First Bloom: Tomato cherry plant

Here is the first bloom of the Red and Yellow Pear Blend Cherry Tomatoes. The bloom(s) looks a bit odd as if it has two heads :/, consisting of layered, elongated, triangular shaped petals that will unfold slowly layer by layer to eventually open up completely.

Thinning The Tomato Plants

Oh goodness, here we go again.  As my tomato seedlings have reached about 2-inches tall it's time to thin them out (as in spread them out), don't want them fighting for space now do we. I get flashback attacks of the time not that long ago when I had to thin out the lettuce bed, trembling sweaty hands and heart racing. The experience was absolutely nerve racking but it turned out pretty well, only lost two little lettuce seedlings that hated me enough for it to commit suicide. The lettuce seedlings were quite a bit smaller than these 2-inch tall seedlings so I figure I should do fine.

Currently the tomato seedlings are in a state of agitation (as pictured above), they're like little children who don't want to share.  So the goal is to thin them out so they all can have their own little space (as seen below).

1st step, digging out the seedlings.  With my spade in hand I dug deep and far away from the seedlings to remove them from the ground without harming the roots in any way.  I set the seedlings still in their original soil aside and proceeded to the 2nd step, digging new holes in the plant bed for the seedlings' new home, one hole for every seedling, all holes 1.5-ft apart from eachother.

3rd step, I then went on to what I think is the most difficult part of thinning out any plant bed, separating the seedlings.  The roots are quite fragile and so being ginger and patient when separating the whole plant (roots and all) is key.  The leaves if harmed will grow back, but the roots if harmed will kill the entire plant.  I think I may have lost one tomato seedling during this process but 1 out 5 isn't so bad, right?

4th step, I placed individual seedlings in the freshly dug holes (one seedling per hole) with fresh soil and covered with fresh soil so that the root was well below the soil line but not so far down that the soil line was too far up the seedling stem.

Now you can see how much happier the tomato seedlings are in their own little space (pictured above).  

I also felt that this was a very good time to put in some structural support for the tomatos which would eventually get about 6-ft tall (I sure do hope they survive to make it that high- that would be exciting!). I figure it would be more difficult for me to put in some kind of support when the plants are bigger as their roots would be longer and thus easier to harm.  Since I have limited supplies I decided to use this circular support for three of the tomato plants, the idea is that (and I hope this works) the tomato plants can grow on each side of the circle, seems pretty iffy but I'm 80% sure it'll work.

So, now with my second thinning experience behind me I'm a pro, right?

Beautiful Tomato True Leaves

I love watching the true leaves of a tomato grow (hear me talk like a pro- pshaw!  Just for your info this is only the second time I've grown tomatos) but the true leaves are indeed beautiful.  So far they've been the prettiest true leaves I've seen growing from a vegetable plant that sprouts such average looking seed leaves.  The seed leaves are the two elongated leaves while the true leaves almost look like oak leaves.

Hello Little Purple Tomato Seedling!

The first seedling of a purple tomato plant that I planted a week ago!  This will be my second time ever to grow tomatoes, I enjoyed it very much the first time, especially since it was the only plant out of 11 that survived, even so I'm not counting on it being easy- growing and keeping plants alive has never really been my forte, but of course I still do love it and am try try trying my best to learn from my mistakes.

Aint she a beauty with her dark red stem and ultra green seed leaves?!

Planting Tomatoes In A Tub

Tomato and I go way back, it was the only vegetable kind enough to let go of it's ego so that I could feel more confident in myself when it came to gardening.  Tomato was the only vegetable that survived out of many in my old apartment, it became quite bushy and strong and yielded many a great sweet red tomatoes.  So here I am again planting tomatoes but this time in my new garden and in an old bathtub no less!  This should be interesting.

It took a littles less than half my Sunday and this includes the time it took to pick up tomato seeds from Whole Foods and the organic ground soil from Home Depot.

When I finally had the tub in place I filled the bottom up with loose rocks that were small and medium in size for proper drainage, there is one large drain hole on one side of the tub but I figured better safe than sorry, I also took the time to prop up the tub just a bit on one side so that any excess water could run out through the drain hole on the other side of the tub, the dirt ground wasn't nearly as level as I would have liked it to be.

I filled the tub up with a mixture of sandy dirt and the organic ground soil, a mixture of roughly 1/2 and 1/2.  Once the tub was filled, I watered the soil down, planted my seeds (one on each side of the stick), 3 seeds per hole (a total of 6 seeds in 2 holes), misted the top layer and began thinking of security measures against birds, slugs and other creeping pests.

While at the gardening store I ran across a large roll called Bird Block which basically is a flexible plastic kind of netting, easy to cut with scissors and easy to fold.  I used this bird block netting to cover the top of the tub weighing it down on all four corners with bricks, so far it's worked really well and I do just love it, before the Bird Block I was using something very similar that was made of wire which made it infinitely much harder to handle.

One of the main reasons I planted the tomatoes in the tub is that it just makes it that much easier from keeping the growing plants away from ground pests, indeed I'm not expected to shield it from every kind of bug, that would just be impossible, but the more bugs and slugs I can keep away from it the better.

As you already know the tub has a drain hole on one side which meant that slugs (fastly becoming my nemesis) can still get into the tub soil, so as a precautionary measure (call me totally paranoid), I placed a brick next to the exposed hole which is located at the bottom of the tub near the ground, the water will still be able to drain but hopefully the slugs wont be able to find their way in.