My Sad Early Attempts

[Mojave]

Looking at my garden today I remembered my first attempts back in the 70's. What a difference 30 or so years make.

I had no idea whatsoever how to grow tomatoes but I did have a green thumb with "other" things (remember this was the mid 70's and I was a youngster). I had a huge back yard and grew 20 to 30 tomatoes every year over a five year or so period. My plants always grew to be huge healthy looking things, but, other than my cherry types, over all those years I only harvested two tomatoes. One of them was a yellow or orange, Lemon Boy rings a bell, so that's a great advertisement for that one. It survived my ineptitude .

Well here we are now in 2015 and things have changed quite a bit. My tomatoes no longer grow to 10-12 feet and produce nothing! The thing that's so cool to me is while I know what I'm doing now I'm still picking up tips and pointers from all of you folks.

Thank you everybody and have a great season!

[Redbaron]

My first attempt was Big Boy tomatoes. I was 8. They had a kit about the size of an egg carton filled with vermiculite and it had a clear plastic lid. That was the "greenhouse". I followed the instructions and planted 3 seeds per cell, watered it, and put the lid on it. Then put it on the window sill. They I thinned it to one plant each. Later when 2 real leaves showed I transplanted them on the south side of the house in a bed I dug myself. I spent hours and hours just watching those plants like a hawk! The plants grew way taller than me! We got tomatoes too! I don't remember how many but I do remember it was absolutely amazing to me. I was so excited! To me it was like a miracle. I had read in Boys World Magazine that plants like earthworms. So every rain I walked down the sidewalk collecting nightcrawlers from mud puddles. By the hundreds! You couldn't believe how many earthworms I gave those few plants! In the end I got a Cub Scout Merit badge!

Subscribed to my first gardening magazine 2 years later. It was organic gardening and farming by Rodale press. Been hooked ever since!

[pauldavid]

I grew up gardening with my folks. When I was little my job was to water the tomatoes. No water hose close either, I would fill a 5 gallon bucket half full and walk about 50 yards switching hands the whole way. Man, I hated tomatoes! I still remember when I was first able to carry a full bucket without switching hands. I was so proud of myself! Now I love tomatoes but I have a water hose that reaches all the way!

[bughunter99]

When we bought our first house, one of the first things I did was plant tomatoes!. I remember that my mom grew them against the side of the house. So I did the same thing, under the eaves...on the north side. Needless to say, they did not thrive in those extremely dark, extremely dry conditions. I learned about the importance of light exposure that year and that one tiny little tomato I got off of the eight original plants was all it took to try again the next year-in a much better spot!

[AlittleSalt]

When I was younger, I did learn to garden, but not in the way I garden now. I learned to grow hybrids and to use only man-made poisons, pesticides, fertilizer, etc. I was just a child, and my father believed to garden that way - so I learned from him. We had 5 gallon jugs of 2,4,5,T that was used to control weeds on the fence lines. It was stored right beside the 2,4,D in the barn. I had no idea the mixture of the two made Agent Orange. That was in the 70s.

Life happened, I grew up. Became a brick and stone mason with no time for anything but masonry and my wife and children (In that order) By 1995, a nerve disease set in and changed my life. I was in so much pain. After failed surgeries and treatments - I was finally diagnosed in 1998. I was no longer a mason and the diagnosis of Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy type 2 meant a short life of taking pain meds methadone, oxycontin, and morphine. I basically lost a decade from 1999-2009 taking all those meds that doctors and specialists prescribed. Those medicines prolonged the pain more than anything else.

In 2010, I stopped taking those meds. Found several little booklets about organic gardening by Rodale Press. I was very interested in those booklets. I started making our garden and had no clue as to what I was doing, but I kept reading those booklets.

I had been told that our soil was dead. "Son, this dirt only grows trees and weeds!"

Well, yes, it does grow those two very well. With a little help and determination, it grows vegetables really well too. I have a book sitting behind my cup of coffee called, "Rodale's Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening" It has 700+ pages. I've taken what I learned as child and what I've learned since 2010 and use those things together to garden. Last year in May, I joined Tomatoville, and have learned that there are many ways to garden.

I no longer walk with a cane. I wake up thinking of gardening instead of concentrating on the pain caused by the RSD. Most importantly, I get out there and do things. I still have to take a lot of breaks, but I've learned to get a lot accomplished in the 15-30 minutes at-a-time in the garden. That's a big part of why I'm here at Tomatoville all throughout the day. I'm here during those time-outs when my body tells me to come in and sit down.

We learn and adjust and do what we can to make things better.

[Mallori]

Last year was my first real attempt at a garden of any kind. Massive fail. I had two tomato plants, and got about 8 total (very tiny) tomatoes, and 5 of them had blossom end rot.

I have learned much since (thanks to this site and others), and so far, my plants look much, much better, and If I am able to harvest the fruit that has set, I will be quadrupling my harvest from last year, already.

I have harvested potaotes (yum), cucumbers, and greens so far!

[bower]

In the years Before Internet, I grew hybrids from the regional seed catalogue that were recommended for us and the only things available. I started seeds in late May, and had a row of plants that barely topped the little tomato cages. I used compost and didn't bother with fertilizer. I didn't even have to prune. We were rewarded with two weeks of fresh tomatoes per year, in early September. One year the catalogue offered heirlooms! Caspian Pink and Brandywine, I bought them as soon as I saw them, and was sorely disappointed to get not a single fruit.
Scroll forward to the year that my friend brought me a bag of tomatoes of all colours, heirlooms she'd grown, and I started my prowl of the internet looking for seeds... and discovering just how many more than CP and BW were out there.
The first year growing heirlooms in the rebuilt greenhouse was the coldest, wettest and most overcast ever. I didn't prune. I bought bamboo and kept building extensions onto cages, like the second little pig. I made a tunnel out of the plants that the sun couldn't pierce through if it did shine. Every blossom that dropped from a cold plant was a little mould bomb... every stem that rubbed against another stem became a site for rot. I never made such a pile of rotten vegetation! But there were a few tomatoes. So I knew, I had to keep trying until I got it right.. And so I joined T'ville.