This weekend, I’m heading to a home improvement store to get a few bags of potting soil. From previous experience, each 2-cubic foot bag provides enough soil to fill six 5-gallon containers, a few more if I filled the containers less abundantly. I saved up several of these containers over the years, but may need to few more. My plan is place these containers in the bare area encircled by my four fruit tree saplings. I might as well use this space before the trees mature, eh?
In each container, I’ll be sprinkling tomato seeds – I love tomatoes! My guess is that I’ll devote at least 9 containers to tomatoes. Additional containers will be devoted to other crops. I’m not sure how “permanent” this new tomato garden will be, which makes containers ideal for this space. This new tomato garden will be viewable from my bedroom window. My first, and original, tomato garden will be in the side garden, outside of my kitchen. I already envision several salads, sandwiches, pasta sauces, and canning in my future!
Although my saplings are planted directly into the ground, my tomato plants will not be. In the past, gophers have damaged or killed a few of my plants, and I don’t want to lose my tomatoes to them. So far, the saplings still stand (maybe the saplings’ roots are not so tasty to gophers?).
SHOPPING TIP: It’s very helpful and cost effective to get accurate estimates of the the amount and types of garden supplies I need, well in advance of going to the store. Measuring and quantifying are central to my garden design efforts and reduce the time I spend standing in the aisle trying to remember the dimensions of the garden space I have (which I’ve done too many times in the past to count, resulting in several repeat trips to the store!). I take this information to the store and get what I need. Very little time wasted these days, which I’m grateful for.
CONSUMER ALERT UPDATE: The non-fruit parts of tomato plants are poisonous if ingested. More information on toxic plants can be found here: http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/ce/king/poisplant/tox-com.htm
Filed under: Gardening, Shopping Tip | Tagged: consumer alert, container gardening, cost effective, fruit, fruits, garden design, Gardening, gopher, gophers, indeterminate tomatoes, poisonous, seeds, Shopping Tip, tomatoes, toxic plants, vine tomatoes
