The Search for a Trellis System.

Last year I planted 12 tomatoes, 4 rows of 3 plants each. I had this brilliant idea to use the Florida Weave method. It would be beautiful both for it's simplicity and more importantly the ability to break it down at the end of the season and store it in my hall closet. Yeah, I mentioned my garden shed is actually a quarter of my hall closet, right next to my Christmas tree, my laundry detergent and mop bucket. This is NYC, we make do with what we have. Anyway, back to the Florida Weave method. It basically involves putting to posts at the end of each row, and weaving twine in between the plants, alternating sides with each pass, so that each plant is caught between the string and held up and together, neatly and uniformly. Well, not to bash on it, but I really don't see how it works without re-bar or a cage system. The posts quickly started leaning towards each other as the weigh of the plants and fruit grew and eventually they were just a giant mess on each other. NEVER AGAIN FOLKS, NEVER AGAIN.

This winter I spent researching various ways to get my tomatoes standing tall.

My goals for a Trellis System were:

• It should be cheap, cost effective. Yes, I could buy individual jumbo cages, but they're expensive for the number of tomatoes I want to grow.
• It should be easy to assemble, something I can do, by myself, and keep all my fingers and toes, without needing a saw or needing to create a mini-workshop in my front room.
• It should as compact and easy to store as possible, ideally in a hall closet, but push came to shove, behind my wardrobe or under my bed (what, do you not store garden equipment under your bed??)
• It should keep the tomatoes upright, easily, without constant tending (as I'll be out of the country for 3 weeks) and shouldn't be unnecessarily fussy or labor intensive to maintain.
• It should be strong and capable of holding the weight of the tomatoes. 
• It should allow as much of a breeze as possible to pass, which'll help with disease. 

I found a few ideas, but ultimately the only one that really fit my needs was the Vertical String method with Electrical Conduit Pipe as support. First, the Vertical String Method involves tying a bowline knot around the base of the plant and then twisting like a corkscrew up the length of the plant, from there it goes to a Electrical Conduit Pipe which is part of a basic frame and attached there. As the plant grows you twist it around the string more and it grows up and up. The most important part of this is pinching back suckers, which is do-able and not super labor intensive.  For mine I built a shoebox shaped frame, with PVC pipe elbows and joints and ECP. If I decide to use this method next year, I'll use electrical conduit pipes that I've soldered joints together, for now PVC pipe joints and a helluva lot of gorilla tape to hold things all together. 

So far the Director of the garden has commented about the ambitiousness of my system and that because I'm right up front everyone's been looking in and wondering what I'm doing and whether it'll succeed. Gah, ambition should be made of sterner stuff. 

Next time: The Trellis, Tomatoes go in and the garden comes to life.

Putting a Question Mark after NYC.

It's been a tough winter. I mean not New England tough, but still, most of February was snow. And while I'm happy the shortest month was the month of snow, it got a little ridiculous. They closed the MTA because of the threat of snow (which later turned out to be JK RAIN/SLUSH/NOTHING). But still. Never before have I contemplated life further south and while a certain 9 month is certainly earning her inheritance from me with her cuteness, this winter had a huge chunk to do with me putting a question mark after NYC.

Really though, It'll be some time before I fly this crazy coop. What kept me sane through the blowing snow and freezing cold was the constant planning of the garden. The trickle in of seed magazines, the slow appearance of seeds and germination kits at Home Depot, how the dates crept forward, closer and closer to seed starting time. Mother Nature knows how to keep us hanging on with hope even when she's raging. 

I was determined to save money this year on the garden. Last year, in a fit of IT'S MID-MAY AND I NEED TO HAVE THINGS IN THE GARDEN resulted in buying almost all my plants at Home Depot, plants that weren't cheap let me tell you. This year would be different, I would inject some bucolic thrift into the city. So I went to all of the places where seeds exist, harried more than a few Home Improvement store workers and set out a plan. Do you know how many YouTubes there are about starting seeds? So many. And I've watched them all. Twice. Not that I'm really that surprised, but very quickly I had created a mid-sized grow lab in my kitchen that would make even the big drug kingpins jealous. All for my tomatoes.

I definitely over-planted, admittedly, I just assumed that since people can barely grow in a NYC apartment, why should I expect tomatoes to really grow. Well. Funny thing happened. Every damn peat pellet had seeds sprout, most of them had multiple seedlings. This is from February 20th:

There was a harsh Sophie's choice in the weeks to come. Seriously. These are from March 5th. How do you pinch back two of the three fully sprouted plants in a peat pellet?!

Currently I have two shelves full of tomatoes and kale and sweet peas and all sorts of flowers. And my kitchen is a ridiculous overgrown mess. This is from a few days ago. That's right 2 feet tall. On the left are my Early Girl, Mortgage Lifter and Cherokee Purple, on the right side are all San Marzano for sauce and jam. So if anyone is investigating mysterious abandonment of tomato plants throughout Brooklyn, it wasn't me, definitely not me, at all. Yeah.

With spring, finally having sprung, I've been in the garden for a week now, cleaning up a bit, constructing a somewhat ambitious trellis system and digging up boulders. Actual boulders. More on that later. For now, things I'm excited for: Rhubarb from the garden, a well planned garden and so many flowers!