Who else is stoked to plant tomatoes?

Been on the road a lot lately and had to take advantage of a sunny day at home and find a productive reason to play hookie. Started with two loads of compost, top dressed the tomato bed with about 8" then got the posts in for the trellis. Now if this annoying late frost crap would come to an end, I'd say I'm about ready to get some plants in the ground

 

Oh. Now that looks nice Solarandwood! Good work! I'm not showing that to my wife. She wants some "real" fertilizer and I haven't had a chance to find any for her. Her entire garden is planted as of Sunday. I told her she better try some stuff she can buy at a store because I probably won't find the time to get her some "real" stuff.

 

And nice equipment to get the job done. Nice truck, trailer, tractor/loader and tiller!

 

Thanks...the weak part in the mix is the operator/laborer That fork didn't move as fast today as I remember.

 

Our county composting program is one of the finest examples of what government can/should do. It reduces waste going to the dump by 15% (yes our society wastes that much food) and helps those of us with glacial till for soil at the same time.

 

Our county takes food waste from the SU, the hospitals, etc and diverts it from the road to the dump into the compost program. They then do a mix of 2/3 food waste to 1/3 double shredded mulch, cook it under monitored conditions in bins and make it available pretty cheap...if you load it yourself. If they load it with the skid steer, it is $17.50/yard and this year they have premium stuff that goes through an even finer screen for an even higher price. I'll be loading it by hand as long as I'm able

 

Im getting ready to plant but certainly not that many!

 

Mine have been in the ground for a couple weeks now. Had a couple cool nights that made them mad, but they are surviving.

 

We do our maters in containers on the deck ,trying some grafted heirlooms this year pics for proof

 

I tried some of the grafted tomatoes last year and wasn't terribly impressed.
I did hybrids on root stock though.
I was careful not to get the graft in the soil and pinched off any roots that tried to grow from the top half of the graft.

It was a hot dry Summer so maybe I didn't water (constantly) enough which some of these hybrids seem to need.

If I had a drip system set up I'd try a couple again.

 

We got 3 grafted, and 3 regular so we'll see what happens .

 

Not a big fan of tomatoes, but I do like cucumbers!

 

Just got 36 in the ground... Tired of wimpy cages.
Made this out of scrap rebar I had laying around.

 

Man Mike, those are some cages! You must grow them big up there! I've got Black Zebra tomatoes ready to go in the ground here!

 

Our plants usually end up around 5-6 feet tall, yet to find a cage that can support them... Usually end up with a tangled mess. I'm going to build a few of these and see how they do.

I've never grown black zebra. I've got green zebra, but my favorite is Cherokee purple. And we are trying black prince this year.