My harvest in February 2021 was 62% better than the same period last year. The stars were again my winter tomato plants.
I never thought that I would harvest almost the same amount of tomatoes as Pomelo in the month of February (just 1 lbs difference!). Last year, Pomelos were 71% of the entire February harvest.
Even more surprising is that the February tomato harvest was the 3rd best month in the past year and half, only July and August 2020 were better.
Fruit harvest last month was 58.5% from the entire harvest while a year ago they were 86%. That makes the vegetable harvest by percentage almost 3 times better this year (from 14% to 41.5%).
Some of my seedlings were too big and I needed to transplant them in the garden. Firstly, I had to remove the radishes and carrots from the garden bed to make space for the new residents. After that, I started transplanting tomato seedlings and zucchinis.
Transplanting tomato seedlings
Below are the tomato seedlings that were too big to keep them in the red cups.
The tallest tomato seedling was over 18″ as shown in in the picture below.
Below is the space where I will plant my red cherry tomato seedling. On December 20th, as shown in this post, I added compost to feed the tomato plant throughout the season. All I will have to do from now on is to water it when needed.
I removed the radishes from the middle and made a hole around 6″ or 8″ deep.
Here are my starter fertilizer, epsom salt, earthworm castings and eggshell powder,I use them whenever I transplant seedlings in the garden. During the year, I save all the eggshell that we use in the kitchen and after I dry them, I grind them using an old coffee grinder.
I used 1/2 of the measure scoop of starter fertilizer, 1/2 scoop of eggshell powder 1/4 scoop of epsom salt. These are the quantities that I use for all my seedlings when I transplant them in the garden.
Starter fertilizerEggshell powderEpsom salt
After I remove the plant from the pot, I spread the roots and place it inside the hole.
I fill up the hole with a mix of planting mix and soil up to 2″ from the top and I place the earthworm castings
Afterwords I covered the earthworm castings with 1″ of soil and after that I filled up the whole with water.
I fill up the hole with water 3 or 4 times after the water gets into the ground to make sure it get all the way down to the roots.
The next project was to plant 6 more tomato seedlings in one of my garden beds where currently I have companion plants for tomato.
I prepared the holes in the garden bed and started transplanting tomato seedlings.
The red circles show the hard to spot transplanted tomato seedlings.
Transplanting zucchini seedlings
Afterwards it was time to also transplant the zucchini seedlings.
I made a big hole and mixed planting mix with chicken manure and soil.
After I filled up the big hole with the new mix, I made 2 smaller holes because form 3 zucchini plants 2 of them were in the same square. Then I added the starter fertilizer, eggshell powder and epsom salt.
I placed the seedlings in holes and covered them with soil.
In the next section I will post periodic updates about the cherry tomato plant and zucchini.
Cherry tomato updates:
The picture below shows the tomato plant on March 20, which is 3 weeks later.
The picture below was taken on March 30.
On April 14, only 2 weeks later, the tomato plant has more than doubled in size.
One week later on April 22, I had to reinstall the middle row of side wood to keep the plant inside the cage.
Eight days later, on April 30, the plant is already 6 ft tall, the nice weather that we had recently helps plants thriving.
Today is May 13 and I noticed that the tomatoes are starting to ripe, so It was time for another update.
May 22 – the pant is getting a lots of fruits and the cage starts to feel small.
May 27 – Today I had a crazy idea. Because the plants is over 8 ft tall and every year when it gets to this height it’s bending over the cage and it gets very hard to harvest the tomatoes in the middle of the cage. I decided to extend my tomato cage, form 6ft to 12ft.
May 30 – Now that I increased the cage size, I really want the plant to grow up to the top of the cage. I gave the tomato plant some homemade compost.
I made space for compost
Homemade compost
June 15 – the tomato is almost 10 ft tall and it’s producing a lot of tomatoes.
Zucchini updates:
The picture below is from April 20, the zucchinis are in bloom
The zucchini are growing nicely and soon will be ready to harvest. But today May 12, I notices some white spots on the leafs, powdery mildew, they get it every year. So, I prepared a copper fungicide solution and treated them, I also removed the contaminated leafs.
transfer the remaining seedlings from the initial containers to pots
change the potting mix for the tomato seedlings that were transferred 5 weeks ago, but stopped growing
add more soil to the 27 gallons rectangle boxes
The remaining 9 tomato seedlings that I left outside for a few weeks had to be transferred to bigger pots.
The seedlings transferred on January 18, stopped growing in the potting mix from Armstrong gardens, so I changed it with the potting mix from Costco.
I carefully removed the soil and tried not to damage too many roots.
After that I filled 1/3 of the pot with potting mix and placed the tomato seedling in the pot.
There were 13 tomato seedlings and 2 eggplants in container.
I took the potting soil that I had left from the seedlings and mixed it with planting soil and composted steer manure. Afterwards I added this mix on top of last year’s soil in the 27 gallon boxes.
The projects for today were to plant beans in pots and transplant the remaining seedlings. You can see the seedlings in the seedlings update post.
I had a packet of Cherokee wax yellow bush beans and I decided to plant the beans in 5 gallon pots. Because I didn’t have enough potting soil, I had to make a little more. So, I got the old potting soil from 2 of the 5 gallon pots and mixed it with steer manure, potting soil and planting mix and filled up 4 pots with the new mix.
How to plant beans in pots
After I mixed the soil and filled up the pots I started to plant beans. I placed 4 seeds in each pot and pushed it down into the mix at a depth of around 1/2 inch. After I covered the seeds with the soil I watered the soil thoroughly.
The pots filled with potting mixPlanting seeds
According to the packet it will take between 14-21 days for the seeds to germinate.
In the next section I will post periodic updates for the life of the bean plants
Bean plants updates
February 28– The beans sprouted and are starting to pop out
March 20 – The bean plants are growing very slowly because the weather was cold in the month of March and it seems that it will be cold for a while in the future.
April 18 – Finally the weather is getting warmer and the beans are in bloom.
April 26 – The bean pods are starting to form.
May 5 – today I harvested the first beans. Also the plants have spider mites on the leafs. So, I spay them once a week with a solution made from 2 tbs of pure neem oil and 3/4 tbs of soap in a gallon of water.
Today I cleaned up my 27 gallon rectangle containers. I trimmed my peppers and eggplants and decided to let them grow for the next season.
I also checked the blackberry plant to see if it developed roots.
BeforeAfter
It was time to check the blackberry plant for roots. I covered the tip with potting soil on December 28 and the result it can be seen in the picture below.
Yay!!! New roots!
I cut the original blackberry in half and planted the new one in a 5 gallon pot. In order to continue the propagation process, I stuck the tips again in 2 small pots. Hopefully in 1 month I will have 4 blackberry plants.
March 10 update: the blackberry didn’t grow roots, most likely I have to wait for them to start growing before I try to multiply them again.
