Melissa said:Here is the Tomato Chat thread.

Tomatoes like a nice warm area in full sun, and need at least 8 hours of sunlight a day, or they get spindly and produce little mature fruit.

So far so good with my tomato seedlings. Growing really well. Many, I guess most, are Heirlooms but of couse not all of them. This year I intend to plant-

Early Girl
Better Boy
Juliet
Sungold
SunSugar
La Vie En Rose
Cal Red and Green
Vinson Watts
Royal Hillbilly
Amy's Sugar Gem
Kakao
San Marzano Retorta
Ambrosia Giant
Juanne Flamme
Gypsy
Golden Tiger
Uptown Funk
Rose De Berne
Yellow Icicle
Black Plum
Azoychka
Mischka
Super Snow White
Blush
Ron's Carbon Copy
Indigo Kumquat
Violet Jasper
Cowlick's Brandywine
Indigo Ruby
Honeydrop Cherry
German Lunchbox
Ivory Egg
Harless Creek Gold
Russian Queen
Orange Paruche
Green Honey
Candy Sweet Icicle
Orange Zinger
Market Wonder
Garnet
Pantano
Golden Rave
Amazon Chocolate
Purple Dog Creek
Black Icicle
Big Sungold Select
Purple Bumblebee

Newyorkrita said:So far so good with my tomato seedlings. Growing really well. Many, I guess most, are Heirlooms but of couse not all of them. This year I intend to plant-

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I wish I had that much space. I have barely enough space this year for 2 each of:
Brandywine, Cherokee Purple (my favorite), Pineapple, Striped German, Ponderosa Pink, and 1 each of Moskvitch (for earliness), Sweet Million (for salads), and Big Beef (for backup when blight is bad). I try to find a spot for an extra Cherokee Purple... LOL!

So it (the Cherokee Purple) looks funny in a cage in my flowerbed. When visitors eat one they go OMG! And want more. So I need the extra one just for visitors.

Yardenman said:

I wish I had that much space. I have barely enough space this year for 2 each of:
Brandywine, Cherokee Purple (my favorite), Pineapple, Striped German, Ponderosa Pink, and 1 each of Moskvitch (for earliness), Sweet Million (for salads), and Big Beef (for backup when blight is bad). I try to find a spot for an extra Cherokee Purple... LOL!

So it (the Cherokee Purple) looks funny in a cage in my flowerbed. When visitors eat one they go OMG! And want more. So I need the extra one just for visitors.

Hey, whatever works!! Gotta find room for those tomato plants somewhere.

Tomatoes are my very favorite. Of all the veggies I grow tomatoes top the list. And oddly enough if I had to choose and could only grow one type of garden plant I would grow tomatoes!

If you have turf, you have potential for tomatoes. Dig up that useless lawn.

There really is not much lawn here as for years I simply expanded my garden beds. Now I have lots of flowers and veggies but very little lawn.

We still have lots of lawn (and therefore room to expand)

However, (1) I need the lawn clippings to mulch my veggie garden, and (2) I need to get what I already have planted to flowers under control before I expand them in any way.

Just buy bales of straw for the mulching. Can't help with getting the flower beds under control.

Hmmm -- let me think; buy straw or use free grass clippings?

The veggie garden is probably plenty big as it is, having already been expanded at least 3 times...

I would never have enough free grass clippings. The neighbors do put them out but not safe to use after the Chem Lawn applications!!

Newyorkrita said:

I would never have enough free grass clippings. The neighbors do put them out but not safe to use after the Chem Lawn applications!!

I wouldn't pick stuff up that I knew had been treated, or if I didn't know whether it had or not, either. We mow quite a bit of lawn, although I use the term "lawn" fairly loosely; it's taken me quite a while to convince DH that this is a "country lawn," not the "city lawn" that he was used to previously!

I used to use my own lawn clippings a lot when I had more of it to use. Never put anything on my lawn except maybe some garden lime.

My mulch of choice is several layers of newsprint and about 6-8 inches of straw. My entire garden gets covered with this mulch. Grass clippings get recycled back into the lawn so I don't have the fertilize the turf.

PaulF said:My mulch of choice is several layers of newsprint and about 6-8 inches of straw. My entire garden gets covered with this mulch. Grass clippings get recycled back into the lawn so I don't have the fertilize the turf.

That looks very good!!

I really like to use straw in the veggie beds too. I love the way it looks and it really does a great job.

I'm so very jealous!! Lawn, lawn, expanding flower beds and the gi-normous lists of which varieties y'all will grow this year!!

I currently live in an apartment (with plans for escaping to a HOUSE!!! Oh, then I will have lawn, too, and room to expand flower beds!!). Property management claims the lawn areas and allows narrow strips next to my building for flower gardens. . . and they mean FLOWERS! And shorties at that! So I grow my 7-8 tomato plants in containers on my back porch.

My tomato seedlings are almost ready for their 2nd pot-up, into red Solo cups; today, they spent 4 hours outside, as they're in the middle of being hardened off. They'll then spend the next 3 weeks outside all day long!!

This year, I'll grow:
Jasper
Big Beef
Special Turkish
Celebrity
Container Choice
Defiant
Mountain Merit
Waratah

How awesome @BetNC that you still find a way to grow tomatoes with our limited space. I live in a subdivision with very strict rules, so I try to hide my veggies in amongst the perennials and other landscaping. One of my colleagues (living in same subdivision) was reported by a neighbor because their tomatoes were "unsightly" . Seriously--you can't make this up. So, his dad (a woodworker) made him a beautiful wooden fence to put around his tomato garden. He was then sighted by the HOA for an unapproved structure. I think we should all be growing food--how can it be unsightly??????

I'm so grateful my near neighbors are not this picky. I'm thinking some bribes of fresh produce might help.

Linda, I agree that it's pretty sad when you aren't "allowed" to grow veggies!

(that's why I love living in the middle of the north woods...)

If you haven't already watched this TED talk on gardening where it's not allowed, you've got to go watch it: https://www.ted.com/talks/ron_...

Love it!

We have new next door neighbors this spring--ones that can actually see into our yard. The person that moved from that home recently was a fellow master gardener, so we were only concerned about maintaining our gardens and growing veggies.


I will definitely need to get on the good side of our new neighbors, although the few times I've met them they are VERY nice people. Hopefully they are not offended by growing veggies.