The Little Tomato That Could

Yesterday we checked up on "The Little Tomato That Could" again. It seems not to know its seasons very well and started coming up in the fall. At my fiance's insistence, we have been nurturing the little thing now and then, when we think of it, to see how it will grow and how long it will live. While I cannot report that the tomato is going strong, I CAN report that the tomato is still going. The cloche has been a big help since the night temperatures here have occasionally dropped below freezing. The tomato is up against a wall, and we have a jar of water sitting next to it. Since it is in a sunny location, the thermal mass helps. I suspect it would be growing even better if we paid it better attention than we do. We did bury its stem deeper when it started to show its first true leaves to encourage growth in its root structure. Here are a couple of pictures, taken December 28, 2011.

Here are pictures of the cloche, from my November 16 post:

I should also report that our Corno di Toro pepper plant is still producing peppers, although the plant itself is looking quite yellow and very sorry for itself. If the peppers grow, by some miracle, into a ripened state, we will save some seeds, because this plant has been an amazing producer under extreme hot and cold conditions.

Update on January 6, 2012: I am sad to report that our pepper plant has succumbed to the hard frost we had earlier this week. We will have to pull it up and compost it. The "Little Tomato That Could" is still alive, because we brought it inside for a couple of days. I have put it back outside under its cloche to help it get enough sun, now that the weather has warmed back up, but will have to watch the weather reports carefully.

Weekend Chores, Recent Purchases, and Plans

I decided I want some fresh sage for our upcoming Thanksgiving feast, so Don dug up a sage plant at my old house to move to our new one. He dug up a little hazelnut shrub we'd like to try to save while we are at it. It was one of three we planted as part of a research project for the National Arbor Day Foundation. Two of these special hybrid shrubs died, but this one lived, although it hardly thrived in its old location. We hope it will fare better when we move it up here where the soil is a little better than at the old house. I'll attach a link that shows us originally planting the three shrubs. Personally, I think the compost may have been overdone/too fresh/part of the problem for the shrubs, but the hard-packed clay at my old location was NOT the place to plant them, according to materials I received with the shrubs. Visit Hazelnut Shrub Project for those who want to see how we planted them at the old location.

So far the tomato plant and pepper plant are still alive despite the first hard frost the night before last. The cloche is protecting the tomato. Don also put a water jar in the cloche to absorb the sun's rays and provide some thermal mass to keep the plant warm at night. The sunny location against the warm bricks at the side of the house seems to help, too.

I planted some peas a few weeks ago in an empty planter to provide some green manure and protect against erosion this winter. The peas are coming up vigorously. They are a cold-hardy pea and should make it all through the winter, by my guess. I didn't inoculate them, so I hope they will actually fix nitrogen in the planter. A type of bacteria has to be present in the soil for the pea plants to do their job of transferring nitrogen from the air to the soil.

I promised myself I would start gardening here at Don's slowly and methodically as we have time to build beds. But I caught a sale of 2011 seeds at 50% off at Seed Savers Exchange, and already I can see that we are going to have to start thinking about putting in several beds to keep up with all the gardening I want to do. I bought tomatillos, three kinds of tomatoes, two kinds of pepper plants, cucumbers, nasturtiums (which are edible), and I can't remember what else. I also saved seeds from last year's garden, and I want to plant onion sets, different kinds of garlic, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pole beans, zucchini, and possibly Hubbard squash as a trap crop. Whew! I may have to invest in one of those online garden planners to keep up with planning out what goes where, crop rotations, etc. Even if I grow just a select few of each kind of plant I want to grow, this is going to take up some space. And we want LOTS of tomatoes...

November 16, 2011 Container Garden

The Little Tomato-Plant That Could?

I should have mentioned where I live in my earlier post. Climate and gardening go together so location is important. I live in Southeastern Virginia. The property I am moving to has better soil than the hard-packed clay of my last home, but the trees block a lot of sunlight, so that will be a challenge. I also have NO vegetable beds here at all, just one small flower-bed planted with peonies and day-lillies.

The tomatoes I planted this past summer were hybrids. This gave them superior disease resistance but means they are not supposed to be able to reproduce, or at least not very well. One little tomato seed didn't get the message, because it is growing fairly vigorously along the South wall of our house in a container. I have no idea where this little volunteer came from, or why it decided to give life a try in November.

I don't have much hope for it, but my fiance refuses to give up on the little guy. We have put a cloche over the plant. A cloche is just a jar placed over the plant to protect it from the cold. We should be covering the tomato at night but pulling the cloche off during warm, sunny days to let it get some air, but both my fiance and I work, so the plant has been getting random attention at best. Don (my fiance) plans to cut the bottom off of a bigger jar to give the little plant room to grow if it so desires. We'll see what happens.