Yeah, I Know ... I Should Post More

Well this is current status folks. I have not generated a hydroponics garden this year. The reason has already been mentioned I think, but it never hurts to mention it again. I was going to go traveling for about two weeks and didn't want to spend the whole time worrying about an automated hydroponics system losing power or running out of water or any of the other myriad of things that can go wrong. So this year is garden year. Also Jessica (my better half and the 50% tomato consumer) says that I need to plant bigger tomatoes. She's tired of Donas, my favorite, because it is a medium to small sized tomato (4 ounces or so) and she wants "real tomatoes." Now that's really not fair. Donas are beautiful. Round, really red, seamless and totally delicious with that slightly acid taste that I love in tomatoes. I don't like the meaty but mild and chewy ones nearly as much.

So this year is big tomatoes ... all of these puppies are Big Boys. although there might be one or two Better Boys in the mix. There are also a couple of sweet pepper plants but they are still too small to notice. All the tomato plants are caged and today was the day we laid old newspapers down all over the garden and then covered them with some straw to discourage the weeds. I didn't do that last year and the weeds got pretty much out of control. So here it is. The plants are not as big as they might be had I started the seeds earlier but they're coming along nicely and should start flowering any day now.

Can It Be June Already

Blink ... blink and it's June already. Well I've not put together a hydroponics system. I didn't really have anything new to try and I've been thinking about taking a two week driving trip sometime and none of my systems will work very well, especially later in the season, if they are neglected for two weeks. I suppose I could more fully automate them, but then I'd be worried about things like power outages and other kinds of failures. People are more adaptable then automated systems usually.

So what I did is take the little baby rototiller (should have popped for a real rototiller but this one was cute, but not all that effective) and I rototilled about an 8 foot by 8 foot plot ... maybe a little bigger and put in a whole bunch of large tomato plants (the plants weren't large but the tomatoes they produce are supposed to be (Big Boys and Better Boys) but they were seeds in April so they're not all that huge even now. We'll see how they flourish. Pictures maybe next time. I also planted a couple of sweet pepper plants.