Tomato Trellis

Our garden is growing!  We are excited to have harvested our first zucchini of the season this morning!  The kale is doing fantastic, we have had several harvests from our plants so far, and are ready for another.  Last week we were even able to get a little sweet corn, and learned why it is best to start these plants outside; the growth is stunted and only a few of the kernels formed on the plant. 

We are also excited that our first signs of tomatoes are showing up on the vines!  We have already decided on a few improvements we would like to make for our garden next year. Today, however, we want to share with you our tomato trellis. Henry spent a good portion of Tuesday constructing the framework. 

Through our research, as we are continually trying to increase our tomato production, we learned a few things about how tomato plants grow. 

First and foremost that many tomato plants can grow up to 10 feet or taller when cultivated properly.  These plants are called indeterminates, as there isn't a specific hight measurement of the full grown plant. They will continue to grow and bear fruit as long as they have space and support, or at least until a frost comes at the end of the season. This explains the height of the framework. The ropes that extend from the top are fastened to pvc pipes at the bottom near the plants roots. The plant is wrapped around the rope as its support system, this replaces the tomato cage.  The rope looped at the top is to provide slack when needed. 

As the plant grows it produces what are called suckers between each fork of the branches. These suckers are actually secondary plants forming on the original stem, and take much of the nutrients from fruit production. These can easily be removed to promote better growth in the original plants. In place of some of the plants we lost we are also cultivating some of the suckers that we pulled from the main stems to get root systems. We will then plant them in the openings with the rest. 

We love tomatoes, and have yet to be able to produce as many as we eat throughout the year.  We are hoping this year we will get a little closer to this goal. 

To add to the garden update, here are a few pictures of our back garden to show how much it has grown over the last few weeks. The weather has been great, and the plants are loving it!

Note: This is glass corn, a decorative hybrid that we planted in the backyard, the sweet corn is in the front. 

Our only surviving cucumber plant, we since trained it up onto the trellace, and sweet peas are growing along the other side. 

The green beans are growing along the back of the glass corn. 

We still have a little space to fill, and will be putting some more plants out in the next few weeks for a late start. We will get more pictures from the front next time. 

Yet Another Garden Update

It's been a while since we've posted about our garden. Despite letting the time slip away, we have had a few eventful moments with our veggies. Gardening, it seems, is full of difficulty and disappointment. Through all of the excitement of planting, inevitably things find a way of going wrong. We have had some discouragement in the last month, and yet we have discovered that life has a way of pushing through the difficulties. 

When we first got everything planted we were excited to finally have everything in the ground. The plants were healthy, and we were ready to see them grow. 

 

It looked great, but this was not to last. Before long the bugs and bunnies started eating our crops. Rabbits snuck under the fence to nibble our pepper plants, we hadn't realized they had such an affinity for peppers. Our squash and cucumbers soon were decimated by insects that attacked the stems. Strangely, though there was obvious damage to the stems near the roots, the squash continued to grow. Then we had a cold snap hit overnight, and by midday it was obvious that many of our plants were dying; it seemed we would have to start all over again... 

Disappointed, as all of our plants in the back apart from the kale needed replacing, we focused for a few weeks on the Microgreens indoors. After a couple of weeks, however, some of our original plants decided to make a comeback. Some of the seeds were also beginning to grow. 

And wow, the kale has been fantastic!  This picture is after harvesting and eating a good amount twice last week. 

Not everything has come back, but We are amazed at how much those that did fought to make it. We are also very grateful to our kind neighbors who provided us with a few of their extra tomato, pepper, and basil plants to replace those that didn't make it. 

We are learning so much this year. It is not always easy as we work toward our goals of becoming self sufficient and self sustaining. There are a lot of road blocks and barriers that we are learning to navigate, and many that our circumstances are not yet allowing for. We are grateful for the opportunity to learn and work toward these goals, and the encouragement we have received as we press forward. 

Thank you for reading. We hope sharing our experiments with you is helping encourage you to keep moving forward as you work on your own goals.