Garden & Landscaping Preparations
It’s almost time to begin sowing those seeds, ladies! Weeks before the planting season, I request my favorite seed catalogue from “Gurney’s” and pore over it as some women do shoe advertisements.
Visions of green beans, spinach and tomatoes are dancing in my head.
I even make an excel spreadsheet of what I hope to buy, determine the planting date, harvest date and if it’s better to buy the full plant or the seeds.
It gets pretty technical, but I love a good excel spreadsheet-reminds me of my accounting days….awe…
I narrow down my needs vs. wants using a system of highlighting, page marking and price comparison shopping. Tomatoes are the most difficult thing for me to narrow down. I could plant every variety that Oklahoma allows and still not have enough.
The tabs at the top are rearranged and my poor Biceps has to hear about the latest string bean that sounds interesting over and over.
This year, I’m going to plant a cover crop. I thought I would use a winter rye-but have decided to go with a clover. A cover crop is helpful to prevent erosion over the winter/spring season and also provides green manure for next year’s garden.
Also, this year we are going to finally landscape the naked front of our house. I would love to have an almond tree, several types of grasses, lavender, and two large oak trees out front.
It would look something like this if a second grader got ahold of markers and my computer screen.
Now, to just get Biceps on board with all of this. I think a romantic dinner, a massage and a discussion of seedlings, plants and trees are in his future….
I had a dream that we moved to a place with a bigger yard and I realized I could plant a garden… hmmm, is spring on its way maybe?
And boys are such suckers for our feminine wiles, aren’t they?
Gwen-
Don’t I know about the boy’s weakness…ehheheh…..
Hey, Rebekah! May I offer a tomato “like”? Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes. Have you tried them? I think our “zones” might be similar & we love them. Also, have you seen the book “Vertical Gardening” by Derek Fell? Some great ideas and information.
According to the almanac – today is a good day to plant lettuce!
Have a great day!
Thank you Janice! I can’t wait to check out the Vertical Gardening book. Sounds space saving and intriguing!
I haven’t tried the Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes. Do you buy the seeds or the plants-and where? Thanks!
Hey, Rebekah! I purchased my Sweet 100 plants last year from Westlakes, a smaller hardware store here in Spfd,MO. I have seen them at Lowe’s & sometimes their plants are in good shape if the weather hasn’t turned cold after they arrived at the store. I hope you get to try them! I put mine in big plastic tubs which makes it easier for me to control watering and they always seem to produce plenty for us w/ some to share.
Have a great weekend!
Hello, happened upon your page, and wanted to leave a comment and a couple of suggestions… We grow an extensive garden every year, including a lot of tomatoes. We stopped growing Romas a while ago because we couldn’t find any that we really liked the taste of. For general eating, we grow Ace 55s and Early Girls. But what you’d probably be most interested in are Sun Golds. They’re, by far, the best cherry tomato I have ever grown. Supersweet 100s are okay, but once you try Sun Golds, you’ll be addicted, I promise.
Good luck with your garden this year!
Thanks, Eric. I am definitely taking in all of the advice and can’t wait to try something new out each year. I love tomatoes, and frankly, can never have enough!
Right with you on that. Not much beats a fresh tomato from the garden. 🙂 Do you do any canning with the tomatoes, or are they going to be primarily for eating?
We ate them all last year-we are such little tomato pigs! I couldn’t make bruschetta fast enough, nor could I ever add too many cherry tomatoes to our salads. I suppose I did can some when I made salsa. Hopefully this year, our crop will produce a little more and I will be able to stew & can some of them-perhaps even make some tomato soup!
The Ace and Early Girls have been really heavy producers for us every year. They get 6-8′ tall every year. I haven’t done any tomato soup with them yet, that sounds like a great idea for this year.
What are you using to support your tomato plants? I totally underestimated the weight of the branches and had to do some serious jimmy rigging….
We use the circular cages made from concrete reinforcing wire. Like these:
We’ve probably had them for 10+ years and they work just as well now as they did then. Just make sure that every couple of days, you pull the errant branches back inside the cage to keep them growing upright and fairly manageable. Otherwise they turn into bushes with metal inside of them. 🙂
I have some of that wire leftover from pouring our concrete countertops. I think I will give it a try. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it is rusty. Is that OK do you think?
Or not… Try this link:
http://liberatedgardener.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a8e8332e970b01347fce006a970c-pi
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