Given our 7 foot fence around the yard, have to rule out deer…my best guess is a raccoon scaling the fence for a snack. Probably the same one who decided that my first tomato looked too good to ripen to save for seeds and pulled the branch off. It was nice enough to leave the green ones on the fine which I have hung up on my garage where…
This is an unfortunately record, being the latest I have gotten my first ripe tomato. In case if anyone was wondering, this was on the 1 gallon milk carton upside down garden planter.
Lots of blossoms, still waiting for that first fruit, hopefully our warmer weather coming this week helps out…
When I mention I grow tomatoes upside down many people ask me, “Why don’t you grow tomatoes in the ground?” The surprise answer is, I do grow both in the ground and in the air. The picture above shows my current tomato plants I am growing in the one location with sufficient sunlight to grow them, which might explain the reason why I look alternate options for adding more…
I wanted to see if (how much) my yields varied by allowing more volume of dirt in my homemade tomato planter, so I made this variation with the same type and size “Husky Cherry” seedling I am using in my 2-liter planter version. The build for this one is also very simple: I started with an organic milk carton given it was already opaque, but if you have the…
Though my first attempt at an upside down tomato planter worked out great, I have a habit of forgetting to water the plants everyday. More commonly when we have decent rains when only the hanging tomato planters need to be watered. So this year I have modified my design a little to make this a little easier. As a bonus you can create this new version much quicker and…
I decided to take the day off to catch up on some things at home and as I ended up outside of course I went right to the garden. We have seen a few warm days here in the Northwest and in my area we haven’t dipped under 40 degrees at night so seemed like a good time to plant a few of my tomatoes spending their time this…
Right about now the temperatures outside should be increasing and I should be thinking about start hardening off my summer plants over the next few weeks. Unfortunately we seeing hail the past few days along with some pretty cold nights. Looks like even though I was fairly pessimistic about my last frost date I may have another battle of tomatoes/peppers over taking the growbox or bring them out into…
If you head over to Campbell’s Help Grow Your Soup site you can get some free tomato seeds and while you are at it vote for a barn which Campbell’s will give $250,000 to restore. So free seeds for you and one dollar for a barn restoration.
Big moment this week, I was able to make salsa entirely from ingredients. I normally don’t use cherry/grape tomatoes for salsa but my Early Girls are not that early this year and have not quite turned red. CVG Garden Salsa Recipe 2-3 tomatoes (or 12-15 cherry/grape tomatoes) 2 cloves garlic 1 small onion green onion 5 sprigs of cilantro tablespoon vinegar 1 jalapeno pepper (seeded) sugar Directions: Coarsely chop…
When your fruiting plants are flowering and bearing fruit this is a good time to give them a little extra boost. Though you don’t want to throw any old fertilizer at them at this point. You want them to get the nutrients they need to produce high yields of produce, though you don’t want to shock them with an abundance of nitrogen to stimulate new vegetative growth when you…
Every time my daughter sees the upside down tomato planter (Topsy Turvy) commercial on TV she asks when we can grow tomatoes upside down. I am definitely not one to pay $15 to $20 to buy one of these things in the store when I could have the fun of making my own for much less money. Though this has been commercialized recently, the concept growing plants upside down is…