This probably wasn't the best year to start growing tomatoes in the Pacific Northwest, especially given our unusually cold and wet spring. Still, I started growing several Sun Gold (hybrid) and Black Krim (heirloom) plants from seed at the end of March, and I ended up with about 40 plants in 2" starter cells, most of which I gave away to friends. On May 21st, I transplanted an 18" tall Cherokee Purple (from a 4" start), two 9-12" tall Sun Gold plants, and a 7-8" tall Black Krim in a raised bed under plastic-covered PVC hoops. I removed all but the topmost 2-3 sets of leaves on all the plants and buried them as deep as I could. Three days later, I transplanted an 18" tall Black Prince (also from a 4" start), two more 9-12" tall Sun Gold plants, and one more 7-8" tall Black Krim under a second set of hoops. The Cherokee Purple and Black Prince were too tall to plant completely upright, so I buried their root balls and stem along a deep trench. Their stems coming out of the ground were tilted at a 45° angle when I first planted them, so I trained them to grow up using lily stakes. I added a handful of Dr. Earth Tomato, Vegetable, and Herb fertilizer into each planting hole, soaked the rootballs and planting hole with water, filled with soil, topdressed each plant with another handful of Dr. Earth, then did a final soaking with at least 1 gal of water. The raised beds are each 8' long by 4' wide and about 1.5-2' deep with Sky Nursery planting mix, then there's glacial till below. The plants are staggered at least 2' away from one another, so they're basically in full sun (when we have sun) from mid- to late morning until the end of the day.
Because I didn't want the plants to stay too wet, I left a 1-2' opening on each end of the hoop tunnels for air circulation, and I placed a capped 2 L bottle full of water a few inches away from each plant to add some heat. It stayed pretty warm under the tunnels, because I always found tons of flies, as well as a neighborhood cat or two, under the plastic when I'd water the tomatoes every week. I removed the plastic on the few sunny days (maybe 3-4 total) between the end of May and the end of June when temperatures were in the mid-60s or higher, but I put the plastic back up each night. I removed the plastic for good on July 1st, when the weather finally started warming up and one of the Sun Gold plants grew tall enough to touch the plastic cover. The tomatoes finally started setting fruit in late June/early July.
Here are photos of the tomato plants in early July.
Cherokee Purple heirloom full of flowers on July 1st
A closeup of the flowers on the Cherokee Purple on July 1st
The first Sun Gold with three tomatoes on July 1st
The same plant with nine tomatoes a week later on July 8th
A second Sun Gold plant with six tomatoes on July 8th
A Black Prince with four tomatoes, the largest about 1.5" in diameter, on July 8th
One Black Krim with several flowers on July 1st, including a megabloom in the middle
A closeup of the megabloom
Another closeup of the megabloom from a different angle
No comments:
Post a Comment