After reading over and over, what great “organic fertilizer” worm castings are, I decided to put it to the test. I’ve included pictures to show just exactly how amazing this stuff really is. If I hadn’t seen this for myself, I would NEVER have believed it could do what I’ve witnessed.

In sowing my tomato seeds (peppers are about to go through the same process) I decided to transplant ONE plant a bit (WAY TOO) early. The starts didn’t even have a set of true leaves yet. In other words they were stems with cotyledons, when I transplanted my Purple Russian tomato plant.

As you can see from the below pictures (now these starts are ALL the same age) the one plant to the far right is the Purple Russian. It was transplanted in 5:1 potting soil / worm castings, 5 days prior to the rest of that tray. I was absolutely SHOCKED at its immediate accelerated growth, so I decided to plant another full tray with worm castings. Those are the ones in the tray next to the Purple Russian.

Purple Russian - First Transplant

As you will see in the next picture, at the same time I planted the tray of tomatoes in worm castings, I also planted a tray of tomato starts in plain potting soil. The difference is absolutely amazing! I have now added some worm castings to the tops of the cups in the test tray, so they may (hopefully) catch up.

2nd Transplanted Seedlings With Worm Castings

2nd Batch Transplants without Worm Castings

If you are interested in trying worm castings, you can either make your own worm bed and raise your own worms, or you can buy packaged worm castings all ready for planting.

My choice was obvious with the number of plants I grow each year, so my worm bin is nestled nicely on my back porch. It’s a wonderful, green way to dispose of table scraps and organic debris.

For a wonderful manual on worm farming, Click Here!

Or for Nature's Solution Worm Castings 5 Lb, Click Here

Looking for Red Wiggler Live Composting Worms? Then Click Here

Let me ask you this: How many strangers, have you given a plant to? Have you ever frequented a store and offered to share seed or a plant from something out of your garden? Have you ever stumbled into someone in the nursery section of a store and ended up offering plants to them?

Quite honestly, I can say, “I have”, to all of the above. Not only have I started conversation in the local WalMart, which ended up with me returning to meet the wonderful lady I met in the garden section, to share my plants, but I’ve also returned to stores where I’ve offered plants as well as seeds and shared them with the employees behind the counter. I have to say, yes, I’m a bit eccentric, but I really enjoy sharing with people. It was pretty funny to see people with their questioning looks as I walked in a store with a bag full of tomato plants to “GIVE” to a stranger behind the counter. All I can say to that is that the Good Lord has provided, from all over the world, LOADS of seed for me to grow, the ability to grow them well and an avenue to share, so I need to share with others.

That isn’t even remotely close to how many plants I’ve given to friends and family. I have plants all over the country that have been either shipped out, hand delivered or even picked up at my home. I always plant too many, but I always know that someone will enjoy them as much as I do.

So when will you share your works of art? Oh yes, those beautiful plants and saved seeds are absolutely works of art!

Imagine being the reason a family is able to put fresh produce on the table. Imagine a family in need, being able to supply fresh food to their family or even that family who has never grown anything from seed, enjoying the amazing flavors of home grown, fresh out of the garden produce. What a wonderful feeling!

So SHARE A PLANT / SEEDS from your garden! If everyone that knew how to grow plants, would share just a couple, it would make the world a better place.

Container vegetable gardening has been a real learning and rewarding experience not to mention a wonderful as well as frustrating method to use. Of course, being the first year to ever plant a vegetable garden in containers, I have learned a number of things along the way. Things I’ll NEVER do again, as well as things I really must do again or instead of.

So far, the container squash, both summer types and winter types, are growing beautifully. My only complaint is that after filling the containers with soil and planting the plants, the soil has settled. This is a very negative thing on the summer squash or bush type squashes especially. What it means is that there is a very deep trough for the plants to reach up beyond, in order to grow their fruit with some size and quantity. Though they are loaded with squash, they are reaching for the starts, in order to have some space to mature. It has caused a few fruits to turn yellow and fall off, but there are plenty more on the way.

