A busy day, yet a quiet day...

29 tomato plants in... Yay!!

It’s June 1, and meteorological summer… already!

I've been meaning to get our tomato plants in for the whole of this week, though with one thing and another something’s always got in the way. I was determined that they’d go in by the end of the week, so down to the plot I went and after a bit of watering and checking on things I started filming me getting our tomato plants in.  With this week gone’s A Week at the Plot already edited, uploaded and finalised at my desk first thing this morning, I’ll have to do some sort of time travel for the start of next week’s upload. 

The beds I’d earmarked the tomatoes to go into were covered in cardboard at the end of last season, and it shows how dry the time between has been as about a third of cardboard was still left intact… so, the first thing I did was rub any soil off the pieces of cardboard that remained intact, and popped them into a big bucket; another day they’ll be ripped up to go into our compost bin. After leveling the soil off a little with a rake, I started planting out the 29 tomato plants.

They’re are real mix; a Croatian variety that we were given by plot neighbour, a Hungarian variety given by a favourite plotter, and of course the selection of our own save-seed tomatoes including Amish Paste, Black Krim, Rose de Berne and an Isle of White yellow tomato of which I saved the seed from a box of tomatoes we were sent last year by one of our subscribers from the Isle of White Tomato Company.

The plants really did need to go in, though despite being pretty big - with some of them about two foot tall - none were rootbound which I was very pleased about. The holes were dug really deep, down to about a foot and about 10 inches wide, and then the plants themselves were put in about four or five inches deeper than they’d been in the pots, ie the top level of the soil of the pot was now about four or five inches down.  This will allow the hairs on the stem to change to roots, bringing more nutrients and water into the plant as each grows. After a really good watering, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for bountiful harvests in a few months time. 

After lunch I popped back to the plot to do some more tidying and general watering, and then came home to get changed to then go off to a neighbor for supper.

The meal was absolutely delicious, as per usual; a vegetable and tofu curry with brown rice and salad, and then we moved outside into her back garden, and sat sky watching in the sunshine for a good few hours. At one point our host decided that she’d make some popcorn as an extra indulgence, salted rather than caramel thankfully!

With the sun going down and shade crossing the garden, we moved inside to her living room and spent another hour or so just chatting away.  We walked back, across and up the road getting in just before 10pm.  Then, after a brief sit down and with me being totally exhausted I climbed into bed and read a few chapters of my Peter James book.

A busy day, yet a quiet day!


Weather:  Greyish, with sunny spells particularly in the evening, though feeling warm as around 24°.

Breakfast:  Rye loaf toast, Flora ProActiv. Yeast extract and peanut butter
Lunch:  Lidl Peppered H*m Sandwiches with lettuce, cucumber, mustard (for Richard) and ProActive Buttery spread
Supper:   Neighbour’s Vegetable and Soya Curry with wholegrain rice and salad, and salted popcorn