Sunday, July 11, 2010

tomatoes

Yum! tomato salad!Suffering through the heat in the city has been worth it for gardeners, assuming they are all getting as good of a crop of tomatoes as I am! Granted I am being more careful about feeding and watering this year than I have been in the past, but knock on wood, all of the baby tomatoes on the roof are looking wonderful! Besides diligent watering, I applied extra calcium and so far have found very few affected with blossom end rot. I also covered the drain holes in the buckets with duct tape in hopes that the soil will hold water better. So far, so good, but I may have to drill new drain holes a little further up because it is working so well in the smaller buckets that when it does rain they are filling with water and drowning the plants. Too much of a good thing, is a bad thing!

In one day's harvest I got 9 ounces of cherry tomatoes. I got a third of that per harvest for the first week's harvests, half of that for the second week's harvests, and now I figure at the early July rate for local tomatoes at the farmer's market- $1.50 a pound- I have already paid for my packet of Golden Nugget cherry tomato seeds! If I figure in the fertilizer, I am working in the black in another 2 weeks or so! (or in maybe 'in the red' is a better thing for a tomato harvest... black usually means blossom end rot!). If even 2/3 of the tomatoes and peppers on the roof, out front and on my father in law's patio ripen perfectly, we are going to have so many tomatoes that I am going to have to give away or freeze half of them so they don't go to waste!

I'm thinking about rigging up some shade clothes so I can plant more lettuce and some scallions... this buying it at the market in order to have a salad is really getting me down!

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