Raised Bed

This past summer we did a lot of work in our backyard. We built a patio, constructed a grape arbor, made a composer for vegetable matter and most exciting of all, built a raised bed. It's around 4 feet wide, 8 feet long, 1 foot high and made of large boards of wood. For its dirt we ordered 1 cubic yard of soil and when that was not enough an additional half cubic yard, arriving shortly after ordering it in a truck. Upon inspecting it we found its quality to be a little disappointing. It was heavy, darkly colored and bordering on septic. To improve the soil we spread it out thinly over a tarp to give it a chance to absorb some much needed oxygen and dry it out a little. This helped a bit but as a step to further improve it we mixed in a good amount of dried, milled sphagnum moss. This seemed to improve its overall quality and satisfied we went ahead and put it in the bed. Upon doing so we found that we had a bit extra so we spread the bonus soil over our flower garden. I am unsure of how soil is going to turn out next year, but will be sure update this with the results come spring.

Padio Hybrid

I am new to growing tomatoes as this past season was my first so when I visited our local nursery I was unsure of what to look for. After inspecting various packets of tomato seeds I ended up choosing a Patio hybrid based on the brief paragraph on its back. As it turned out my choice was a great one and while as I mentioned I don't have the experience with tomatoes to compare this hybrid to past ones I can say with some confidence that this is one of the best! Throughout the summer it managed to stayed very compact, never growing more that a foot and a half tall and instead of growing viney and leggy like other tomatoes plants I have seen, it simple grew bushier. Yet dispite of its small size it was surprisingly productive, giving off 14 tomatoes between our two plants and due to its compact nature it didn't need to be staked or caged. Because of this positive experience I this past year with the Padio hybrid I'm definitely going to use it again in this upcoming year's garden. I have collected around 20 seeds from its tomatoes and plan on planting them so that with each passing year the plants become more and more productive. I am unsure if this technique will actually work with tomatoes though and if the seeds I have collected are going to grow true and produce plants like the ones I had last year. If you know anything about this I would love to get some feedback from you to help me answer this question. In any case I'm certainly going to try it out and I'll be sure update this in a few months with the results!

2009 Garden

This past summer we have a particularly successful vegetable garden. The best plants were two "patio" hybrid tomatoes (more about them above) that I had started about 6 weeks prior to outdoor planting. When first brought outside they were put into two separate large terracotta pots that were filled with soil made from composted chicken excrement bought at a local plant nursery. This turned out to be a near disaster as the plants stopped growing an began yellowing and dying off. I strong advise against using any soil of this kind and I never will in the future. I believe it was suffocating the plants roots and although perlight or vermiculite probably could have been added to it to lighten it up, my advise is still to stay clear of the stuff. To replace it we refilled the pots with Miracle Gro soil and it turned out phenomenally. The tomatoes tuned right around and by the end of the growing season had churned out a total 14 large red tomatoes and a good 25 more green ones coming. In two other large terracotta pots were Swiss chard, Kale, Oregano and Collard greens all of which thrived in the new dirt.