Geddie's

March 31-
 Yes it was Easter weekend but after the family get together was over and all the eggs were found, it was time to get back to planting.  By now, we've had our last freeze so we should be out of the woods for the colder temps.

Getting more rows ready. Because we are planning on making homemade salsa & hot sauce, we'll be planting 48 regular jalapeno plants and 48 roma tomato plants. Also I wanted to try a new variety that we received from Malakoff Nursery at the store. They are called "Cute Stuff" and they are a type of small bell pepper in red and orange colors that are more of a snacking pepper instead of a regular bell pepper that you would use for fajitas. We also planted 3 habanero peppers too!

We used the post hole diggers to make the holes for the pepper plants & tomatoes. Most were in 4 packs, but some were in the single and 6 pack cups as well as some peat pots.

Using the post hole diggers allowed us to make larger holes thus breaking up the packed ground to make it easier for the roots to get growing quicker and spread out easier.

Planting the Cute Stuff pepper plants....

To give our tomatoes and extra boost, we used the Espoma Tomato-Tone plant food. The directions called for 3 tbsp. per hole, but since i have such small hands and knowing that although we added lime, our soil isn't that great, I just took a small handful of the mixture and sprinkled it into the hole before we placed the plant in it.

At the end of one of our tomato rows, I did a comparison planting of 2 of the same varieties of rainbow tomato plants, one with the Tomato-Tone and one without to see which plant does better.
 I'll keep you updated with pictures on how the trial goes.

You can see the Tomato-Tone is the small white colored granules in the bottom of this hole.

We like to snip off the first few 'arms' from the tomato plant when planting them as this will help the plant become more stabilized in the ground and develop a better root system. Its best to plant at least 2/3 of the tomato plant in this fashion. Also it helps to 'ruffle' up the bottom of the root system to help get them growing quicker.

Here is a great example of how much of the actual tomato plant we like to plant. You can see we have a larger plant about 12-14 inches high in the 6 pack and when we were done planting, it is only about 4-5 inches high.

This is really a great secret on how to grow better tomato plants.

Another new variety we are planting this year is called "Cherokee Purple". They produce a large deep purple tomato named after the Cherokee Indians. These were available in large peat pots so this picture series shows how to plant if your tomatoes came in a peat pot. You'll snip the plastic label from the top and make sure to snip a few arms off and then simply plant the whole pot in the hole and gently pack the dirt in around it.

Our finished rows of tomato & pepper plants. Now just to water them and let Mother Nature work her magic!