The 2014 Northwest Flower and Garden Show

Yay! It's February and time for the annual NW Garden Show!  OK, so it's a little early for spring, but the show is the perfect 'fix' for those that are winter weary.  As for us, well, this year has been really light and not a bad winter at all.  We headed to Seattle this morning with a clear sunny sky and a great day in front of us.

There were about 25 demonstration gardens for us to look at. This year's theme was Art in the Garden (I think).


Glass Houses. . . 


I was fascinated with the glass sarracenia (pitcher plants) display garden. 


















This one really was our favorite - the glass looks like super-sized pitcher plants.

Sooooo many great ideas

Wouldn't this look great in a koi pond?  (especially my koi pond)



Asian Style Gates

This garden was a happy surprise.  We've been talking about adding this kind of gate to our garden entry, but hadn't found a good example in the scale similar to our yard.  This is exactly what we were looking for.




The back fence was also really beautiful and gave us some additional ideas.











And then there are the cool conifers.  I've started getting into conifers lately (not literally, because they are pokey), so I find myself fascinated by all the new colors and textures tht are available.  This display had a little bit of everything.

 

Another display had a red gate with a slightly different approach to the same gate style. 













Ever wonder what to do with that dead tree you have laying aound?  How about adding a splash of blue, white and purple paint? 

Who'd have thought you'd find that in a garden.  Can't say its a bad idea, just one I would not have thought of on my own.











Well this is a cool idea for plant markers. 

I have rocks all over the place and these labels are really easy to read - talk about creating an 'organic' look using an inorganic material (that would be a rock for those that don't remember science class)

 

Hmmmm, this was an interesting display - lots of stumps and rocks of assorted sizes.























We thought this one was alot of fun.  It was an interesting collection of glass, stone and metal. 


Though I'd love to have some of this artwork, the large metal sculpture is a little too big to fit in the yard - and I'm not going to fire up a torch and do this kind of project right now.

The glass plants were very cool.  They looked like Dr Seuss plants, which are always very appealing to us, especially the green horn shaped ones.

I also really like the way they did the glass bamboo.  I've looked at those for a couple years now and at some point I'll break down and start collecting them slowly.































We loved these (the artist is Kevin Russell) and I'd really like to have one or two.  Doesn't everyone need a few neon jellyfish??

The sky-bridge had some mini-gardens displayed.  I liked these glass vases.  I just saw some empty ones the other day and wasn't sure what one would do with them.  Thinking these may make really nice gifts in the future.  They look pretty easy to make.

This is the sort of thing I should not see at a garden show, but I immediately start searching the web for one.  If only I had a pile of spare 'copper downspout cash' floating around, because I would love to have one of these.  It really is way too cool.


I'm now kicking myself for taking a photo and not finding the card for the company that makes/sells these.  The copper wheel in the center spins with the water flow and this would look great on our deck above the rain barrel.

Shopping at the Show

You can't go to a national garden show without shopping, right?  Right!  There weren't as many plant vendors as there used to be, but we wonder if it is because this year's show was so early in February and everyone's plants are not ready to sell yet.  Not everyone is willing to keep their plants in a "cool, but not too cold" place while they wait for spring to show up.





Ozothamnus coralloides

Cool plant, huh??  It's a little green, a little white, a little slick and a little fuzzy.  It looks like a cactus, but it isn't.  It looks like a succulent, but I don't think it is.  This won't get too big, only about 15" tall and more shrubby looking over time.  I guess I better do more research before I turn this little guy loose in the yard.









Thujopsis dolabrata 'Aurea' (Aka Golden Elkhorn Cedar) 

My husband says I love this tree because it looks like a big fern.  Wish I could say he was wrong, but once again he hit the nail on the head. 

The Heaths and the Heathers

Our new little Golden Joy Heath.  The plant is about a foot tall right now, but it turns out that this is a 'tree heath'.  That means this quiet little plant is going to grow into a 6 foot tall monster in a few years. 

Apparently there is a difference between Heath and Heather.  We don't actually know the difference, other than one is a girls name and one is a boys name.  This one appears to be the boy.


Our other new one is Winter Fire Heather, so it must be a girl.  It has not flowered out yet, but that's ok.  The ones that were forced for the show were really beautiful, so we're excited to have these. 

It sounds like these will take off sometime next month and put on a show until May.

