The Tomato Garden

This has nothing to do with tomatoes or peppers or anything, but it's pretty.

This time of year is just crazy busy with getting the garden ready to plant, planting the garden and taking care of it once things are planted! We finally got the tomato/pepper bed ready and the tomatoes and peppers planted.

This garden is on the south side of the house so that the plants are protected from the wind and they get the benefit of reflected heat at night. The bricks heat up during the day, then release the heat at night to keep the plants warm.

We've added many, many wheelbarrow loads of compost to this bed over the years - at least a million loads - and it's starting to pay off. Years ago, we took out as much of the old dirt as we could and just add more compost every year.

So in the spring, Walt spades up the garden - it's lots better but still not great soil, so it's easier to loosen it with a shovel before tilling.

Then we cover it in compost, and till it in. We still have dirt clods, but they are smaller every year and the soil works up easier every year.

I adjust the drip lines. They are hooked up to a timer on a faucet. This way I can monitor the amount of water each plant receives.

Then I plant the tomatoes and peppers. This is always fraught with anxiety. The day I planted them, it was a blast furnace 90 degrees on that side of the house. The next day, it was a frigid 45 degrees. In Cheyenne, it can be 95 degrees on Memorial Day, or it can snow. So I take my chances. I can always cover them if it doesn't get too cold. And that actually helps cut down on the shock of transplanting - to have it a bit cooler after they are planted.

I started all the tomatoes and peppers from seed in the house back in March. I've found, over the years, that I really like individual peat pots. I tried coir pots this year, and they are ok, but I wasn't that impressed. So I'll stick with peat pots. Then I use a grow light and keep it on from early morning to late evening. The plants are also in a big sunny window so they get lots of light.

Still, the plants get pretty leggy by late May, so I'm anxious to get them in the ground. I'm also anxious to reclaim the sun room.

I plant the tomatoes right up next to the trellis then tie them with green plant ties - the plastic kind, not metal. I put the tomatoes fairly close together. They always do well and we get from 100 - 150 pounds of tomatoes every year. I always start more tomatoes than I can possibly plant - the gardener is ever optimistic, as you know - because I want to try so many varieties. I've tried everything from your basic Early Girl (which do well) to more heirloom varieties like Brandywine, Paul Robeson, Black Truffle. They've always done well too.

Then the peppers go in front of the tomatoes. Again, I start way more than I have room for, but I love peppers and we eat them all. Peppers need lots of hot weather to grow. I plant everything from beautiful purple mild Island peppers to nice hot Serrano. The hotter the pepper, the longer they take to grow. So it's dicey to plant Serrano or Jalepeno peppers in Cheyenne, but we usually get lots of them.

Notice that the peppers are tied to a stake. That's to protect them from the Cheyenne wind. Which only blows in July, March, September, May, February, June, October, and August. And it blows at some other times too.

In front of everything goes cilantro. Of course! If you plant tomatoes and peppers, you need cilantro to make fresh salsa and pico de gallo. Cilantro can be grown anywhere. Really. And it sends little seeds out everywhere. You can toss out a bunch of seeds in the fall and have cilantro early in the spring. We've already been picking cilantro from some volunteer plants from last year.

I also put in some marigold seeds to give the garden some color in the late summer.

After planting everything, I mow the lawn with the grass catcher on. Then I mulch around all the new plants - this helps the roots stay cool, keeps down the weeds and conserves moisture. Like I say - it gets pretty warm by that brick wall all day. And notice the little boards in the garden? Those are to stand on so I don't stand on the soil. I don't want to compact the soil around the plants, so the little boards come in handy for picking tomatoes, or tying them up as the summer goes along.

I love fresh, plump, red, juicy, tart or sweet, full of flavor homegrown tomatoes. So all this work is well worth it!

These are from last August.