Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Stringing the Tomatoes and Setting Up the Hoop House

Want to show you all some of what we have been doing. Yesterday it rained enough to call for a job that kept us out of the wet weather. Tomatoes needed pruning and stringing so that is what we did. I went ahead of the others and pruned each plant, Bryne tied the strings from the wires and the gang attached the clips and carefully wound each stem around the string.  After it was all done each plant was watered. Its always a tedious job but so important to get done. Every week we will prune and wind the growing point of each plant around the string. You want the energy of the plant to go into developing fruit and not growing more stems.

There are about 300 plants in this hoop house and about 12 varieties. Black Krim, Black from Tula, Black Prince, Black Cherry just to name a few. Looking forward to a good tomato harvest.
Early last week we reassembled our original hoop house into another field. We have planted it full of basil. The location gets the very last rays of sun for the day. Good for basil. Those are my dahlias on the right side of the hoop house and snow peas on the left.
Bryne putting the finishing touches on the hoop house before the planting begins. We planted first, watered the transplants in with the sprinklers on and then put the plastic on the next day. I will post some photos of the basil soon. Here on the west coast you really can't grow large amounts of basil successfully without cover. Made some pesto for supper last night. What a great smell and flavour.