Arisaemas!! (Aka, Jack-in-the-Pulpits)

OK, so I already have griffithii, but mine was lonely, so I got him a friend to hang out with.  In truth, I'd like a little flock of them, so I'm going to expand to 2 and see if they feel more confident in the garden and spread out. 



We have tons of different strains, but this one is cool and I'd like to have more to look at.












This is our first tiny arisarum.  Its not going to look like the others and hopefully it won't get lost in the hugeness that is the rest of the garden plants.  Maybe I'll tuck it in near the tibetan poppies...hmmmm.



  

 Toad Lilies!!

Some of us are hard core 'Toad Lily' people.  I happen to have way too many of them in the garden, so of course I needed a few more. 

This year Edelweiss www.edelweissperennials.com had several interesting toads that I don't already have, so I put in a little extra time in their area. Last year I bought the prettiest Dodecatheons and look forward to seeing them again this year.

I've been looking for this big 'Tricyrtis Woodland' for a while now.  Because everyone needs a 4' tall Toad Lily dominating their yard.



The 'Tricyrtis maculata' looked nice.  I don't have alot of the really tall toads, and this one looks nice.  I'll start it this month so it has a jump on things this spring.

Yeah, this 'Tricyrtis formosa Blushing Toad' is a smaller one, but who can resist blue flowers liek this? I never get tired of looking at the structure of these flowers - there is so much going on in that tiny flower that it is just amazing. 








Veggies!!!

This year we're going to try out some different strains of onion, shallot, garlic and potatoes.

The white Ailsa Craig onions are supposed to get huge, so we'll see how that works out.

White Cipollini are sweet and about the size of a golf ball.  It sounds like they are great for roasting - yum!

Candy Apple Red onions should be sweeter than normal reds, but it sounds like they don't keep in the pantry as well.  Maybe these will get flash frozen this year.

We also picked up some Holland Red shallots and some Early Italian Purple garlic.



We're going to have a ton of potatoes this year - 5 different strains this time.  We got a blue, a red, a yellow, a white and a russet.  Some get big, some are late, some are early - so we'll do some potato experiments and see how things go.

Potatoes: Cherry Red, Russet Norkotah, All Blue, Kennebec and German Butterball.

Red Fuchsia Begonia 

Yes, this is an outside plant.  It's a Fuchsia Begonia.  It's not too tough, but worth the effort, if you get a chance to try one.  They can get 4' tall over the summer and are very cool looking.  We normally have one on the patio during the summer.


I was happy to get one again this year. Its an annual in our area but I'll bring this one indoors next winter and see if I can grow it huge.

Just the planter I was looking for. . .

What luck, I've been looking for pots just like this.  These are called Plantopia Hanging Baskets (http://www.plantopiaflowerpots.com/home2.html).  They were really reasonable for what they do - only $12 each at the show (you can get them on Amazon for $14). 

These are large planters with removable panels so you can insert plants and have them hang down.There is a reservoir at the bottom so the plants don't die of thirst in the sun. 

We're going to mount these onto our plant posts this spring.  I can't wait to give these a try.

Little Cement Koi

We stopped at our favorite statuary shop at the show.  We usually get something from them every year - this time it was half price koi.

They're pretty small, only about 7" long, but they are multi-colored and very cute.  They look drab because they are dry.  They turn bright colors when they get wet.





So Much for Spring

On the drive home we were surprised with snow.  Yep, it is early February and winter decided to come back and visit for a day or two.  Unlike the rest of the country, we really haven't had winter here, so snow in February came as a surprise.  This snow won't stay, it should be 44 degrees and rainy tomorrow, so this is just a quick blip on the radar.

In the mean time, I can do some research on what we bought today and figure out where to put this year's new plants.

Winter Project - Kitchen Facelift

This winter I just needed a change.  Something kinda dramatic and fun, but not "death-defying" fun. I generally keep busy on garden projects, but it's winter now and I didn't want to wait for spring to do something I could stand back and look at.

Hmmmm, what could I do to the house that wouldn't put us in dept or the hospital...the kitchen and bathroom both could use a little 'sprucing up'.

Besides, I hated that kitchen and we had completely ignored the house for the past few years. Anything I did in there will be a vast improvement.

Original Kitchen

When we bought the house the kitchen had (and still have) cheap white melamine cabinets, a grey counter top and white sink. The walls were originally a depressing grey, which we've long since painted over and wall papered.  The flooring was swapped out for a warmer vinyl and things were better, but the kitchen itself is still...cheap and plastic looking.