At this point, we have had several zucchini meals out of the garden with many more on the way. However they would have produced better if I had let the containers settle a couple of days and filled them again prior to planting. This would enable the squash to be closer to the top of the bucket and enable them to sprawl and have space to grow.

As for some updates on the zucchini plants, below are some pictures….

And here is a delicious recipe that you can try with your zucchini….

Roasted Veggie Lovers Mix…

1-2 small to medium zucchini cut into sticks or wedges
2 carrots cut into sticks or wedges
1 onion cut into large chunks
1 cup fresh snow peas (or sugar snap that have a sweet pod)
Any other vegetables you would like to add (or subtract from above) – Celery, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms etc…these all work well.
2 Tbsp olive oil
Your favorite seasoning salt, rub or salt free seasoning
Smoked Paprika – (OH THIS STUFF IS TO DIE FOR!!! I use it in Shepherds Pie too YUM!) The only place I have found this is at Costco.
Parmesan Cheese (I use the grated fresh not the powder, however either will work and you can use what ever amount works for you)

***There is no exact science to this recipe, use your own taste to make it your own way.

Place cut vegetables into large bowl, drizzle olive oil over the top. Toss so all vegetables have a thin layer of oil. Sprinkle seasoning over the top, sprinkle with Paprika and sprinkle with parmesan. Toss so all vegetables are evenly coated with seasonings etc.

Place in a roasting basket and grill on barbeque until semi soft, but still crunchy on the inside. No need for dip, but you can sure try them with your favorites. We just love to munch them down as they are.

Just remember this is a finger food....like fries but so much better for you. So keep the size of the cut veggies to finger picking up size.

You’ll get your kids to LOVE vegetables with this recipe!

Things are finally coming together with our move and I wanted to share some really helpful information on how to keep your garden virtually weed free.

Until this season, I have always used techniques offered in “Lasagna Gardening” by Patricia Lanza. However, the possibility of moving and having to adapt to gardening with containers, has made it a bit difficult to apply many of the suggestions of this method. So I began the process of figuring out just exactly how I can keep the garden weed free.

What I’m about to share will work with both in ground (which we usually do anyway) and container gardening.

As I’m sure you’ve seen in my pictures, all of my plants are in large white buckets. So preparing the garden was actually a bit more simplified this season. The first step is to cut all of the grass down very low. This can be done with a weed eater or lawn mower. With the weed eater, you can actually cut it down to dirt and it will work beautifully. Though this step is not 100% necessary, it does make the next step more aesthetically pleasing. Then use “BLACK” landscaping fabric or weedblock and roll it out in the areas you want to place your plants. I also found this fabric at Home Depot for about $35 per 4 foot by 220 foot roll. Make sure to leave adequate space between rows of the fabric and also make sure it is the “Black” variety and not the “Gray”! I tried the gray last season and it doesn’t block the light, so it promotes the growth of grass and weeds, under the landscaping fabric.

At this point, you can either mark where you want to place plants in the ground or simply place your containers on top of the fabric. If placing in the ground, slice large X’s in the spot for each plant. Dig your hole, place your organic materials, fertilizer, bone meal etc in the hole and place the plant to where the stem is centered at the center point of the X. If placing containers, simply set the container where you want it.

Black Landscaping Fabric For Rows

Now between rows, stomp the grass down or cut it with the weed eater or mower and spread news paper between the rows of black fabric. Overlap the news paper over the top of the edge of the fabric. Water the news paper to make it moist and then apply saw dust, wood shavings or other form of mulch like bark, cut straw or hay, over the top of the news paper. Be sure to cover it completely.

Mulch and Newspaper Between Rows

Now you have a weed free gardening area for your plants to thrive.

