ground, kills the grass around them and under the plastic, and makes the tomatoes pop.
The process is pretty simple, once the mulch is down (thanks to Dave Feikens, Tim Reid, and Tony Cellini for help with that). Dig a hole, put in some alpaca compost, put the plant in, tap it down. The plants spent the previous two weeks being set outside during the day…and then the night…to harden them off. If you take plants right out of the basement/grow lights, and plant them, they’ll fry the first sunny day…they need time to adjust.
Pretty much anything will grow with full sun and water.
Notice the row-cover (Agribon) in the foreground. We plant almost everything that rabbits like under row cover…kale, chard, beets, beans, carrots…the plants are happy to have this semi-permeable membrane over them, they grow fast and strong, and most importantly don’t get eaten by bugs or bunnies or groundhogs.
The raspberries are kickin’ it at this point…
150 tomato plants / 14 different heirloom varieties planted:
All solar mulch down…and squash / pumpkin / melon / corn all planted (plus early corn is up)
Sour cherries already. Amazing. Almost four weeks early.
Next week we harvest honey. Stay tuned.
