I went to Hole’s Greenhouse in St. Albert last night to get some replacements for the too windburned peppers and see what they had for vine tomatoes. I couldn’t resist the full grown and already fruiting Holy Mole pepper plant for $15 so picked that up. I also got about 16 other tomato plants to fill the last empty spaces at each garden to replace the windburned plants. I picked up 4 each of: Park’s Whopper, Golden Girl, Big Bite, Health-Kick, and Early Time; as well as another Bush Beefsteak.
So the currently planted species list is different than I started out with, but that’s ok. Next year I’ll start the tomatoes out in Camrose under a mini, bottom heated glass cold frame so they have full sun right from the get-go and a better chance of surviving when coming out of the shelter when summer hits. I’m currently revamping my indoor garden room at home now that I’ve gained some experience. Some of the tomatoes I have in there right now are sprouting flower buds, but the plants got too tall and spindly to support any fruit. I’m going to pick up a light meter to help me adjust the light they’re getting. I finally got the timers all setup properly on the plant lights as well as the oscillating fan. I hadn’t really been using the fan since I had way too many seedlings on the go (most of which got given away to good homes), but the fan may have helped them get more stocky stems than what they had.
The next things to setup in the house are: automatic watering and fertilising according to the life cycle stage each plant is in, figure out how much fan time is enough, and how far away from each plant to have the lights to prevent legginess. I am looking into the differences in light that the plants require at different stages to see how I can best adjust between the red and blue spectrums for optimal development.
I had a look at the utilities bill since we started growing things in the house and the jump wasn’t really too bad. We only used about 3 more cubic meters of water, and when water is only $1.38 per cubic meter that’s not too bad.
I’m looking into building my first red wiggler vermicompost box from a rubbermaid tub just in time to feed the worms with the scraps of the harvest. I can’t wait to feed the worm compost to the seedlings for next year! I also learned that when I’ve got my farm running and I have rabbits, their poo can go directly into the garden with no extra composting needed! That’s great since we intend to raise rabbits for meat for our freezer, and all that rabbit feed ends up…somewhere!
We have started to look for somewhat affordable land in the vicinity of the city, far enough out to be cheap, but close enough to still have broadband internet so we can work from home at our current jobs. Cross our fingers and hope to be in the new place within 2 years…
Now that I’ve rambled enough, here’s the list of tomatoes we have planted between both gardens:
Big Bite
Bush Beefsteak
Burpee Early Pick
Early Time
Golden Girl
Health-Kick
Husky Red
Lemon Boy
Manitoba
Park’s Whopper
Roma Gusto Italia
Starfire Improved
Sub Arctic Maxi
Tiny Tim
Ultra Pink
Ultra Sonic
Wow that list was longer than I thought. Now for an update on the Camrose garden – Ants! Some ants moved in and decided to make a home around the base of one of my Manitoba tomatoes! The plant was looking kind of stressed and had begun to curl its leaves. I pulled it and washed off the roots and inspected it pretty closely. I think it might still survive, so I replanted it where there were no ants. We found 2 places the ants were and decided to try putting a shovel-full from each place onto the other colony, hoping the colonies weren’t related. they were supposed to fight to the death, but it didn’t seem to make a difference so they must’ve been related. we also discovered them in the main potato bin where I put some sweet potato seed chunks. who knows if anything will come out of it or if they’ll eat the chunks I put in.
I updated my Millwoods plot map with where everything got planted yesterday, and we were there till sundown building windbreaks to try to prevent the windburn from getting the new tomatoes. It’s funny but the other veggies don’t look affected by it. I was surprised store bought transplants were affected so much too, so up went some plastic to break up the breezes and give them a chance.