Happy Gardening

I’m sure you’ve all watched the commercials about the Topsy Turvy and, if you haven’t already found out for yourself, wondered if they really work. When they first came out, I had already tried growing tomatoes upside down, in a 5 gallon bucket. The tests I did were nothing more than a complete joke and a waste of time and tomato plants. The measly little plants that came from growing upside down, finally produced two tiny little tomatoes on deformed looking tiny stems, where the plants that I had planted in the ground were beautiful, lush and full of tomatoes.

The only question in my mind was whether there was something different with the design of the actual Topsy Turvy. So this year, I managed to gain results with another test, but with actual Topsy Turvys and not my 5 gallon buckets.

During my tomato planting season, I had a huge amount of extra tomatoes, so I shared them with family and friends, so the results I am about to share are from plants that were planted at the same time mine were planted and have been grown only a few hundred feet away from mine.

As you can see, the container tomatoes, in the upright buckets are a bit stressed from our move, but they are doing beautifully. There are little tomatoes on nearly every single plant and some are so loaded with tomatoes, I’m wondering if there is a tomato food bank somewhere local I can donate some.

Container Tomatoes July 28, 2010

Now for the picture of the Topsy Turvy grown tomatoes. Amazingly, the upside down tomatoes look very similar to my previous test in the upside down 5 gallon buckets. The plants do not grow well upside down and as you can see, there are very few branches and so far, no tomatoes. The amount of energy it takes the plants to turn their branches upward, toward the sun, takes away from their overall production and growing season. Personally, I would never spend the money on a Topsy Turvy.

Topsy Turvy July 28, 2010

In searching the internet, I have read some reviews on the Topsy Turvy. The results were similar to mine, so why on Earth, would someone recommend these things when they deteriorate within the first year and they don’t hold enough water to keep them moist for even one day? You can bet you won’t find them hanging around my home in the near future!

Happy Gardening

If you chose to use tomato cages to support your tomatoes, then there are a few things that you need to do on a regular basis. While they are a simple fix for the support issues, they will quickly become unstable and unable to hold the weight of your large indeterminate tomato plants without being in danger of toppling over.

To begin with, due to the fact that tomatoes grow at such a quick pace, during the warm summer months, they need to be checked daily as they grow. What I mean by this is that they need to be trained to follow the cages upward as they grow. If branches are not pulled up over the rings, they can grow and actually split off from the main branch as they are forced up against the rings.

The pictures shown below give examples of branches that if left to grow as they are, the lower section will grow below the ring and the upper section will grow above the ring, thus splitting the two branches from one another. In order to prevent this, as the branches grow, they need to be carefully pulled above the ring and left to rest on the ring. They will then be supported by the nearest ring.

Tomato Branches

Tomato Branches

Another necessity is to support those beautiful big indeterminate tomatoes and their continued increasing weight. I find that the easiest method to do this is to use wooden slat material or even rebar. It only takes one stake to stabilize the cages. Simply weave it through the rings and down into the soil. Others can be added if needed, when some of these extra tall indeterminate tomatoes get up there in size. You can also tie the branches, that are heavy with those big beautiful tomatoes, to the stakes used for supporting the tomato cage.

Happy Gardening!

The task of watering a large garden, whether it be a vegetable or flower garden, becomes a daunting task. With busy schedules and trying to work daily tasks in, it becomes a difficult chore to remember and complete every day.

Last season, with so many plants to water and so little time to spare, I finally broke down and purchased a supposed “high end” water timer. I programmed it and reprogrammed it, changed batteries and programmed it again. It was such a disappointment and quite costly. It never did turn on with the timer and the only thing that actually worked was the override, which ran for two hours. So watering was two hours if we needed to go anywhere, whether we needed to water for that length of time or not. Not to mention, the company (which I will leave unnamed) would not back it up in any way.

