My first attempt at starting tomatoes this year was a complete failure. We planted the seeds in the ground in the greenhouse, as I did a few years ago when I was not able to buy potting mix because of the lockdown. When they germinated, we pricked them out and put them in a mixture of potting soil and compost that I bought from a department store in town–as I have done every year for five years. This year, they didn’t grow. After about five weeks, when I realized they had barely grown since transplanting, I transplanted them again, into larger pots. Two or three weeks later, they still hadn’t grown at all. By then, I had started some new seeds. When a friend mailed me her extra starts, I sadly dumped every one of the nearly 300 tomato plants that refused to grow and were, in fact, dying. This is what they looked like at that point, two months nearly to the day after sowing the seeds.
This is the new ones that I started the second week of October. By the third week of November, they were nearly all about 5 inches tall, growing fast and ready to put in the ground. Our tomato crop will be late this year, but hopefully we’ll get one.
I started a lot of beetroot! Quite a few of them got covered up with the mulch they were transplanted into in the garden, though. We have a resident weka who spends its nights throwing mulch around, probably searching for slugs and such underneath. What a nuisance!
When James rented the digger to work at Simon’s house, he took advantage of having it to do a couple of jobs here. This was the first; he had Elijah dig a hole for a septic tank for the garden sink. They dug the hole and then James dropped in a barrel which he had cut both ends off of. He covered it with plywood and some boards and ran the drain into it, then covered it again. It is wonderful to be able to use that sink without getting my feet wet and without having a perpetual mud puddle there.
This was the other job, and it was a sad one. Our gorgeous tulip magnolia died, so he dug it out. Now, instead of a beautiful tree with branches perfect for the children to climb in, we have an ugly hole. We’re planning to plant grass there, and eventually build a swing. I won’t miss the shade on my garden, but we do miss the tree.
Interesting to see the tomatoes failing to grow once potted up in commercial mix. I get garden products from Wally’s Enterprises and in one of his weekly newsletters he advises only using Daltons or Oderings mixes because they are the only mixes that do not include material that may have been sprayed with herbicides and that herbicide residues may be in the mix. I had never thought of this, but it makes sense and could explain why the seedlings died and why some plants struggle after potting up
I am guessing that is what happened. On my second try, I used Warehouse potting mix and mushroom compost from the local nursery, and those plants grew very well.
I see that Maria is learning to use a digger! Maybe she has heard that one of her cousins here uses a roller/compactor, and another is learning to use a skidsteer? You never know what skills you may need!