Monthly Archives: March 2010

Well it was time to transplant the largest tomato "clone" plant...it already has blossoms coming out! So I figured a nice organic soil filled deep bucket and some TLC will bring those blossoms out and start making some yummy tomatoes! I'm still setting my goal at JUNE, for some nice juicy tomatoes lol. Let's see, I transplanted today...add about 70 days....makes it about May 25-June 1. We shall see

We found a local equestrian farm with extra "aged" horse...hmmm how to be appropriate with this comment...poopoo lol. They even loaded it up for us, free of charge. So be sure to check your local feed stores etc...they have a very difficult time finding ways to rid their farms of this wonderful organic fertilizer. Or you can always purchase prebagged fertilizer if you can't find a local farm.

We've found horse poopoo to be the best, unless you have rabbit breeders in your area. Rabbit poopoo is great too! Both make a beautiful lush and productive garden.

We all went out and clipped kiwi and grape cuttings to make more to add to last years. I have some beautiful kiwi cuttings that are just growing like crazy. I just need to make sure I have plenty of male and female cuttings, so if I trade them, I can offer both male and female. They are so fun and these kiwi plants grow an abundance of beautiful, juicy fruits in the fall. If you're interested in any, just drop me an email. I'm going to try to do 50 of each (not every cutting takes, so I'll probably get 25 or so of each, out of that)

Tomato Seedling 1st transplant

I thought I would offer some info on something I learned this winter. It was really exciting to find that tomatoes can be wintered over. That may sound crazy, but tomatoes are actually tender perennials. If they don’t freeze, they will continue to grow as long as they have adequate light, water and food.

Last summer, I read somewhere that you can take cuttings from your tomato plants and over winter them for the following year. I've always taken the bottom branches off of my tomato plants and stuck them in the ground to maybe create more plants of the variety. Most usually root and grow. So this idea sounded like a great way to keep hybrids from year to year or get a head start on the following season. I don’t usually like to plant tomatoes that I can’t save seed on, but this sounded like a great idea not only to be able to save hybrids over, for the following growing season. After all, there are some great hybrid types out there and far more than just Early Girl and Better Boy, so I gave it a try.

Though I didn't use hybrids to test this out on, I figured it will work with them as well. The items you see pictured are Cherokee Chocolate heirloom and Super Sioux heirloom.

The way I did it was to take a few cuttings of each plant, before the frost hit. I dipped them in a bit of Rooting Hormone – which really isn’t necessary, but I did for added assurance they would root. After taking the cuttings, I placed them in a small vase of water and put them in a sunny window. After making sure the greenhouse was warm enough, I went ahead and put them in the greenhouse until roots began showing.

Super Sioux Cutting from 2009

At that point, I took self watering pop bottle greenhouses and planted the cuttings in some soil with a bit of Fish Emulsion

Cherokee Choclate Tomato Cutting from 2009

My pop bottle greenhouses needed to be added to 4 times during the winter. That means my tomatoes were pushing out the top. One clone is over 37 inches tall, while the other is over 27 inches tall. Both are already developing blossoms. They are beautiful and absolute clones of the parent plants.

Looking forward, I’m hoping to have tomatoes by June =D well, one can hope ;o)