A progress shot of the garden bed off to the side of my porch (click on the pic to visit it's Flickr page with rollover notes).
If the state fair had a competitive category for Leggiest Tomatoes, I'd be coming home with an armload of blue ribbons this year. Having planted most of my tomatoes in February at the advice of a family friend, I soon found myself with huge plants that I was struggling to keep alive with grow lights until I could actually plant them out.
In fact, while moving the tomatoes outside, I discovered that many of them had actually shot up into and around the bulbs themselves, to the extent that I had to remove the bulbs to get the plants out. Note to self: Never start tomatoes in February, no matter what anybody tells you.
Now that such a time has actually arrived, the task of actually getting them planted is proving challenging as well. For the leafy AND sturdy ones, I've been planting them laid-down in a trench with compost piled on top in the hopes that the excess stem will all go to root and give them Extra Moisture Powers.
When one stem half-broke during installation, I took a chance and tried fixing it with duct tape. Seems silly, but I've seen them come back from worse with less care.
I've been DIY'ing topsy-turvy-type contraptions out of salvaged hanging baskets, and so far they appear to be working quite splendidly.
April helped me engineer and install a 1 3/8" piece of EMT between the two columns of my porch, so I now have about 100" of room to hang plants from. We also ran a screw into the support beams along the side of the long barn, giving me room for another 30 or so hanging plants.
Below are some random growth-progress shots.
Blanco peas in flower.
My sweet corn sprouted!
Broccoli is getting big.
Bush bean sprout.
It is also worth mentioning that I had several more encounters with Fat Snake before the day was over. I saw him in a garden bed while watering, and then later on in the back of my garage. I had to try and scare him out by making lots of noise (banging on stuff and yelling "Rooooar, I eat snakes!" in a loud voice), and then finally gently dragging him out with a pole. He looked moderately inconvenienced, but not really upset. I guess snakes get food comas too?
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