Last year, we had a huge success with tomatoes considering the conditions that we had at that time. From my childhood, I'm used to plant the tomatoes outside, but it seems that because of the more acid rain it is not possible to do so where we live now. The rain poisons the plants and they die eventually. Some plants are more sensitive to the rain than others, so it's mainly tomatoes and cucumbers that do better in a greenhouse.
The former garden owner only had a small greenhouse which was literally about 1.5 meter long and 75 cm wide. As I got to learn that we can't plant them outside too late we couldn't purchase a greenhouse on time, so we had to accommodate with what we had. I had 51 seedlings at home, and although I didn't have much space I still wanted to plant as many as I could. Normally, you should plant the tomatoes about 50-60 cm apart, but I could only afford 30 cm. I managed to put 15 plants in the green house, and 7 on the balcony. The rest of my seedlings I used to make pesto (from young leaves - so delicious) and fertilizer.
The plants grew like crazy, and I had to prune them constantly to be able to get to all of them because it was becoming a crowded jungle! Our neighbours were telling me that I did a big mistake and should have planted less, but I didn't listen to them. And it's good that I didn't! We had enough tomatoes to eat all summer and I even managed to preserve quite a lot.
I only planted 3 varieties, and my favourite were cherry tomatoes. They taste so different to what you can get at the supermarket!
Look at them! They were as delicious as they looked - I must have been doing something right 😊 Jokes aside, cherry tomatoes are the easiest variety to grow in my opinion.
These two photos was used in an older post
Today, I want to show you how I transplanted my 3 weeks old seedlings. You might remember that I wanted to do it last week, but so many things came in between and I was finally able to do it earlier today.
When I was planting the seeds, my husband saw that I was using our glass salad bowl to mix the compost with potting soil, and he didn't like it very much. Luckily, we have another glass bowl which he started to use after 😊 This time, I needed much more soil as I was using containers with 1kg volume, so it would take me ages to finish that. On Saturday, we went to a DIY shop and we got this 50 litre container which is so much better than my former method. It's a plastic one, so it's light and easy to transport and I don't need him to help me.
He went to the garden yesterday, and I asked him to bring me a small shovel because a spoon from my kitchen is simply too small 😊 He brought me these three tools and I'm not sure what he thought I was about to do in our living room. At least, the small shovel was among them.
First, I put some compost and soil in the container and mixed it up. I only filled it up to the half because it was becoming too heavy.
One of our friends owns a restaurant and they are serving many dishes with yoghurt, so he collected some pots for me. They are big which is great as last year I was using much smaller containers and the seedlings didn't get enough nutrients. It was raining until mid of May, so I couldn't plant them in the garden and had to give them some fertilizer.
These are the first seedlings to be transplanted. This kind of tomato is used to make pasta sauce, puree, passata or ketchup. I had 14 nice seedlings which should be enough for us.
Of course I'm still using some kitchen utensils 😊
I fill up the pot with the potting mixture, dig a deep hole with a chopstick, carefully remove the seedling from its place, place it in the hole, tap the soil around it and add more soil if needed. Then I water it a bit, but not too much as the seedlings are small and could rot easily.
And this is how it looks like once done. The pots looks huge for such small seedlings, but they will grow very fast and in a week I will already have to support them with a wooden stick. Soon enough, they will have the perfect size for the pot.
I also plant them deep to root better. Tomato plants have those tiny hairs on their stems, and if you bury them they will become roots. Like this, you make sure that your plant will develop good root system which is the base if you want to have a good harvest.
I have managed to transplant 52 tomatoes not because I didn't want to finish them all, but because I ran out of pots! Now, I'm waiting for another delivery from our friend 😊
I place the pots in a sunny location and arrange them in rows per thvariety, so that they don't get mixed up. 4 varieties are done, there are still 4 others to be done. I know very well that it's way too many plants, but I will only choose the best for the garden, and the rest I will turn in pesto and fertilizer again. If many of them turn good then I will share them with our friends as the seedlings from the shop can be anywhere between 10-15 EUR for an established plant, so people will gladly take them.
I will keep checking them every day to see if they have enough water until they are strong enough to take more, and then I will reduce it to once every 3 to 4 days. I can't wait for them to grow and show you the progress again.
Happy gardening!
See you next time!