Pruning tomatoes: look for the “Y”

Hey there, SuperKasey!  How the hell is life?  It’s nice to hear from you about your strawberries, but we’re missing you!  I’m missing you, I mean.  I know life gets busy, but…Come back, Shane, come back!

Now to tomatoes.

Tomatoes are very important to me.  I use them in sauces and dishes all the time.  I’ve considered getting a dehydrator to make sun-dried tomatoes, too.  I love them in salads, pastas or as a solo snack.

I have two varieties of tomatoes in my garden.  I have one beefeater and one mortgage lifter.  Both are heirloom tomato plants, which means that they come from a long line of successful plants, like a produce dynasty or something.

My sister and brother-in-law visited this past weekend, and they had some advice for maintaining and pruning tomatoes.  They are both wildlife biologists and have a very large garden in their back yard in Kentucky.  Their soil is mostly clay, but they grow LOTS and do a lot of canning and jarring and all that stuff that seems like far too much work to me.

A thorough update and overview of my efforts so far

SUPERKASEY!  We are now nearly two months into our little competition, and I hope you are feeling as good about this as I am.  Because, uh, you know.  They say it’s my year.

Whatever that means.

I wanted to drop you a general update on the goings-on in my garden.  Here is how things are looking now:

Pest Control (The Glory of Marigolds)

Hello BraceKyle,

I’m glad to read that everything is going so well! Your note reminded me of a time you came to visit and we were getting ready to go out. You found me in the veggie garden, my hair all over in the place in my nice summer dress and looked at me so quizzically. Do you remember that?

I was picturing you in your suit in the yard and feel like the understanding is there now.

Now to your concerns on pest control.

Seeds are sprouting, buds are blooming

Good evening, SuperKasey.  Your recent post about which seeds to buy was educational.  I knew there was a reason to not buy those seed packets I see at the super stores.  So, do you collect seeds from the produce you pull, then?  That seems like a painstaking task.

I am now sitting here in my suit and tie after a board meeting from work.  I couldn’t be happier about stopping by my garden, seeing all the little things sprouting out of the ground and getting my dress pants dirty to thin things out a bit.

Guess what?  When you plant things and give them water and good soil, they grow!  Like these radishes:

Plants and seeds and MUTANTS!

Hey BraceKyle,

Welcome to the society of dirty knees!

The weather is finally warming up here, and so I can actually begin to think about planting. Thank goodness!

I’m doing a mixture of seedlings and plants as well.  What you said is true. Most one-time harvests with little or no firm shoot goes straight into the ground (i.e. lettuce, carrots, onions, etc). The trick is having good seeds to plant.

My first planting 2K10!

Yo, SuperKasey.  Greetings from the year 2K10.  BraceKyle has officially planted things.

Double-take-say-whaaaat?

It is hard for even me to believe.  Hard to believe, also, that I just referred to myself in third person.

By seed or by plant

Hello, SuperKasey!  How is Chicago?  Windy enough for you?

This post is not about dirt.  Okay?  Stop giving me guff over my posts about dirt.  THE DIRT IS IMPORTANT!

So, as I dive into this whole shebang, I’m thinking about whether ’tis better to plant by seed or from a plant.

I hear pros and cons from both sides of the aisle, so to speak, and I think that several considerations must be undertaken.

Dirty deeds done dirt cheap

Hello, SuperKasey.  As you can tell by the title of this post, I’m struggling to find witty things to say about dirt!  It is dirt.  There’s little wit to be had.

I’ve now (with lots of help from my father) spread the dirt in my raised bed, in the yard and in a few containers.

I ended up going with 3 cubic yards of soil even though I only needed 1.8.  I used some to pack around the little gaps at the base of the raised bed in hopes that the soil won’t all just wash out through these gaps.

BraceKyle’s garden: an introduction

Greetings, SuperKasey!  I’m ready to tackle this endeavor like Helen Keller tackled speaking and reading and writing and everything else she did.  Really, I’m just excited about the project, as I imagine Helen Keller was about much of life. (Disclaimer: Helen Keller is one of my personal idols; I mean no disrespect.)

So, our endeavor.  As I understand it, our aim here is to maintain separate (but equal?) gardens hundreds of miles apart (you in Chicago, I in St. Louis) though in the same general region of the US of A and to measure our own results.  Yes?