Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Babies

Well the tomatoes have been in the ground for 10 days and we already have little babies.  These suckers are fertile; now if we can get them to stay on the vine and ripen.


little babies
We've been working on more cages; and I'm creating awesome tomato cage tags - be excited people labels are fun!  Other things going on at the Smith Ranch include a drip irrigation system and planting okra.  I personally haven't put any irrigation together in over 10 years in my Greenhouse Maintenance Class with Dr. Wilkerson.  Let's all hope that my fancy college eduation will come in handy.  If it doesn't my parents will tell me they want their money back and Todd might not let me be the offical taste tester.  That is my biggest fear during this whole project in case you where wondering. 

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Tomatoes on Tuesday

We have a little project going on at the Smith Ranch....tomatoes.  I'm talking about tasty; you only need a fork and knife kind of tomatoes.  They are older types....that's right folks, you guessed it.  Heirloom Tomatoes - all types and there are 67 plants in all and we have a plan.  Logging the water, fertilizer, production, and most importantly the taste.  I'm excited about being the official taste tester in the project because next to eggs, tomatoes might be the best used cooking ingredient in the kitchen.

Most people have thought that Todd and I are nuts to plant so many but we need a project and can you think of anything better except maybe ice cream.  We won't pack on as many lbs. tasting the tomatoes...we'll leave the ice cream to our visits to the good old DQ - I'm already an expert at the Blizzard.

The back garden plot.


Here's what we have planted:

Porter
Stupice
Yellow Perfection
Gardener's Delight
Golden Nugget
Kellog's Breakfast
Marglobe
Persimmion
Mr. Stripey
Black Krim
Aunt Ruby's German Green
Mortgage Lifter
Jaune Flamme
Arkansas Traveler
Lemon Boy
Striped German
Cherokee Purple
Green Zebra
Black Cherry
Golden Jubilee
Patio

 *I know some are not considered "heirlooms"but we're trying them anyway.  It's our garden and we can!

We've grown a few of these before but if you have any experience with heirlooms; taking all the advice and knowledge I can get.