After last season’s experience, I was a bit reluctant to purchase, when I spotted a 4 station water timer by Orbit. It came with the brass 4 way splice unit, which alone is over $14.00, so when the total of the whole timer (including 2 stations and ability to add 2 more stations) was less than half of what I paid for the unit I purchased last year, I decided to give it a try.

Though it takes a bit of programming, it’s pretty simple to figure out. You just need to follow the instructions, step-by-step. It’s WONDERFUL! I can’t even begin to express how much time and worry it has saved. It starts on time and runs it’s program perfectly! It takes 2 AA batteries and it’s simple to unplug the station in case you don’t need to water. It can be set to water daily, every other day, any specific day and so on. I really cannot boast enough about what an amazing system it is.

The nice thing is, you can water different sections of your yard at different intervals, even different days. One station can be set up for 1 hour, then the next station can start when that one stops, and so on. It’s a very powerful system for the price! What an incredible investment and time saver!

It was a great weekend for getting many of those wonderful heirloom tomatoes in the garden. Though I walked through some of my steps in my previous posts, I thought I would share my routine on transplanting those plants into the buckets.

After acquiring over 150 4 and 5 gallon white buckets, I began the process of drilling holes in the bottoms for drainage. After drilling a batch of buckets, I’m ready to start filling them up with planting medium. Each bucket receives 2 shovels full of a great organic soil mix with about 20% sand. Our soil tends to be heavy in the clay end of things, so the sand mix is something the plants seam to just love. After the shovels of soil mix, I placed a shovel of well aged horse manure in, then another 2 shovels of my soil mix. Now I add about one shovel of peat moss or sphagnum and mix the top ingredients together. I top it off with a sprinkle of bone meal and mix again. My buckets are now ready for planting.

I realize that many folks just love those husky short tomato plants. While I agree they look much healthier than the taller slim ones, I actually prefer transplanting the tall and more spindly ones and for a very good reason.

As I’ve mentioned, I like to trench my tomatoes when I plant in the ground, however planting in buckets doesn’t give me that option. It does, however, give me the option to plant deep. As long as the buckets have good drainage, they will grow roots all the way up to where the soil stops. So planting the husky, stubby plants doesn’t enable me to do this. So, if you’re working with spindly more tall and leggy plants, don’t fret, they will grow a wonderful root system if you enable them to do so.

So we’re off to planting. After choosing the tomatoes I want to plant, as you can see from figures 1, 2 and 3, I pinch off the lower leaves and branches, giving me a nice long stem, below the last branch.

Using my trowel, I dig a deep hole large enough around that my tomato will simply slip right into it. Gently, I take my potted tomato (I use drilled plastic cups, simply because they are cheap and smaller around, giving me more space per tray) squeeze the cup around the sides and slide the tomato out. When root bound, I like to carefully separate the roots a bit and then I slip the root ball down into the hole. Firm the soil in around the plant and cover the stem up past the last pinched off leaf or branch.

After transplanting, I give them a healthy watering, a feeding of fish emulsion and then let them go. I rarely have shock from transplanting and if I ever do, it’s typically from not being fully hardened off. Sometimes I tend to get excited about getting my hands in the dirt, so I’ll jump the gun a bit. Not to mention, here in the Pac NW, we make hay when the sun shines, cause if we don’t, we’ll drown trying.

I’m now up to these varieties that are planted out and enjoying the space…

Andes Paste, Banana, Baylor Paste, Bear Creek, Big Italian Plum, Bisignano #2, Black Aisberg, Black Elephant, Black Ethiopian, Black Oxheart, Black Pear PL, Black Russian, Black Star, Break O Day, Buckbees New 50 Day, Cherokee Chocolate, Cherokee Purple, Chico III, Chinese PL, Copia, Dads Barber Paste, De Barrao Black, Elfin, Giant Italian Paste, Giant Sicilian, Japanese Black Trifele, JD's Special C-Tex, Marglobe, Marizol Purple, Mexican Paste, Morado, Mortgage Lifter, Mule Team, Myona, Paul Robeson, Pink Accordian, Prudens Purple, Rento, Rio Grand, Romeo Paste, Sara Black, Super Sioux, Tim's Black Ruffles, Vorlon PL, Winsall RL and Wuhib,

I’ll update on varieties as I plant more, cause there are PLENTY more to get in buckets.

