Monday, May 5, 2014

Planting Tomato Plants, What To Do And What Not To Do

         Hello and good day to you all, and welcome back here today on Garden The Easy Way. This is Ken and Marilou Elliott from Rogersville, Missouri.

          Gardening looks like a lot of work, well it is work but most of us could use the exercise, including my self for sure.  But let me tell you this, gardening is truly fun and the best therapy a person can get, also the joy from watching your plants grow, and when it comes to harvest your fresh garden vegetables, you will not able to keep from tasting them before you get them in the house.

           Fresh garden vegetables out of your garden taste about 100% times better than store bought. Most people do not know store bought vegetables are pick green ( too early ) and shipped to the store.  A big plus when you have your own garden, it is just like getting ( FREE Vegetables ).

           " WOW " what a long cold winter, we thought it would never end, and now it is so hot 91 degrees here today, we went from winter to summer with no spring.  Today we are planting tomatoes and we have lots of pictures to show you how we plant a garden. We will share some very important thing you need to know about planting tomatoes and vegetables in your garden.

            Probably the most important thing to remember about planting tomatoes is do not plant too early never plant until all danger of frost has past, we live in central Missouri so we wait till the first week of May. By doing this it could keep you from having to replant new tomato plant.

             When you planting a garden it is so very important to till or plow up your soil about 7-10 inches, where you intend to plant, by tilling or plowing the ground deep will give your plants more oxygen and help them get more food and nutrition from the soil, which helps your plants have a longer and healthier life and your plants will produce a lot more tomatoes. We think it is very important to fertilize your garden with natural organic fertilizer such as cow manure or horse, and some people use chicken manure.

              We use cow manure, what I do is I will till the garden first, and after I till it all up, I rake the garden with a hand held rake, I pick out all rock and break up all dirt clods and level it all out, and then I take a pickup truck and I go to our local dairy farmer and ask him if I could get some cow manure for our vegetable garden. All natural fertilizer is always the best fertilizer to use in your garden.

               The local farmer down the road always gives us the cow manure for ( FREE ), If you ask your local farmer for cow manure, he will probably just give it to you. You will find most all of our farmer are so kind and always willing to help out someone, we not only get the manure for (FREE) our farmer will go get out his tracker with a big scoop  shovel on it and load up our pickup for us.

                All natural fertilizer is always the best and if you do what we do you can get it for (FREE). I take pickup load of cow manure back to our garden and I use a pointed garden shovel and scattered the cow manure all over the garden. After I have put the cow manure all over the garden, I will get out the garden tiller and I will till the whole garden one more time, it is very important to till the garden so you will have the cow manure mixed up good with the soil so that plants roots can get it.

                I would like to tell you one more very important thing about using any kind of manure whether it is cow, horse, chicken, pig, always make sure to use old dry out manure, never use fresh  ( wet ) manure, it get so hot, it could kill your plants.

                 As you can see from the picture, I dig out a hole where I want to plant my tomato plant, I use my little hand held shovel. Very Important to plant tomatoes deep, plant 2/3 of the plant and should be covered, you may ask me why so deep? Because the plant will have a better, stronger root and you will have a lot more tomatoes, better roots mean more tomatoes.

                 I dig out a big hole about 9 inch deep and the file in back in  about 6 inch with some fine loose soil no rock,  always make sure there is no rocks or sticks or roots in the hole where you are planting. I always fill the hole up with water and then I will set the tomato plant down in the hole and leave it set there for about 10-15 minutes so that the roots will pull up a lot of water for the plant, so very important to do it this way so that your your plant will not be stress out looking for water, if you do not put water in the hole your plant could die.

                 As you can see from the picture on this blog, the water is blue color, that is because I like to use Miracle Gro Plant Food when I'm setting out plants, you do not have too, but I do because it give the plant a healthier start.

                 Well we hope that we have been some help here today on Garden The Easy Way, we hope you like our blog and share us with your friend. So until next time, good gardening always to you all from Ken & Marilou