We've decided it's time to make do an actual remodel to the kitchen, but we want to make sure about our choices before we started knocking out walls. We 'test drive' our ideas first - I set a table where the new island would go (made us use the new traffic pattern) and have a few color ideas we're not completely sure about.

New Stove and sink

The wall won't come out until we're ready to fully commit to that project, but color is fairly harmless, so we're starting there.

First - Change the color of the counter tops.  Ok, so we actually bought a new stove on a killer sale first and then found our copper sink on clearance, but that is beside the point. 

Because of the beautiful black stove and copper sink, I thought black counters would look very nice, but who wants to go buy a new counter top just to check out the color? 

Roll on counter coating curing for 24 hrs

Enter Daich Coatings, out of Canada http://www.daichcoatings.com. These guys have great 'roll on counter resurfacing' products at half the price of the Rustoleum version.  So we bought a kit online and started on the counters.

The kit showed up, we watched the videos and realized that this change is not hard to do.  We sanded down our counters and started the process - primer, wait, primer again, wait, black sticky stuff, wait, black sticky stuff again, wait, sand, wait, seal, wait, seal again.

Ta-dah!! Black granite-like counters.

But it wasn't as smooth and shiny as we decided we wanted. Hmmm, time to look into the epoxy resin stuff that makes your counters look like stone or glass on top.  We really weren't too worried about the counters, since all of that will come out on the remodel. Anything I do to them can be chalked up to a 'learning experience'.

Light Cabinet Test

While we were debating on the resin idea and letting the counter sealer cure, we played with paint colors for the cabinets. We liked the rich deep mahogany as well as the lighter brown color. Keep in mind that we're not painting 'real' wood, but plastic melamine, so paint is just fine.

Dark Cabinet Test

Since we couldn't decide, we painted one cabinet the deep reddish color we liked and another set the lighter shade that looked good with the counter top.  We couldn't decide.

I added a stain to give the drawers a faux wood grain look.  We couldn't decide.

We turned the lights off at night in the kitchen and area with the mahogany colored cabinet turned into an inky, dark, scary place. We went with the lighter color cabinets and I started painting.

Finished Cabinet

The faux wood grain staining process is a little tricky and I need to redo a couple of the cabinets, now that I've got the hang of it.  It took a little finessing to figure out the order of the stains, but things are starting to look more like wood and less like plastic.

We don't plan to keep the cabinets, just  use this activity to decide what kind of wood type to start looking for.


Yes, our cabinets are glowing - cool, huh?  While painting cabinets, we decided we'd get some under-cabinet lighting, so all of us could see in the dark in the new kitchen. After some online research, we rounded up some tiny LED tape lights (thank you ebay) and stuck them up in the toe area of the cabinets and above the counters.  Boy are those things handy - they fit anywhere and you wire them together where you need them.

Cabinets wrapped up to protect during epoxy coat

After several days with the counters, we decided to try our hands at epoxy resin coats to see if we can get the counter tops to look more glossy.
We did a test on a smaller counter top, got good results and then moved onto the long counter.

Our first layer went pretty well, but had some spots that didn't cover right, so we did a second coat last night.  We've pulled out the sink - again - and made a tape dam around the openings.  This approach worked really well and we didn't get goo in our sink area.


Today the surface is curing and we will set the sink back tomorrow evening.  After that we wait one more day and then our counter tops are completely finished.

Next task - paint the upper cabinets.

More Tomato Taste Tests

My goodness the tomatoes are coming along enthusiastically this year! 

The great tomato experiment is having a wildly successful growing season and we're excited about how well the plants are producing.  We have had tons of Nicholayev Yellow Cherry tomatoes and the Sasha Altai and are now starting to look seriously at salsa as a meal option.




Last week our Azoychka's started to ripen up and the first of the Zefen Shorts have also turned pink and ready to eat.










Azoychka's are large, bright yellow tomatoes that taste great and are low acid.  Its not as sweet as the Nicholayev's, but it is very good as a sliced tomato.

We'll make a salsa out of it tomorrow and let you know how it tastes.

This one is small, but the others are much larger.  This is a vining tomato and it is covered in them.  They scare us a little bit, in truth.








The Zefen Shorts are large, pink when ripe and very good. 


