Saturday's Sunset
Sunday morning we woke up to a frozen patch in the pasture where we had turned the “pivot” (aka the sprinkle) on in the pasture. The frost also tresspassed in the garden and toasted the ends of a couple of tomatoes and a few various cucumber and squash starts but really everything else looked pretty good.
The last 2 nights I transplanted 100+ tomato plants into the garden that were given to us for free. Sounds pretty good huh? Well they all came in a single flat…
Half of the single flat of tomatoes
But being very frugal minded I figured I wouldn’t pass on a chance for free tomatoes. I figure if any of them live it will be a nice bonus, if they all live I will be in tomato heaven and if none survive well… I’m not out too much!
A mat of tomatoes...
So as you can see they are pretty intertwined with one another and looking a little stressed so I figured if they were going to go in this week would be a good time as it has been a bit cooler than the last couple of weeks. I started with a sharp knife and cut out a little group of them…
A smaller group ready to be broken into single plants...
Then I gently pulled and sometimes cut through the roots to free the individual plants and tried to maintain somewhat of a root ball. Some plants ended up with a descent amount of roots while others where a bit twiggish.
Not too bad...this one ended up with quite a bit of root.
Then I pruned off all the lower branches and dug a deep hole, burying them up to the first row of leaves left on the plant. Tomatoes will form adventitious roots along their main stem, so if you have leggy tomatoes you can shear off the bottom section of leaves and bury them quite deeply and they will form roots all up the stems where they are buried.
All done-just needs a good drink!
This guy here I could have probably buried deeper but I think it’ll pull through just fine. It will definitely be interesting to see what happens with these guys! Hopefully it will stay cool the next couple of days to help settle them in as the heat would probably just wilt them down. When I was all finished I ended up with 2 double rows of tomatoes, planted fairly thickly-so we’ll see!
One of the double row of tomatoes...
It even set in and rained, giving the tomatoes a much needed mist...
Everything looked so beautiful…
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Then this morning…………….
Oh no!!! Tell me it isn't true!
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A frosty trail...
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Frost in between the strawberry rows
Phew! Most of them look pretty good this morning and only have a touch of frost that they should be able to pull out of. However most of my vineys look pretty bad and a couple of my big tomatoes really got hit hard…
This one's a goner...
But just a little further down the row this one just got nipped AND LOOK…
Look what's peeking out...
The first tomato of the season!
Bad Basil...
The basil got hit a little hard though, but I think if I cut it back it will come back as the bottom leaves still look fine.
Corn still looks good though!
The potatoes got a bit nipped too but I think they will be ok and everything else seems to be doing well, I guess we will see as the day goes on.
Dancing Aspens Farm Blog 