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I took the opportunity to plant tomatoes at two different locations that I help maintain here in Hocking.   My target date for tomato planting is usually around Memorial Day.   That avoids almost any chance of a late frost as well as allows the critical soil warming tomatoes need.  Tomato plants will stop uptake of nutrients from their roots if temps are too low.   That is also why I told folks to hold off planting in April even though we had some great weather.   The past week had very high temps for most of the week(perfect to warm soil), then moderate temps with rain for the ten days following.  Perfect to plant and then have a good source of water for the new transplants.

First up was the Children’s Educational Garden here at the fairgrounds.  Here is the spot:

Four raised beds filled with compost. Great sun exposure, up against chain link fence.

Last year I planted a couple cherry tomatoes and then trellised them along the fence.  It worked great.  I tied the vines horizontally in a modified espalier technique.  It allowed tremendous production and I was able to keep the vines at kid level so they could easily harvest.

Building on that I started seedlings for six different colors of cherry tomato in my seed start grow station.  That will give us way more that can possibly be eaten but I was looking for a colorful effect.   I am a little worried about following tomatoes with tomatoes in back to back years and not following correct rotation.  I will only be able to do an every other year rotate.  I do heavily mulch and we reapply compost.  I will keep a close eye for disease.  Cherry tomatoes have shown they can out grow the blight so I am not super worried.

L -> R: White, Red, Chocolate, Orange, Green and Yellow.

The mulch is mission critical.  It smothers weeds, keeps the soil cool(not cold), prevents moisture loss as well as provides a barrier to the fungal spores in the soil that splash on the leaves and cause most of the tomato diseases.  That is why I had to wait until the soil warmed.  The mulch would have slowed warm up.

Next up The Urban Farm:

We are planning to use 2 of our 6 beds in tomatoes.  One of each of the two different growing media.  I want to see how they do in comparison.  The trellis method here is different.  I am using cattle panel that are zip tied into a steep triangle.  This will allow easy harvest and the panel will last years.

dark soil is a mark of lots of organic matter.

Tomatoes are one of the only plants that should be buried deeper than where they were growing in their container.  This is because they will grow roots off the stem below the ground which makes a stronger plant. I pinched off the lower branches and leaves and planted them in 10 inch deep holes.  Then comes the mulch.  I put about 3-4 inches deep hay around the plants.  I will add more as the plants grow.

14 plants per bed, 28 tomatoes total.

The asphalt next to the right side bed will keep the heat in.  This might hurt the plant in high summer heat.  I put cherry tomatoes in that bed as they do less blossom drop due to heat.  Now I just need to get my home plants in.

It is amazing to me to see the old pictures of when we first started the raised beds.

Now we have some fertile growing media and are in full swing for spring harvest.  The cover crops have been terminated and mowed and are getting ready for tomatoes, beans, and peppers.  It is still too early to plant those, but not too early to get the space ready to go.

I got the trellis up for the sugar snaps and if the deer do not eat them we will have a fine harvest.  I am using cattle panel as my trellis as it will last for many seasons.  I am going to do the same when I trellis the tomatoes.  I mulched with hay to keep the weeds down and the soil moist for this cool season crop

Carrots take quite some time to germinate and get started but they are coming on now and will be part of the produce boxes for the seniors in a month or two.  I will start lots more later in the season.

Senior Farmer’s Market voucher season starts this week and I am hoping to add radishes to the spinach, lettuce and broccoli.

So my last post back on April 2nd showed snow on the raised beds.   We had planted about 40 or so transplants to take advantage of an early warm up then put some row cover season extension over the plants for protection.  Lettuce and broccoli are generally cold tolerant but the weather was in the teens for an extended period of time plus I did not have time to set my low tunnel up correctly so I was thinking we would have some loss.  And we did.  But not too bad.

First week of April after hard long hard freeze period

No worries.  We pulled dead plants and put in new ones.  That is why you have a seed start grow station at your house and you plant every two weeks.  Having a dozen plants ready each week or two ensures a steady stream of produce.  We had nice weather with decent rainfall and it shows.

Here is that same bed a couple weeks later.

Lettuce is interplanted with broccoli and cauliflower.  We will harvest the largest heads to allow the smaller heads to get bigger as the broccoli and cauliflower grow to maturity.  We have about 30 heads of lettuce going in a separate part of the farm for later on.

I need to find a few hours this week to work at the farm.  The peas are coming up and if the bunnies and deer do not eat them they will need a trellis in a week or two.  Targeted harvest for sugar snap peas is early June.

So,  back on February 26th, I did a post on how we had started planting at the farm.  I had started a ton of seedlings for various seed starting classes and they needed to get into the ground.  The weather had been beautiful which was not typical for late winter around here.

Then we got some actual winter.  Sam and I put row cover over the seedlings and then doubled up on it for further season extension weather protection.  If it had been spinach under the cover I would have had zero worries but baby lettuce and baby broccoli do not tolerate multiple days in the teens, even under cover so we lost about 25% of the plants from the cold snap. It did not help that I did not have time to put hoops under the cover.  That would have held the fabric up higher and helped the microclimate.  It did help that I had planted right next to the driveway so the asphalt would soak up and release heat locally.

No worries.  The best part of having your own seed starting grow station is the ability to have plants ready to go into the ground every two weeks.  We had started dozens more lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower seeds.  I figured it would take me hours to plant but then Sam and a bunch of her co-workers at The Southeast Ohio Regional Kitchen came out with her and we planted everything plus turned over two more beds of cover crop in an hours.  Big Thanks to them!!!

We filled the whole bed and replaced any dead planting.  Started more under the lights as well.

Covered them up and had some nice rain a couple days later.  I will check on them this week.  Cover will stay to protect for deer plus we have some cold nights still.

Speaking of cover crop the rye is going like crazy and will take off towards three and four feet tall here shortly.

(gallery pic credits: Naomi S.)