![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Tomato Time
As is usual in New Zealand, October went rapidly from kind of wintery to full-on summery, and that means it's time to plant tomatoes. I loathe gardening with the fury of a thousand burning suns, but I hate tasteless tomatoes even more, so I bravely put up with the gardening necessary to grow nine pots of the tomato bred for flavour, Tasty Tom.
This year that was more complicated than usual. Tasty Toms are often not easy to get here, but that was made worse this year by Auckland being in lockdown at tomato-buying time. Finally I managed to locate the only branch of the big box chain in Auckland that had them for sale and intrepidly and maskedly drove halfway across Auckland to click and collect them.
It was early in the season, maybe three weeks before most people plant their tomatoes. (I wanted them early as otherwise the plants are always festooned with tomatoes in February just as I'm leaving for two weeks at the beach.) As a result, the plants were a little on the weedy and pathetic side. So I decided to lovingly hand-rear them for a couple of weeks inside.
Only it wasn't a couple of weeks. I had to do more click and collecting to get the tomato potting mix. Then even more to get the pot stands I'd forgotten that stop my deck from rotting away under the pots. So I think I might have left the plants a bit too long.
Fortunately, although they were very long and very spindly, I did manage to get all the plants into the pots without snapping any of the stems. Now they're happily racing up the deck posts. Roll on tomato-picking season.
This year that was more complicated than usual. Tasty Toms are often not easy to get here, but that was made worse this year by Auckland being in lockdown at tomato-buying time. Finally I managed to locate the only branch of the big box chain in Auckland that had them for sale and intrepidly and maskedly drove halfway across Auckland to click and collect them.
It was early in the season, maybe three weeks before most people plant their tomatoes. (I wanted them early as otherwise the plants are always festooned with tomatoes in February just as I'm leaving for two weeks at the beach.) As a result, the plants were a little on the weedy and pathetic side. So I decided to lovingly hand-rear them for a couple of weeks inside.
Only it wasn't a couple of weeks. I had to do more click and collecting to get the tomato potting mix. Then even more to get the pot stands I'd forgotten that stop my deck from rotting away under the pots. So I think I might have left the plants a bit too long.
Fortunately, although they were very long and very spindly, I did manage to get all the plants into the pots without snapping any of the stems. Now they're happily racing up the deck posts. Roll on tomato-picking season.