2020: Tomato HOA Rehab journal

[KathyDC]

Love it! I have clay soil here, too, combined with generally terrible soil. This house had been a rental house for decades in a gentrifying area until someone rehabbed it and flipped it, at which point I bought it. I'm pretty sure the back yard was just used as a trash heap for years.

But we're forever digging up glass, and when we dug my current beds we broke a lot of buried glass. It's just everywhere. I've found all kinds of crazy things -- makeup bottles, whiskey and beer bottles, old glass marbles, a skeleton key, even an old square watch face.

Anyway, but tell me how you manage to squeeze so many plants together in that space? 35 tomatoes there! Do you just prune aggressively? What's your methodology for that? Interested because I always want to grow more than I have room for I have 16 plants this year and had to resist squeezing in more.

[Vespertino]

Originally Posted by Whwoz

Some beautiful fruit there Vespertino, enough to make me drool and it is still 2 months off seed sowing time here

Oh, that waiting period is horrible, greenhouse tomatoes just aren't the same and my hubby turns his nose up at store-bought tomatoes now that he's used to the ones from the garden. Hopefully those 2 months will pass quickly for you!

[Vespertino]

Originally Posted by ddsack

Really enjoyed all the photos! You are doing a great job with the clay soil I had/have pottery clay too in my main garden, so can sympathize. Plan #9 from outer space looks like one I'll have to try -- if only for the goofy name!

It was the name that got me as well -- supposedly Plan #9 from outer space is one of the worst movies ever made. I thought the fruit looked pretty even though they were supposedly prone to a little catfacing, so I said "Sure why not!" and have it a go. This was probably one of the best gambles ever. I've never had a more productive beefsteak for Texas weather in crappy clay soil. After I harvested the big ones from the two plants I have, one of them have another 4 fruits starting to swell from buds that I though were dormant. It's not as good as KBX (10/10 for me), but it was still a very delicious & sweet one (8/10) and for all the fruit set I was extremely impressed!

[Vespertino]

Originally Posted by KathyDC

Love it! I have clay soil here, too, combined with generally terrible soil. This house had been a rental house for decades in a gentrifying area until someone rehabbed it and flipped it, at which point I bought it. I'm pretty sure the back yard was just used as a trash heap for years.

But we're forever digging up glass, and when we dug my current beds we broke a lot of buried glass. It's just everywhere. I've found all kinds of crazy things -- makeup bottles, whiskey and beer bottles, old glass marbles, a skeleton key, even an old square watch face.

Anyway, but tell me how you manage to squeeze so many plants together in that space? 35 tomatoes there! Do you just prune aggressively? What's your methodology for that? Interested because I always want to grow more than I have room for I have 16 plants this year and had to resist squeezing in more.

Those are some interesting finds in your back yard! I hear some of those vintage glass marbles are actually worth a bit of money. Did you find any cool-looking ones?


Part of why I pack 'em in tight is because there's only really one patch in my entire yard I can use for tomatoes. The spot I picked gets the southern sun all day long, no shade at all. It's also next to the foundation of my house, which gets watered on a daily basis by the sprinkler system on hot days (because of the clay soil and the hot summer weather we have to water our foundation every day).


The clay does a pretty good job keeping enough water down below where they're not competing with each other for moisture, and I feed them a LOT of epsoma, blood meal, bone meal, etc. in the dig hole when I plant each one. I'm very good about pruning all suckers until the late blight starts to get bad.



Another trick is that I'm cherry-tomato heavy in terms of plant ratio, like 2/3 cherry or small-sized tomatoes to 1/3 beefsteak varieties. I put the cherries in the back row since they're usually vine-y and less bushy - so I can plant them closer together. The beefsteaks I always have in the first row and I try to give them a little more space in-between but not a whole lot.



Another reason for limiting the ratio of beefsteaks is the Texas heat, after July they're pretty much given their all, and the cherries keep cranking out tomatoes until first frost. Sometimes I pull them out in late July if they're fried, and it gives the cherry tomatoes more room for the rest of the summer/fall.



I don't do a second planting, I'm usually too lazy