Two of My Early Girl Tomato Plants

Bob Bauer

June 04, 2017 (Last Updated: March 06, 2023) | Reading Time: 2 minutes

June 03, 2017

The corn is tassleing and the strawberries are ripening, let the summertime roll. Did you know that raccoons like strawberries? I didn't either. They must like picking them more than eating them because I have them strewn along my garden pathways. Would turkeys do that? Surely not the garden cats. The cats are busy catching birds, mice, lizards and cabbage moths. I try to rescue the lizards and get growled at..

They are helping me harvest the garlic and I'm surprised at how dry the soil is. I learned that the type of sprinkler I'm using, an orbit type, throws a heavy circle of water around a light center. You have to move it away from the area that you want most of the water to go. I'm watering the onions differently now that I discovered it..

June 04, 2017

Two of my Early Girl tomato plants have set fruit so I guess I'll cut back on the water. Just kidding. You want to wait until the plants are full sized before you do that. I consider filling up the tomato tower to be full size, but my tomato towers are 4' tall. I've seen some 2' towers and usually kind of snicker at them. With healthy tilth in your soil cutting back the water is difficult. Plant roots extend far away from the plant base if they have lite, fluffy soil to grow in. Your good earth is like a sponge, with air pockets and tiny tunnels, that absorb water and move it horizontally along the ground..

As I harvest the garlic I keep checking the dirt clods that come up for their crumbability, and marvel at how much open space there is, because I don't rototill Bugs, worms, microbes and decomposed roots are responsible for all those pockets and tunnels. I mulch..... therefore I garden..

June 05, 2017

I've just read about a soil microbe called Mycobacterium Vaccae that has an antidepressant effect. Studies are being done that show it increases seratonen levels when inhaled or ingested. All the more reason to let the first half inch of your garden soil dry out. Back when I was a hippie gardener I read that plants communicated with each other and I believed it because I wanted to..

Now that I'm a geezer gardener I'm buying the Prozac in the dirt bit because it's fun. I really enjoy the smell of the earth, now I have an excuse to inhale it..

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