Recovery

After the hail storm, I took a bunch of cuttings of my tomatoes and thought I'd share a down and dirty how-to.

First thing is to identify a prime bit of broken tomato that you'd like to salvage. Branches work just as well as main stems, so pick a bit that has most of its leaves intact and minimal bruising on the stem. The piece I chose was a sucker from the main tomato plant.

You can see how the stem was broken and pretty much destroyed. Above all of the breaks, though, was a fairly sturdy vine. This is where I chose to cut.


Now that all of the decision making has been done and you've committed to a cut, the easy part comes. Plop that puppy into a pot. Since tomatoes root along the stems, I like to put a couple of inches (depending on the size of the cutting) under ground. This'll give you a pretty solid root mass in a shorter period of time.


I laid the bottom of the cutting across the potting soil in a 1 gallon pot. I bent the top of the vine upwards and packed potting mix around the stem. I watered thoroughly and gave the little puppy a squirt of Superthrive for added punch.

And this is what it looks like a week later!

Several of the cuttings are flowering and showing signs of greenies again. What a relief!

Oh hail.

You heard right! HAIL.

About a week ago, we had a normal, everyday thunderstorm that dropped a nice bucket of hail all over my growing plantation. I'd just gotten the Florida weave rocking, and everything was beaten down quite nicely. Entertainingly, our roof, two miles away, survived without a dent. Drat!

We went over to survey the damage, and I took long cuttings from about half of the plants and have them going at home. They're doing pretty well, so I hope we'll be back in gear (albeit extremely behind schedule!) shortly.

Talk about taking the wind outta someone's sale. Mother nature, sometimes you royally stink. I wish they had home growers' crop insurance!!

Tutorial on how to take tomato cuttings should be up soon. ;)

I've been a bad, bad blogger

My little world has been pretty wild for the past couple of weeks. My health and now my man-thing's have been keeping us on the run from doctor to doctor and hospital to hospital. I hope things will settle down in another two weeks and programming will return to normal.

Things are green here and the Tomato Plantation is up and rolling!

Some pictures from my back gardens:

Modish interviews greenthing

My last post mentioned resellers in the plants and edibles section on etsy, and Modish published an interview partially describing the situation.

Check it out here.

And now for something completely different! Flowers. Here's an amaryllis that I got from my mother. They're everywhere around her home, and her beds are always overflowing with the lovelies. Sadly, I have to dig them up every fall, but I wouldn't be without them! This prized specimen was 8.75" across! I was impressed.

Selling Elsewhere

The recent influx of seed and plant resellers to Etsy and complete dismissal of the issue by the Etsy CEO has encouraged me to find other outlets for my plant sales. While I won't be closing house entirely on Etsy, I feel that the situation has severely compromised the integrity of the Plants category and don't wish to be lumped in with blatant resellers and people lying about the origins of their seeds.

By the recommendation of greenthing, I will shortly be setting up shop on winkelf. I like the layout and general look and feel of the site, and I think it may end up being a good home.

I've had a couple of listings up on ArtFire, but I feel that the look and feel of the site is too cluttered, messy, and difficult to navigate. Supposedly, there are going to be changes made, but I'll be waiting for those before I decide whether to invest any more time in my shop there.

The second place that I will be opening up shop is Zibbet. It's still very small and developing, but the layout and listing process is very clean, tidy, and easy to navigate. They also have a strict 'no resellers' policy, which greatly, greatly appeals to me. I hope that means that, as the site grows, it will maintain its integrity in a way that Etsy seems unwilling or unable to do. My shop on Zibbet is located here.

We'll see how they do and what happens. I'll probably be checking into other selling outlets, but that's all the news that is news, for now.

Rain, iris, and snakes.

The past couple of days have been a great break from the rain. We had one day of high winds that took down part of a dying Bradford pear, so I'll have plenty of mulch this year for my beds. My flowers are blooming and I've had a lot of visitors.

My iris are blooming for the first time this year. I've got a couple of yellows and possibly a couple of peaches that are budding out, and I'm very excited! Here's one of the purples:


And here's a little guy that visited last week. He was only about 12" long, but he gave me a start when I saw him sunning himself on the patio. I think we positively identified him as an East Midland Water Snake. He was completely non aggressive (but very slippery!), so we picked him up and carried him back across the street to the pond.

Sowing small seeds

Seeds come in all shapes and sizes, and I've noticed, recently, that many people tend to shy away from small seeds. When I say 'small', you might think of tomato seeds, but I think of tiny seeds. Seeds that are so small that they can easily be balanced on the tip of a ball point pen.

You've never seen a seed this small, perhaps, because many times, these tiny tiny seeds are treated before you get them. Sometimes they're imbedded in paper or strips or coated in clay to make them easier to handle. For those of us who are small growers, these treatments are often costly and impractical for the batches we collect.

I've been told time and time again how difficult it is to start these plants from their tiny seeds, so I thought I'd provide a short list on how to successfully germinate your newest addition.

First, find your container. I know a few people who are able to sow these tiny seeds outdoors, but I always have the best luck starting them under shelter. Your container can be just about anything from a seed tray to a plastic cup.

Second, mix a soilless potting mixture with water until moist and pack it into your container. You don't want it soupy, but it should be noticeably damp, if you stick a finger into it.

Third, the moment of truth. Take a pinch of seeds and sprinkle them over the surface. If you like to see where your seeds are going, take a piece of damp paper towel and lay it over the surface of the soil before sprinkling.

Fourth, DO NOT cover these tiny seeds. Some small seeds are fine with being covered, but I've found that my germination rates are much higher when surface sown. If you are starting your seeds in a dry environment, cover your container with plastic wrap or a clear plastic cover. This will retain moisture and allow light in to your seeds. Make sure to keep the containers warm to speed up the germination process.