My boys have been busy this morning getting the shade project underway.
They are just getting the poles in the ground because I don’t want it shaded yet. The temps are going way down and so we’ll get the shade cloth up on my plants next Monday when the temps start climbing again.
My boys are awesome!
My goodness, your tomato plants are huge!! How often are you watering them? My dad think I’m watering mine too much and that’s why they’re all still green. I’ve got lots of green tomatoes all different sizes. I’m starting to get a little impatient.
I was deep watering once a week with the water barely running for about an hour for each plant. I will step that up to probably 2 times per week of deep watering. What type of plants do you have and when did you plant them? I planted my tomato plants in the middle to last part of February so that is why I am getting some now.
My plants are huge because I plant a whole bunch pretty close together and they climb on each other and get taller. I have found that I can get a whole lot more tomatoes when I plant a “tomato jungle”. I have some places in my backyard where I have only planted 2-4 tomato plants by each other and they don’t do nearly as well as the tomato plants that are in the “jungle”.
It looks strange, but it works for me. 🙂
Staci, I was in a real hurry to get the garden in so my garden is not level. I quickly realized this the first time I watered it and none of the water stayed where it should. I built up dams around each plant or groups of plants to keep the water in one place. At first I was watering the plants every other day – I honestly thought that was deep watering. After reading your post now I know how to water deeply. So I have been watering the plants too much and now I’ll do some deep watering and hopefully the tomatoes will turn red. I don’t remember what kind of tomatoes I planted but there are 4 of them and they’re a mini tomato jungle compared to yours. I put them in about mid March. Thank you so much for your site, it’s very interesting and I like the pictures. Have you taken a master gardener course before? I’ve decided to take the course when it’s offered in the winter because I need to learn how to do this gardening thing
Thanks for the posts. The jungle is a good idea. I have 7 different varieties here in Scottsdale. Black Krim, Yellow Pear, Pink Caspian, Stupice, Mortgage Lifter, Giant Belgium, German Johnson. They are all doing pretty well. I have started harvesting only the Stupice. There has been heavy fruit set on most of them with tomatoes ranging in the 1/2 to 3/4 pound range per tomato! I water daily now that it is gettng hot. 2 GPH drip emmiters for 30 minutes, so each one gets approximately 1 gallon of water. They seem to be doing OK, however, the watering deeply infrequently may work. I’m nervous to try it though with so much fruit ready to ripen. What do you think?
Ted,
Aren’t heirlooms the best? They sound like they are huge!
I don’t know exactly how much water they would need. I always just did it by “feel”. I never follow recipes, either. I’m sure that’s not very helpful. 🙂
I would keep doing what you’ve been doing since it’s working just fine and then keep upping the water as it heats up more. They need lots of water and deeply. When I would deep water mine every 2-3 days it would still be a little wet from the prior watering. I never did let them completely dry out between waterings.
I don’t know if that was helpful, but it is fun for me to hear about all of the heirlooms you’re growing.
I’d love it if you would keep us all posted!
Staci