Yeah, that's an apple on the right.  The tomato does not get bright red, but a soft blush color. 








Zefen Shorts are a more acidic than the others so far, with a nice tomatoey flavor and we look forward to trying some sauces with these. 


The plant is covered with tons of fat, large Zefens, so we shouldn't be short on sauce this year.

I think I put a few out in the flower bed, just in case we didn't get many tomotoes from a plant, so we may be up to our armpits in them soon.

Grandma's Relish Recipe to the Rescue

Ahhh Summer.  Its that time of year when we think of slowing down and relaxing and mother nature is picking up speed. 

 

This is that strange time when you are amazed at the amount of food that is starting to come out of your garden and the realization that there is no way you can eat all of this stuff as it comes ripe.  You'd swear its too early to start canning, but the cucumbers start to pile up alot more than you ever imagined.

 

This is also the time when that age old phrase "where did this new zucchini come from" is heard far and wide.

 

We are making that statement almost daily right now.  I thought I had outsmarted the evil zucchini plant and chosen one that was supposed to grow 'smaller' zucchini. 

 


OK, so what that REALLY means is that you will get 5 times more zucchinis, but they WILL be smaller than the normal kind you see, equaling an equal amount of zucchini over the course of the summer.

 

We're still up to our armpits in zucchini.  

No, we can't eat them all and they just keep piling up.

Visitors are not jumping up and down with glee when we try to pedal zucchini on them, either.  They are taking the japanese cucumbers we offer them, however, which has helped out immensely.
 
 

Out of desperation, I flipped through my recipe book and didn't come up with enough recipes to put a dent in the growing pile of zucchini. 

 

Then I looked through my Grandma's recipes...and there was a recipe for zucchini relish - a recipe that is probably quite a bit older than I am - and it used 10 cups of zucchini!  SCORE!!!!
 

I had one of those "country grandmas" that could cook great tasting meals with nearly nothing in the pantry.  She was also one of the best brook trout fisherman I've ever known. 

Grandma had a large collection of recipes that she carefully guarded over the years and sometimes we would be lucky enough to learn one or two of her recipes.  No one could ever 'get a copy of that recipe' out of Grandma, and I'm afraid I've picked up that same habit.  It was only after Grandma had died that Grandpa let me borrow the recipes so I could get them written down - which was an adventure of its own. 

Just in case I end up being the same way, my Mom has been very clear that SHE gets "The Black Box" (my recipes) when I die.  Hopefully it won't come to that.

 

 

So I dove into the zucchini relish recipe.  I prepped my 10 cups of zucchini, delighted with my good luck.  I started cooking the relish and decided to water the vegetable garden while it simmered. 

 

Tomatoes happy - check

Peppers happy - check

Blueberries ready - munch munch munch

Pick more cucumbers - check

Lift a zucchini leaf…..NOOOOOO!  Not MORE ZUCCHINI!!!

 

I finished going over the bushes and we took in the two new armloads of zucchini.  The relish is ready to put up in jars and we're back at square one with the zucchini pile.  Great. 

On the bright side, this zucchini relish is AMAZING!  I think we'll make some more soon...very soon.  

August Tomato Update

OK, I'm sold on the heirloom tomatoes for cool coastal regions. 

We’ve been eating the Nikolayev Yellow Cherry tomatoes for a couple weeks now and those are SO GOOD.  The plant is covered in tomatoes and they're coming on slowly, but wow.  I'm not a big 'cherry tomato' fan, but we can't stop eating these.  Like fruity cherry tomatoes that you can't stop picking. 

Next year we'll plant several more of this kind to keep us in our new favorite 'candy tomatoes'.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday we tried our first Sasha Altai tomato.  Also loaded with tomatoes, but only one was ready to eat.  It was very good and hard to describe.  Not as acidic, but not as sweet, either.  The tomatoes are described as having 'complex flavor'...which explains why we really couldn't describe the flavor.

 

 

 

 

 

August 10th

 

Summer is in high gear and the garden is busy being a garden.  As for the current growth/production of the tomatoes, well July was the month of"take off and grow", and August is the month of "get busy setting tons of fruit".The indeterminate tomatoes (vining ones) are still growing like crazy and also putting on more and more tomatoes.The plants have all shot up and have been covered with blossoms and now they are covered in tomatoes. 

