Mulching and Other Maintenance

Yesterday I finally took the time to apply mulch around the tomato plants. This should help keep the soil moist and cool, and help limit weeds. I also did a bit of pruning and tying of the plants that needed it.

The hot weather has helped the tomatoes mature. In the past week I've picked 7 tomatoes. I will keep a summary of tomato pickings for this season. I hope to prepare some statistics later on, and maybe compare the yield to the reasonably good harvest of the 2004/2005 season.

Plan of Tomato Plants in Bed #2

Here's a rough plan of the tomato plants in bed #2 (refer map).

   [South]
[East] [West]
   [North]

      +-----------------------------------------------+
      |                                               |
      =                                               =
      |                                               |
Row E |  E1          E2         E3       E4       E5  |
      |                                               |
      |                                               |
Row D |  D1          D2            D3             D4  |
      |                                               |
      |                                               |
Row C |  C1      C2      C3      C4       C5      C6  |
      |                                               |
      |                                               |
Row B |  B1       B2       B3     B4      B5      B6  |
      |                                               |
      |                                       A6      |
Row A |    A1     A2      A3      A4      A5      A7  |
      |                                               |
      +-----------------------------------------------+

Legend

Variety	Location(s)
Beef Steak	E1
Tickled Pink	E2
Super Roma	E3, E4
Pot Roma	E5
Acid Free (Roma)	D1, D2, D3, D4
Grosse Lisse	B1, B2, B3
Costoluto di Marmande	A1
Unknown/Various (supplied by Zio Pasquale)	C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, B4, B5, B6, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7

Rockmelon and Basil Seedlings

This morning I transplanted some rockmelon seedlings that I had grown from saved seeds. I put three seedlings in the middle of bed #5 (refer map).

Some similar looking seedlings have already been growing in bed #5. I didn't deliberately plant them, and I can only assume they have grown from discarded food scraps. I eat a lot of watermelon, so hopefully I can get some "for free" soon :)

I also transplanted three punnets of basil seedlings that I had started from seed in October into garden beds #3 and #5.