It looks as though the tomatoes are going to be okay. While the yellowed leaves haven't necessarily turned green again, the tomatoes are putting out new leaves up top, so at least they've recovered enough to start growing again. Now it's just a matter of having weather mild and sunny enough for them to go outside during the day. As to the larger ones in the plastic pots--they're getting huge. I swear I can see them change in size over the course of just a few hours. If they get much larger, I may have to transplant them from the 3-inch pots into 4-inchers. Now, the 4-inch pots I bought have an interesting feature. They're made of a recycled coconut shell fiber, and will decompose directly into the ground when I transplant the tomatoes into the garden beds. So once the tomatoes are in those pots, I don't even have to remove them in order to plant them. Cool, huh?
I would have taken new pictures of the huge tomato seedlings this evening, but I ended up making a run to Lowe's to get more peat moss. Last week we had eight cubic yards of topsoil delivered to our driveway, and had to shift it immediately into the back yard so it wouldn't get anyone in trouble with the subdivision's homeowners' association (or the City's law enforcement--you can't block a public sidewalk.) It took a few hours' labor with shovels and wheelbarrows, and fortunately our friend with the grapevines came over to help. I guess my shoulder must have been out of place before we started the work, and then it got worse over the past week, so as usual I ended up at the chiropractor. But the beautiful thing is that the Huz got two of the new raised planting boxes done and in place, filled with a mix of that nice dirt and some peat moss. The teenager and I actually planted peas in the first box a few days ago, and now that the second one is in place, we'll be planting more peas early this week. The Huz tells me the boxes were expensive to build, so I'd better grow lots of food. With any luck, these boxes will hold peas in the back, beans in the middle, and cucumbers in the front where they can drape themselves over the side. Companion planting, and the most efficient use of box space I could come up with--so we'll see how it works. Now all we need is for the nights to stop getting below freezing so the soil will warm up and seeds will sprout.
As a consequence of the cold nights, our area is still waiting for asparagus, which was here already at this time last year--or so I've heard. Since this is our first local-food year, it's the first time I've really paid attention to asparagus season, and I'm here to tell you, it really brings home our relationship to the earth, the climate, and their changes. I can't gripe about the cold because it's the first normal winter our area has had in years, but...it's really hard to eat locally when all the Co-Op has left for local food is ancient cold-storage potatoes and onions--and we've been lucky to have those. Last fall's cold-storage "fresh" apples are gone. So we've been eating food from California again, looking forward to the day when our own area gardens have something to feed us. I don't have any idea what the farmers' market will have to offer when it opens next weekend, but I'll be there with bells on.
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