Color Challenge Thursday Green Seed to Garden Update

Hive account@kimmysomelove42

I had some time to catch up transplanting several tomatoes I started from seed. When I ordered my 100gallon cloth pots for my cannabis this year there was a 5th one included so I thought I'll try to grow monster tomato yield this season. I was inspired by Hive account@sunscape beautiful garden post https://steemit.com/homesteading/@sunscape/homesteading-and-gardening-weekly-contest-from-plug-to-harvesting-by-sunscape of wonderful herbs and veggies and was determined to get planted some basil and give my tomatoes the best chance to produce this year.

Fortunately, many seeds sprouted from the re-used soil after my caterpillar destruction of my first round back in March. Thus, I have many mystery plants in terms of varieties and what they are, kinda a fun game unintentional this year. So, these tomatoes will either be cherries, brandywine, beefsteak or pear, hoping for the beefsteak on the 100 gallon.

When building my pot I hauled 19, 5 gallon buckets of soil/compost/perlite to build the grow medium. I did layers of soil, then compost, then mulch, then rabbit poop, then some old sticks and such (hugelkultur method) to help with drainage, mycorrizae and to take up some space. Then I mixed a couple scoops of perlite and really mixed it in with compost. I was ready to plant, however I needed some basil for this to work.

I took a break and went to my local farmers market to poster for an upcoming event and to pick up some basil starts to my dismay, they didn't have any. My next errand was Trader Joe's where to my surprise they had a big ole pot of growing basil. I know anything with the Trader Joe logo is 100% GMO free so I decided to go for it, even though it didn't say organic.

I brought it to my front porch and sprayed down the basil plant with a fine mist of filtered water and soap. I highly recommend doing this when purchasing any plants from a nursery, market store etc. there are soo many pests and diseases you can unwillingly bring into your garden..

A simple recipe of 1Tbls dish soap to 1 gallon of water will knock off most pests and kill unwanted molds.

I gentle separated the basil into many different plants to be, and planted the healthiest of mystery tomato plants in the center. I intend to build a mini frame over the row of tomatoes as to get them to grow upward for better production.

Next I watered in some new product I found at my local grow shop, Big Foot mycorrhize biochar, kelp and worm castings. It was super hot when I transplanted and the basil, wilted a bunch as you can see, this will take a couple days to establish the sensitive roots and stop wilting.

I love the smell of tomato plants. I'm drooling in anticipation for yummie tomatoes this year. Unfortunately, I just found some aphids on the daikon radish/tomato pot, all on the under leaves of the daikon. So, I'm going to transplant tomorrow the tomato to its own pot and harvest the daikon. That's the cool thing about nature, tells us when to harvest plants sometimes when we forget.

The bugs know when the yummiest time is!!

I've been hearing from many people aphids are everywhere. Probably, because we had so much rain over Winter and Spring. I'll be spraying some amazing compost tea I brewed up last night everywhere. Healthy bugs and critters keep the munchie pests away..