Some tomato plants really don't need staking, due to being bush type or determinate plants. However, when you grow some of the mid to late season heirloom tomatoes, which are, quite often, indeterminate or semi-determinate, you’ll find that the plants will grow to amazing heights and begin to sprawl all over the place.

So in order to keep those precious tomatoes up off the ground, we need to stake them up and train them to grow where we want them to. There are many reasons for staking and of those, first and foremost, is that it keeps your tomatoes in a smaller space rather than sprawling all over the ground. Another very important reason is that while keeping your tomatoes up off the ground, this keeps them cleaner and ground critters - wood lice, pill bugs, as well as rodents etc are less apt to nibble on them. It also prevents your tomato plants from retaining water beneath them and rotting the fruit before it's ripe. The other very important reason for staking is that when your tomatoes grow, they become heavy. Higher tomatoes can break branches from the plant. So if they are resting on or tied up to another support rather than your plant itself, you don't run the risk of losing that prized tomato.

There are a number of ways to do this, so I'll give you some ideas on the different methods.

Tomato Cages

Of course, if you used my soil warming technique, you should have a tomato cage or two. These round ringed cages are pretty simple to use, however they can be a bit flimsy to use alone. What we do is use a piece of rebar or a wood stake and weave down through the rings on one side, pushing the stake into the soil until it becomes sturdy. Sometimes this may require tapping the stake with a hammer or other tool. This will keep the tomato cage rigid and will keep it from falling over with the weight of your plants.

As your tomato plants grow, simply coax the branches up and over the wire rings.

Wood or Metal Poles

This is another method of staking that I use, usually when the tomato is too large to place a tomato cage over. Okay, so I’m admitting that my staking is sometimes neglected, but for a very good reason….I like doing other things besides staking. Anyway, I pick up slat material from the hardware store, in 4 foot lengths. It’s usually about $25 for 100 pcs. So it’s pretty reasonable in price. You can also use bamboo poles, which are strong and pretty reasonable in price, depending on where you purchase them and how many you are buying. The slat material can be purchased in single pcs for around $.45 each at the larger home improvement centers.

With this method, the branches will need to be tied or clipped to the stakes. When using bamboo rounds for staking, you can purchase plant clips that will hold the branch tightly against the pole. However, if you use the slats as I do, they are almost 2 inches wide, so you will need to use some form of tie.

To avoid damage to the branches, I like to use strips of either cotton sheets, torn into 1 inch strips, or 1 inch strips of torn cotton T-Shirt material. Either choice works well and depending on what I have around the house factors in which I use.

When tying the branches to the stake, always make sure the branch is only wrapped with the cotton strip, loosely and not a complete wrap. Then take the ends and wrap each end around the stake and tie on the opposing side of the tomato branch.

Ranch Fencing or Concrete Reinforcing Wire Tomato Cages

You can also use Ranch Fencing or concrete reinforcing wire, to build your own tomato cages. Just remember to find fencing that has large enough holes to get your tomatoes through. It comes in heights of 48 inches as well as taller and to use it, simply cut a piece about 36 – 37 inches long. This will make about a 12 inch circle to fit over your plant. Twist the cut ends together and create a circle. Place around your tomato plants. You’ll probably need some reinforcing sticks or bars to keep them upright, but they do work quite well and help to keep larger critters from munching on your precious tomatoes.

Wood Ladder Style Frames

Wood ladder folding style Tomato frames are unique. They actually form an A frame over the top of the tomato. They can be folded up at the end of the season and stored in a very small area. Mother Earth News has a nice how to on building them which is located here.

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