Tomatosaurus Rex Lives (I Hope)

I was setting up my miter saw to sharpen 2x2x8s into stakes and my neighbor offered me the loan of a radial arm power saw. This marvelous device turned what was going to be a several hours long chore into a twenty minute pencil-sharpening.



Then, this morning I was turning a bit of Tomato Tone into my beds with a spade, trying to break up the dirt a bit more before applying mulch, driving stakes, transplanting, etc. My neighbor called over the fence, 'Hey, Farmer John, I got a tiller you can use if I can get it started.'



I had resigned myself to what I'd been able to do with what would have been my fifth assault with spade, rake and hoe. My beds were pretty clumpy, but I reasoned that people lived off the land for thousands of years with even more primitive tools to break up the earth and probably with less understanding of the value of really pulverizing and aerating the soil.



But Mom didn't raise any dummies, and I took him up on the offer.



Two hours later, my soil was nicely pulverized. Not entirely clod free but well mixed and loose. The level in the beds was visibly higher despite throwing a lot of dirt completely out of the bed with the tiller. I couldn't feel my right hand and my right ear was ringing. My trapezes muscle down the right side was in full riot and when I went to post a quick Facebook note about these symptoms, it felt like little springs were bouncing in my sleeping fingers.



Then to applying the silver reflective mulch. I stretched it more or less like a drum head on the first bed, then thought that having air pockets between the mulch and soil might give more hiding places to cutworms and whatnot, and put the others on looser. But none of the three really lay against the earth, and I don't know if this is a problem or not.



I also don't know if water pooling on the surface in the low areas is a problem or not.

Per the instructions I got from Worley's site, I stripped the tomatoes of all but their top leaves and buried the whole affair up the to leaves, or pretty near it.

I dug as deep as I could, which was deeper than I could have before the whole affair with the rototiller, but maybe not as deep as would be ideal. I put a dash of Tomato Tone and a dash of Bone Meal in each hole before transplanting. I put collars on them against the dread cutworms. I watered in with three applications of water per plant.



I did some looking into those cutworms, and after decided there wasn't any evil they won't commit, I collared my peppers and basil plants as well.

A robin had been happily feasting away on worms as I worked the soil with the spade and tiller, and I made a deal with him that he could eat all the worms (and cutworms, one of which I'm pretty sure I saw him eat) he wanted as long as he left my peppers and tomatoes alone. And I plan to hold him to it.



I'm not sure how concerned I need to be about the rabbit I keep seeing in the back yard. I'm pretty sure it's nest is back there somewhere, and what could be cuter? But I draw the line at the silver reflective mulch. Bunny can eat whatever he wants of my weeds and grass, but that's all. I have a slow cooker that bunny would fit in just fine.

I was a bit confused when I went to transplant the peppers as to whether I should strip off their lower branches to bury them extra deep. I decided it wasn't as big an issue since they don't grow as tall, and I wasn't sure they withstood the shock of that as well as the tomatoes. As I understand it, the buried parts of the vine will just branch off with roots, but I don't know that peppers behave that way.

I didn't sleep very well last night, these things all worry me. Worley has the confidence of many years growing tons of things. He's prone to say such things as 'throw them in the ground and run.' But this is my biggest gardening effort since the debacle of 1993, when I planted an even bigger garden right before a frost and subsequent 40 days and 40 nights of rain (the 500 year flood you may recall) that waterlogged and washed away anything that survived the frost.




Well, there were the hollow, horrible, woody radishes that grew in a day or so to sizes that would suggest radioactivity in a sci fi film. But nothing edible came from that microfarm.

That total, shattering failure is probably why I've only dabbled in the years since. I failed to grow a big pumpkin one year, I successfully shepherded a few tomato plants, but this is the first big garden I've attempted in seventeen years.



My Dad told me a story on the phone tonight about a friend of his who used to grow tomatoes under contract. Deliver this many pounds at this price, etc. He put out 1,000 plants in a weekend (which astounds me, that's fifty times what I just did today and today kicked my ass but good) and there was immediately a hail storm on that Sunday night that so thoroughly obliterated the crop, 'you couldn't even see where the tomato plants had been.'

Thanks, Dad. That'll give me great dreams. But what do I expect from the guy who sang The Wreck of the Old 97 to his toddler sons at bedtime and didn't understand why we didn't just drift off to sleep.



Dad did loan me a couple of tomato cages. I tried to waive them off, but he insisted I try them. He explained that some tomatoes are determinate and only get about so high. I said, yeah, I know, but these sixteen are the indeterminate kind. At which point he asked, 'Why'd you want to go and do that?'

Which was kind of my neighbor's response when he asked why the stakes were so tall. Truly, I hoped I'd be able to drive them a little deeper, they're probably 15 to 18 inches deep in most cases, and being eight feet long to begin with that means they're taller than me. I was aiming for getting them two feet down so they'd cap out at about six feet. When the plants get to six feet, I'll let them grow back down the rest of whatever they decide to do.

My neighbor was incredulous, 'You'd let them get that tall?' Hey, man, if the plant grows like that, I'll be too busy being thrilled and amazed to think it's a problem. That's how big these guys can get, but it's me growing them, so no guarantee they're even alive come June.



However, I was going to put little stakes in for my California Wonder green bell pepper and maybe the Lilac Pepper as well, and these two cages seemed perfect for those plants.



I labeled things, too. In duplicate in the case of the tomatoes. In case the little tongue depressor comes off or becomes illegible, I also wrote on the stakes. Some I'll be able to identify easily from the fruit, but if there's a plant I definitely want to grow more of or don't want to jack with in the future, I want to be sure I know its name.



I notice the photos are a little wonky. I was using Program mode on my camera, which is normally safe for outdoor daylight shooting. It's like 'auto' but with the flash off.

However, the silver reflective mulch is so bright, it obviously jacked with the camera's idea about where D-Min and D-Max were and where the middle gray might lie.

Really, it was overcast today but none of these are actually night shots.



Oh, and with all the tools I borrowed for this project, including from my brother, I can't believe I forgot to ask for his knee pads. I'd have killed for a pair before this was all in.