Monday, June 8, 2009

TOMATO RESCUE


During the calm before the daily rain-lightning storm today I was able to rescue one of my wild Everglades Tomato plants. I found it growing up in one of my pots containing a flower plant.
The Tomato's grow wild wherever they fall from the bush or the birds drop them. I have a Mockingbird who when the bird feeder is empty regularly helps himself to one of the grape size tomatoes. He spreads the seeds around the garden as he is eating the tomato.

I pulled the plant from the pot and decided to

replant it in the garden as I to like to pluck off some of the Tomato's and eat them while working in the back garden. This time of year the Everglades Tomato is all that I can count on to grow and produce in the heat. I plan on starting my regular Tomato plants toward the end of August from seed so they can go out in September. This is the correct time to plant main season Tomato's here in South Florida.
Anyway I cut the bottom out of a black plastic pot I had saved from someones roadside trash. I dug a planting hole for the bottomless pot about six inches deeper than the pot height and filled the hole with soil and cow manure mixture . The pot went in with the lip sticking up about two inches to catch the water. Then the tomato plant was suspended in the air while I filled in around the roots with the soil mixture.
After wetting everything in with a large cup of the saved rainwater I put some of the shredded newspaper mulch around the plant on top of the soil. I added a small homemade cage to keep the dogs out and a bamboo stick to train the plant to go up the rebar steel pole I have to support it as it grows.
That's it the project is done with a reclaimed plant in a reclaimed pot mulched with reclaimed newspaper surrounded by a homemade scrap cage. Total cost zero.
Both the Mockingbird and I now just have to be patient a while for our daily Tomato snacks.
---sanddune----
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