Gardening 2012 - Mid May Update

Things are happening in the garden! The San Marzano tomatoes have recovered from the little cold snap and are almost half way up the towers.

In the old lower bed the onions are doing well and as soon as I get done typing this, I'll thin the cima di rapa. Just to the left of the onions we've added a few rows of carrots and replanted the beets. Now that temperatures are well into the 70's they should all be sprouting in a matter of days.

Earlier in the week I picked up 4 cheap plastic buckets. They're a classic piece of low-budget container gardening and make excellent pots for tomatoes. So we drilled 5 half inch holes in the bottoms and filled them with potting mix topped off with one Roma tomato plant each.

While it's possible I'll have way too many tomatoes this summer, this will give us a chance to compare the performance and taste of "real" San Marzano tomatoes and the modern Roma hybrid.

In the new front bed the eggplants are doing quite well, but the peppers don't seem real happy. It's still early though and they may still be a little stunted from the cold snap a couple weeks ago. Or... it might be because I forgot to poke some holes in the plastic so rain water could reach the soil. Whichever it is, the weather is now warm and the holes have been poked.

On the other hand the rest of the container plants are very happy. Obviously I was able to bring in the big pot for a couple evenings, so that eggplant suffered not at all on those cold nights.