Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Tomatoes


Tomatoes
Wednesday August 26

This year they say was a bad year for tomatoes.
I have to agree, here in New Jersey we got a Tomato blight
on our tomatoes.
This is the crazy part, I did not to bad with my crop.
I did want to share a few things I tried this year.
First, my husband started them from seed, which
we had saved the seed from previous years.
Second, he built the soil using compost from our yard,
bone meal, rock phosphate. We put in 168 tomato
plants, heirloom ugly tomatoes, cherokee purple,
amish paste, san marzano. At the beginning of the
season I put bone meal down, I did this twice.
I read this will build your root system. In past
years I got more leaves than fruit, so I believe
this helped. I also put down a organic fertilizer,
Feed N Grow 4-24, which I got from a Organic
Farmer here in New Jersey. The organic fertilizer
did not go down until after fruit was producing.
Of course, the most important part is I put down compost
along with leaf mulch. I also wanted to share that I do
stake my plants with bamboo. Pruning is another
technique I do every year. This means getting rid of
the sucker leads, which is a perty big task in the beginning.
I also keep leaf branches away from the ground as I feel
this can add to fungul problems.

My creator, My God is my provider!
Psalm 104
He makes grass grow for the cattle, and
plants for a man to cultivate-bringing
forth food from the earth:

2 comments:

Unknown said...

My mother-in-law did not have a good year with tomatoes either - It's been bad here as well... The tomatoes look delicious though! :)

Faith said...

It was a tough year all around. I think the weather was off for so many of us that our typical methods didn't work.

We had so much more rain than expected, I lost most everything due to fusarium wilt.

Mostly all I've gotten is some cherry tomatoes.

~Faith