 

 



 



Even the peppers are taking off for the summer.  (Italian Roasters)

Nikolayev Yellow Cherry has been such a surprise.  This is a 'semi-determinate', but we think of it as a short little guy - covered with the sweetest tomatoes you've ever tasted.  We check this one over for new orange tomatoes several times a day...just in case one or two are ready to eat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heinz 9129 is loaded with tomatoes already, which surprised me.  It will be one of the latest to come ripe, but I am very impressed with how much fruit it already has and how large they are.  The tomato is stocky, very healthy and full of fruit.  We look forward to trying them out and see how they taste.

Azoychka is a vining tomato that grows and grows - and has tons of tomatoes on it.  These are on the outside of the plant as well as deep inside the shady middle.  I mistakenly thought that an heirloom may not produce as heavily as the hybrids do, but boy was I wrong on that one. 

Heirloom Tomato Experiment

We've all heard that you should try heirloom vegetables, right?  Well, I'm from the extreme cold, where the growing season is short and hybrids are your friend.  I'm not talking about the GMO hybrids, I mean the good old fashioned 'short season' hybrids.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, however, I have a temperate climate, nice weather and no severe freezing (when you're used to -20 to -40 in the winter, an occasional 10 degrees is nothing).  The downside, however, is that it is cool in the evenings and it rains until the 4th of July, which is not ideal tomato weather.  We didn't like how our local selection of 'Better Boy' or 'Early Girl' performed for us, so I started thinking about a cool weather tomato - and if they even exist.

Enter TomatoFest.com.  Their website listed more tomatoes than I ever imagined and even had a 'Cooler Coastal Collection' with 8 different kinds.  This collection looked good enough - tomatoes from Russia, China, Alaska and one from Heinz - all heirlooms and supposed to do great in our cool evening area.  So I took the plunge, got the seeds and started them early on (April), so I could set them out when it was warmer.

They all sounded great, we were skeptical, so I started 4 of each strain, just in case they didn't have a high germination rate.  Surprise!  All of them sprouted and we soon had little tomato plants crowding under our grow lights.

Here are the tomatoes included in our collection (by shortest time to tomatoes to longest):

Name	Height	Days	Season	Fruit Size	Color	From	Type
Sasha's Altai	Determinate	57	Early	5"	Bright Red	Southern Russia	Heirloom
Gold Dust	Determinate	62	Early	2"	Yellow-Orange	New Hampshire	Open Pollinated
Zhefen Short	Determinate	68	Early	3"	Pink	Zhengiiang China	Heirloom
Azoychka	Indeterminate:	70	Mid	3"	Yellow / Orange	Russia	Heirloom
Nikolayev Yellow Cherry	Semi-determinate:	71	Mid	Cherry	Bright Yellow	Russia	Heirloom
Sunset Red Horizon	Indeterminate	72	Mid	5"	Red	Southern Russia	Heirloom
Heinz-9129	Determinate:	73	Mid	3"	Bright Red	Ohio / Ontario	Open Pollinated
Japanese Black Trifele	Indeterminate	81	Late	6"	Black Purple	Russia	Heirloom

Here's what I did when I planted them:

Box Prep
Potting soil
Sub-irrigation planter  (see my other posts for info on this one)
1 cup of lime in the top  4" of soil
2 tomatoes per box

Layout in the garden
Street 1

Box 1	Zefen/Heinz
Box 2	Peppers
Box 3	Azoy/Nicholai

Arbor

Box 1	Sunset/Japanese
Box 2	Red Bore Kale
Box 3	Gold Dust/Sasha

Garage

Planting Time - in each planting hole

Small handful of Cascade Minerals
Small handful of HuMagic (Hendrikus Organics)
Small handful of Organabloom (Hendrikus Organics)

1st weekend in June

Spray-N-Grow Micronutrient Spray

1st weekend in July

Spray-N-Grow Micronutrient Spray

1st weekend in August

Spray-N-Grow Micronutrient Spray

Water sub -irrigation planter daily

Progress:
March started seeds indoors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 9 - moved tomatoes to larger containers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May planting time in containers under cover.  Moved out last weekend in May.

June 5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 27

 

July 5 - Trellises added

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 15







I'll add update posts as the summer progresses. 

Happy Gardening!

