Growing Tomatoes

[FlickerOfLight]

As nice as my sandy loam soil is here in the swamp, it is fairly poor. Likely due to the variety of trees and plant life here before I carved a garden out of it. I did great for fertilizer when I had chickens. Neutralize the poop with lime and it is ready to use, or leave it for a month to mellow out before using it. Great stuff, better than cow poop. I have a nice big mulch pile, but I need to get chickens again.

I began to use commercial fertilizer after that, and it became an addiction to the soil. I'd rather find natural sustainable organic ways to condition the soil and have it improve over time than inject it with nitrogen every week as a temporary fix when the plants start getting the Jones for more.

The organic compost is what I was wanting to lean towards. My idea was to figure out how to do all this with what I already had. I know my granny didn't go out and buy fertilizer all those years she was growing her tomatoes. She used something she already had to feed the plants. I'm just not sure of how she did it. I wished I had paid more attention when I was growing up, and had learned her secrets to growing food.

It rained here the last couple of days. Apparently the rain itself has some natural elements to it that feed the plant; beyond ordinary tap water (something I read somewhere). Today I woke up to a very healthy looking tomato plant. There is barely any yellowing, the leaves and stems are nice and buoyant. The little bit of brown around the one leaf hasn't spread or gotten any worse.

I have a bunch of flower pods formed on the plant. About 8 flowers in all. This morning 3 of then were opened to the little yellow flowers. I'm told the tomatoes will come soon after the yellow flowers start to bloom.

I'm hoping to see some tomato production soon.

I think taking out some of that fertilizer made a big difference. Next time I won't add so much so quickly. 

For now "Ludell" looks great.