Date Line: 2015-06-23
It has only been a few weeks since our last visit to the garden, but it was time for an important upgrade. Tomatoes are a type of shrub and while they grow upwards a good bit, they also REALLY like to grow outwards. If you want to get the most out of tomatoes, they need support and guidance to grow tall, rather than wide. Plus if you’re growing a garden on a patio, like me, and don’t have the space — they doubly need help.
Googling “Tomato Cage” returns a lot of results, but I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to use on my patio garden. I ended up purchasing a few things on Amazon for my upgrade:
- Gardener’s Blue Ribbon 3-Pack Ultomato Tomato Plant Cage
- Bond 425 25-Pack 4-Feet Bamboo Stakes
- Gardener’s Blue Ribbon 150 ft Sturdy Stretch Tie
- Master Craft Plant Watering Spikes, Set of 6
- Mudder 3-in-1 Soil Moisture Meter
The “Ultomato Tomato Plant Cage” (har har) and Bamboo stakes were a toss up. I used all three sets of the plant cages on three pots, and the rest of the tomatoes got bamboo. I considered it a slow g(r)owing experiment. If you’ve never tried to wrangle plants before (unfortunately when I was a young’n my father made me learn), just take my word and get the stretch tie. Sometimes the plants just can’t get in the cage (without breaking them) and that’s where the tape comes in. I also figured the moisture meter was a good idea since A) I like data and B) I really have no clue what I’m doing.
While the tomatoe plants didn’t have much to show overall at this point in time, the careful observer of the pictures above will have noticed one large green fruit. We’ve been carefully keeping an eye on this single, solitary tomato of note and hoping that it would get ripe soon (because omnomnom). I’d also point out that this first fruit is from the Home Depot Bush Goliath plant that was purchased back in April.