growing tomatoes in pots

Making Dirt

I grow tomatoes in pots. That’s the only way to succeed with them in my garden. I wrote a series of posts about that last year.

This year, I bought six new, larger pots for tomato plants (which are still ridiculously small, due to our cool spring).

My usual practice is to refresh last year’s soil by dumping each pot (which has been sitting by the garden shed since last fall) into a wheelbarrow. I add bagged manure (which purports to be from cattle, steer, sheep, or mushrooms–haha, that’s a joke; I know mushrooms don’t actually produce it!) and my own compost, along with extras such as lime and fertilizer. Then I stir up the mixture with a spade, and when it’s uniformly mixed, I refill the pots.

The new pots, of course, were empty. And this year I have twelve tomato plants instead of the usual eight or nine. I needed more soil.

Digging up the garden wasn’t an option, so I had to make more dirt.

I used my established technique of enhancing the soil from last year’s tomato pots, but I also rounded up a few extra pots whose occupants had died or been dispatched, and incorporated that soil as well. But, some will ask, what about evil fungi or other toxins that may have killed those plants? Yes, that dirt might harbour such things, but I was going to dilute it with other stuff, so the risk was worth taking.

The “other stuff” was large amounts of compost and several bags of manure. Sheep manure this time. (To be honest, the stuff I dump out of those bags into the wheelbarrow has only a passing resemblance to actual poop expelled by whatever creature is named on the bag. Okay, it’s also labelled “composted” and “deodorized.” I suspect that really means the manure has been mixed with a good deal of other material, such as straw or sawdust. No matter, though, it refreshes and enhances the old soil from the pots.)

Prepping soil for tomatoes, wheelbarrow, compost and sheep manure

Amazingly enough, after filling the six new pots, I still had soil from six of last year’s tomato pots and two sacks of sheep manure, not to mention a good supply of compost. More than enough. The garden gods’ equivalent of loaves and fishes?

Of course the soil is fluffed up in the enhancement process, so I will probably have to top up the pots at planting time.

With luck, by late summer there will be tomatoes!

Growing Tomatoes, Part 2

Once frost is out of the question and night temperatures don’t fall much below 10C (50F), it’s safe to put the young tomato plants into their permanent spots. In my case, that’s the biggest plastic pots I can get my hands on–the kind nurseries use for young trees and larger shrubs. This year I have nine pots.

Tomato plants in big pots mid May — *Three of the nine*

A week or two before transplant day, I prepare a soil mix that consists of the contents of last year’s tomato pots and a generous helping of fresh compost plus bagged manure. I also add lime, because tomatoes prefer a soil with a pH close to neutral, and mine is somewhat acid. Too acid a soil leads to a calcium deficiency which produces blossom end rot.

My plants are of the indeterminate type, which means they keep growing indefinitely, unlike the determinate or bush types. The plants were already starting to grow tiny new shoots in the leaf axils when I planted them. I remove those. Left alone, they would turn into additional stems. It makes no sense to let potted tomatoes grow extra stems, but three stems per plant may be manageable in plants grown in the ground.

In any case, the plants will need to be supported as they grow, which means cages or stakes. Cages are preferable for my pot-grown tomatoes, since the pots sit on the asphalt driveway. Plants in the ground may be staked–3 or 4 stout stakes per plant with twine wrapped around them. In my experience, mature plants that have set fruit always get unwieldy and need extra supports for their last month or so.

But that’s in the future for these plants. For the next few weeks, all I have to do is supply water, remove those unwanted leaf axil shoots, and wait for the plants to produce flowers.

Other posts in this series:
Part 1
Part 3
Part 4

The Garden in 2014: a backward look at year’s end

The year began with a seriously cold period in early February that caused great anxiety in the gardener, who hadn’t provided wraps and covers for the most tender plants. Fretting lasted well into spring. Did the last Gaura lindheimeri perish? Yes. What about Convolvulus sabatius, the charming blue relative of the hated bindweed? For a long time it seemed so, but on the first of June a sprout emerged.

Convolvulus sabatius in September 2013

After putting on a pleasing show in 2013 the blue poppies failed to bloom. Lots of leaves, no flower stalks. Was it because of the cold in February, which delayed sprouting out? Or the gardener’s failure to supply extra nutrients, especially considering that the plants grow on top of the roots of a large magnolia. These poppies refuse to compete with roots. They would rather die, and there’s every chance they will not appear next spring.

Not this year!

Then came a warm, dry summer. Not hot, but definitely warm. It was a great summer for tomatoes. By September the ten plants in large pots were producing well — nice ripe tomatoes.

Perfect Tomatoes!

Roses did well too — the anonymous pinky-white climber slung over one of the Norway maples, and even Fragrant Cloud, which got deer-chomped in 2013.

Climbing rose in maple

Rose “Fragrant Cloud”

Deer were not much of a factor this year, after being a huge one in 2012 and 2013. The flimsy deer fence put up at their preferred entry point did the trick, but more fundamentally this area seems no longer to be on their route. Even so, a couple of hostas, formerly large and prosperous, were not helped by being chomped just as they were dealing with what must be a fresh invasion of maple roots into their bed.

Asters did especially well, especially the two large clumps of a purple variety (name unknown) in the front garden.

One of the better scenes in the front garden this year

In late September was the Coming of the Dog — Nelly the Newfoundland puppy.

The back garden is now a maze of small fences intended to prevent casual incursions. They seem to be working, but give the place an odd look. It remains to be seen how garden work will go in the vicinity of these barriers.

But the Chinese witch hazel (Hamamelis mollis) has set more buds than it has ever managed to before. Some of them are preparing to open, unfurling threads of yellow.