 

 

Overhead / Vertical Tomato Trellis - Let Them Reach for the Sky

This year I'm doing a few tomato experiments. I wanted to find 'the perfect tomato' for us, so I decided to try a bunch of different heirloom tomatoes that were suitable for the Pacific Northwest and see which ones we liked the best. I got a seed collection of 8 'cooler coastal' varieties from Tomatofest.com that sounded promising.



Tomatoes in Sub-Irrigation Planter Bed

I started the seeds pretty early and got a very high percentage of seedings, which was good and bad.  I planted one plant of each in the SIPs and a second plant in the flower garden, so I could compare how the different plants did under different circumstances.  Then I gave some away and tucked the extras into other flower beds,  so we'd have alot of tomatoes for canning this fall.



Tomato Trellis mock up

It's now July and the tomatoes are getting out of control. 



I know I should have staked them earlier, but I told myself I had more time and let them sneak up on me.  The tomatoes are leaning over the sides of the SIP bed boxes, completely covering the kale and threatening the potatoes and nectarine tree.







Painting the trellis a bright color

Time to add support - but I'm not sure how big the 'determinate' ones will get, so I tried to plan ahead this time.  Half the tomatoes are determinate (4' tall??) and the other half are indeterminate and will likely grow so tall they cover the arbor we have set up for them. 

Regardless of tomato type, it seemed like a good idea to add support that could extend vertically about 6' from the soil level.

This year we decided to try a 'sawhorse' approach, legs on each end, a long bar on the top and low on each side and support strings that the tomatoes could climb.




Adding a UV sealer coat

We started with 2" x 2" boards that were cut to about 7', then secured at the top with a wood furring strip. This let the legs of the sawhorse move and lets us fold them up for storage and created a spot for the bamboo rail to fit on top.

Pine lumber seemed pretty bland, so we perked it up with a bright red paint and then a UV sealer.

The bamboo was already stained black, but I went over it again with a black stain that should protect the bamboo from the elements and extend it's usefullness.

Then the wind came up and blew the bamboo sticks over - 5 times.  I did alot of damp cloth dabbing and some retouching, but we finally got everything done and dried so we could assemble the sawhorses above the SIP bed boxes.


Placing the trellis in a planter box

It was so nice to finally haul our trellis sawhorses out to the garden and tuck them into the ends of the box.  The legs fit snugly against the corners of the SIP bed box and are wedged into place by the SIPs inside the raised bed.

Then we added the first bamboo pole across the top.  Things are moving along well at this point.









Attaching the bamboo side rails

We added the bamboo side rails and the clamps.  This allows the side rails to be secure but not clamped down.  The slack lets you slide the side rails out if needed.











Adding the trellis guide lines

The last part is to add the trellis lines.  We used construction string, but in hindsight maybe the green twine would have been better.  It would not have been so....obvious.


The trellis line needs to be long enough to tie to the top bamboo bar loosely, and then hang down loosely and tie to one of the side bamboo rails.


We ended up with about 10 -14 lines per box, which means 5 - 7 lines per tomato plant.
Next I spent alot of time weaving the lines through the tomatoes to keep them upright and allow for airflow.




Weaving tomatoes around the lines

Now the real work begins - training the tomatoes.  If I had been paying attention, I would have done this when the tomatoes were much smaller. 

If this approach works well this year, we'll use it again next year.  So far it looks like a good choice.









Early tomatoes

While adding the tall indeterminate tomato climbing lines, I noticed that the Nikolayev Yellow Cherry already had tomato clusters on it !  This tomato has thin leaves and doesn't look particularly healthy for a tomato - I was expecting big bulky leaves like the others - but this little guy doesnt' seem to need alot of leaves to perform.


We're keeping an eye on this one and hope the cherry tomatoes taste as good as it says they will.  The plant is already covered in blooms and we look forward to trying this one soon.

Tomato trellis in the garden

We have 4 tomatoes per SIP bed. 1 box with 2 determinates (short) and 1 box with 2 indeterminates (very long/tall) on each side of the arbor.









Tomatoes have plenty of climbing room now





The 8 tomato types we're trying this year.  The tomato descriptions can be found on the Tomatofest website

1. Azoychka
2. Gold Dust    
3. Heinz-9129
4. Japanese Black Trifele
5. Nikolayev Yellow Cherry
6. Sasha's Altai
7. Sunset Red Horizon
8. Zhefen Short



Finished trellis and guide lines

Our newly trussed up tomatoes enjoying the sun.


I'll let you know how the experiment goes over the summer.