On the 20 of May, I planted out my tomatoes.
This is the first year where we don’t keep the tomatoes in pots. Instead we made a Hügelbett against the south side of our cow stable, where the squashes were next year, but directly against the stable wall (It is concrete for the first 2 Meters, so should be no problem). I made a long heap of tree prunings, then we heaped manure on top during the winter and in spring, we collected the soil of mole and volehills all over our land and put it on top of the manure. I installed drip irrigation, since no rain reaches this location.
Since we don’t have to water the plants by hand, we can afford to have many more plants. I know that many people on this forum propably think: “Whaaaaaaat, drip irrigation. Is she crazy? Does she want to coddle her tomatoes? What about adaptation? What about low tech?”
Well yes, these are all noble goals. But I also want some tomatoes to eat. And I hope that this system is enough improvement on our previous system (if you can even call it that), so we get some tomatoes. And we still have high humidity, cold nights and the possibility of unfriendly weather in summer, so I believe there is still plenty of selection pressure on the plants.
Additionally, since tomatoes grew so badly all these years (in the pots) it was not possible to document which plants were a little better, since all were so bad. For example, a black krim tomato made not more that 2 fruit all summer. I believe one problem was probably the nutrient situation in the pots.
But now the roots have more space, and a better nutrient situation with less work for us during the summer. Therefore I hope to see differences in vigour between the varieties (or sources) I have AND have time to document it. I am not at home right now, but I have definitely seen already quite a difference in growth habit and vigour between the plants.
Additionally, I planted one pole each of:
- Xaver, a old variety from Liechtenstein (testing)
- a variety I got from an italian aquaintance (testing)
- Dasinger Blaue
- Fasoi grisoni
- potential cross Fasoi-Dasinger
- the Amish gnuttle lookalike that appeared in my seed
The potential crosses will be almost all kept for seed, the other poles are also for eating green. Additionally, I still have seed from the potential crosses for next year, since I don’t hvae capacity (mainly the room) for many polebeans thhis year)
