Monthly Archives: May 2010

It’s looking like we will have a full season of white buckets this year. So it’s off to pick up some good clean topsoil and finish up on all my planting. We’re looking at probably needing around 300 buckets. Won’t it be a beautiful sight? A sea of white, but that won’t be all, they will be set on sheets of black plastic to avoid the overgrowth of weeds. It’s almost sounding like a bit less work to keep the weeds down.

Over the past two days, 40 varieties of heirloom pole beans went in buckets and there are a few more to still be planted, but only about 25 or so more. Not to mention the heirloom peas. I don’t have quite so many of those, but I do love my sugar snap and snow peas. Oh and some of those heirloom varieties are absolutely amazing! My favorite from last year was Mammoth Melting Sugar. The pods were the sweetest and they grew to over 7 feet tall with an absolute abundance of sweet and juicy snow to sugar peas.

I’ll also be testing out the squash in buckets this year. It will be interesting, especially for the winter varieties, but I guess we do what we have to do. I may end up enjoying the container method over the in ground method, at least on some items like my Tomatoes. But for now, it’s just trying out this method so I’m not deprived of my time to dig in the dirt and to have an abundance of produce to can, freeze and dehydrate.

I can’t wait to fix up some sun dried tomatoes! Oh my mouth is watering already!

Yesterday, I potted up the test cuttings of the Cherokee Chocolate tomato plant. Cutting number 1, or the cutting from the jar with Willow, is on the right and cutting number 2, or the chamber cutting, is on the left.

Potted up Rooted Heirloom Tomato Cuttings

There is a very noticeable difference in the health of the two at this point. I’m sure cutting 2 will perk up, but I’m amazed at the difference between the two. I took pictures of cutting 2 before planting it, and there are a number of roots that finally began forming up the stem. Cutting 1 was much more advanced with a much larger and stronger root system, as you can see here on April 30th, all the way up the stem.

Rooted Cutting 2 May 3rd

As you can see in this post, the cuttings were comparable in size and health, however cutting 2 grew toward the light and bent half way up the stem.

This has been a great gardening experiment and a whole lot of fun. I plan on expanding my tomato garden each season, with all the tips I’ve learned and experimented with along the way. Gardening is so rewarding and the best part is, you never stop learning!

Yesterday was a great day to be in the garden. Of course my garden is currently a wall of white 5 gallon buckets, but that's okay, I refuse to miss out on my vegetable season.

After scooping a nice volume of very well aged horse manure, into the drilled buckets, I mixed a nice batch of topsoil and peat over the top and tossed in a sprinkle of bone meal. While proceeding to mix all the top contents and only a small amount of the lower contents, I finished with two small wells on either side of the buckets.

Ah now it's time to choose those hardened off little tomato plants. Which one of the more than 200 varieties do I choose? I told you I had a passion for tomatoes

Well I decided that it should go by size. The larger ones (due to lack of space in the greenhouse) needed to be relocated first. Of course our day was a bit on the warm/cold/wet side, but hey it's Washington and we all know why it's called the evergreen state. So my first choice was De Barrao Black. This variety produces 2-4 ounce, brownish purple egg shaped tomatoes and it’s a work horse to boot. It was quite early and had amazing production even after my horrific experience with our local deer nibbling it down to almost nothing, the poor remaining branches produced more fruit than some of the full sized, non nibbled plants. Oh and the flavor was simply divine! De Barrao Black had an amazing spicy, smoky, sweet and rich flavor and made an interesting salsa with my purple hot peppers. There isn’t anything that could compare on this wonderful tomato.

Now this year, due to our unknown move date, I am stuck with planting in these beautiful (cough) white buckets. But as a little bit of a blessing (or should I say a silver lining on that dark cloud) this gives me a chance to test a few different fun experiments.

Remember those TWO small wells that I mentioned earlier? Here is one of those experiments. There have been many writings of dual planting. What this means is planting two tomatoes within just a few inches of each other. The plants supposedly grow faster because they are competing against one another. Well I’ll believe it when I see it

So, I selected one plant for one well and another for the other well. If nothing else, I’ll have two plants to take cuttings from and I can just move the buckets into the greenhouse, instead of doing the whole wintered over cuttings deal this year.

Prior to planting the starts, I always break off the lower branches. Typically, I trench the stems, but that’s difficult in the buckets. So I’m just going to make sure the stems are buried up to the lowest branch that I didn’t break off. As we now know, from the experiments we’ve tried, the tomatoes will create a stronger root system when their stems are buried in the soil.

A nice watering, then a drink of fish emulsion and on to the next bucket for yet another dual planting.

So far, planted out, I have Mortgage Lifter, Sara Black, De Barrao Black, Brandywine, Pink Accordion, Japanese Black Trifle, Black Ethiopian, Bear Creek, Tim’s Black Ruffles, Andes Paste, Rio Grand, Morado and Marizol Purple.

Dual Planted Tomato Transplants May 1