Winners and Tomato Stakes

Thank you so much for all the comments on the new pattern makeovers!  I loved hearing what everyone is sewing too.  It was so fun to hear about all the handmade activity happening out there!  I used the True Random Number Generator and it gave me numbers 18, 8, & 28!  So the winners are these awesome readers...

The Love Your Lunch Box is next is a few weeks so you'll have a chance again soon!

Since I can't make a post ONLY about the winners, I decided to tell you all about my tomatoes!  Nothing too exciting but I have been trying a different method the last couple of years and wanted to share it with you all.  I used to always use cages with my tomato plants but now I have switched to stakes.

 This is the old timers method and I am liking it.  My favorite part is pinching off the suckers.  Do you know about the suckers?  You can train your tomato to grow up a stake only if you pinch off the shoot that grows between the main stalk and each leaf stem that comes off the main stalk.

Unfortunately I pinched all my suckers this morning so I couldn't show you one in action but above is what they look like AFTER you pinch them off.  It's so fun to stand up there in your garden early in the morning, look for suckers, pinch off and then have that wonderful tomato plant smell on your finger tips.  That sounds pretty wierd, but if you love growing tomatoes, you hear what I am saying, right?  When you grow with cages, you just have to wait until the fruits get red to start interacting with your tomatoes but with this method, you are doing something with them every week!  I love it.

I wasn't much of a student in science class but I do have 1 control tomato growing in a cage...

I know you all are on pins and needles waiting to see which plants will bear better fruit!  The cage one is a grape tomato though so maybe this experiment is already flawed???  We are growing lots of other things in the garden this year.  The deer have been brutal though!  Travis and the kids made a scarecrow for me.

Isn't it beautiful?  Especially his old hockey helmet in the crabbing net.  Awesome!  There is also a transistor radio playing in a plastic bag in the helmet.  The neighbor dogs are totally freaked out by this guy!  Another new addition last year was kholrabi which is super easy to grow and so yummy in salads right out of the garden.  It looks cool growing in your garden too.  

Does anyone else have new things growing in their garden?  

 

Comments

[cheap customized jerseys]

we use Liquid Fence in our organic master gardener projects. It doesn't smell very nice (to either people or the veggie thieves) so it's best to spray it on a stake and pound them in every twenty feet or so around your garden area. It does work, but if the animals are hungry enough, well... :) Best of luck with your garden!

[Shannon]

Thank you for the win!! I can't wait to start making them. I have never heard about growing tomatoes like that. My daughter is growing 4 tomato plants this year. I think we will give it a try and see what happens. My dad grows Kholrabi. We love it. We just peal the outside off and eat them raw like a carrot! Great stuff!

[sharon]

Lindsey, thank you for the pattern (I won the organizer pattern)
I am off this week and am going to make at least one.

BTW, I notice the sweat shirt on your scarecrow === I see a lot of scare people dressed similarly in my neighborhood

[Cate]

We planted a whole bunch (well 5) fruit trees this afternoon (since it's winter here) and I'm crossing my fingers that we can keep them alive and harvest lots of fruit in the coming years. Each tree is grafted with 2 or 3 varieties so we should have fresh fruit all year! Your tomatoes look great, I'm interested in that old timer method, I'm googling it now!

[christina]

For deer and rabbits, we use Liquid Fence in our organic master gardener projects. It doesn't smell very nice (to either people or the veggie thieves) so it's best to spray it on a stake and pound them in every twenty feet or so around your garden area. It does work, but if the animals are hungry enough, well... :) Best of luck with your garden!