Tomatoes

Over the month of April, I gradually planted my tomato seedlings. They're in a sort of weird two-and-a-half row area that I'm still trying to work out a watering system for. You can see where they fit in the garden in my garden plan.

The varieties I have are:

1 x Juliet
1 x Cherokee purple
1 x Valencia
1 x Big rainbow
1 x Pineapple (yellow)
1 x Lillian's yellow heirloom
1 x Amana orange
1 x White Tomesol
4 x Italian super paste
6 x Brandywine
12 x Roma

Total: 30 tomato plants, with a wide variety for making plain sauce, fancy heirloom sauce, and some just for eating raw. Yum.

All heirlooms will be staked individually. Romas have stakes placed every three plants, and I'll tie string between the stakes to support them. I'll also prune them less aggressively, since they are a determinate variety.

The issue I'm having is that with my tomatoes in three side by side rows, with two channels, it's hard to water them together, even with the channels being connected. I've been using two hoses, but with rising temperature in the summer, other gardeners will need to use their hoses more often and I don't want to be using them more than I should.

Right now I'm trying to figure out a way to essentially make a "hose splitter". I was considering doing it with some tubing and a T-joint. I was also considering doing the same thing, but keeping the two resulting mini-hoses a bit longer and punching holes in them, so I can run them in the bottom of the channels and water a bit more evenly and hopefully prevent erosion. I'll probably experiment a bit and see what happens.

So far, despite a few plants being slightly droopy-looking at the beginning, everything is looking fantastic.