Progress report 3-8-11

This week we will be harvesting tomatoes from the garden ! As you may remember we lost all our plants in mid December to a hard frost. And we did not replant till early January… I grew Heirloom tomatoes for many years and love vine ripen fruit !! I think the most important thing when growing tomatoes is proper spacing . Our Tomato plant’s are spaced 7ft. Apart. Each plant has 49 sq. ft. each to grow. Crowding plants makes them weak and gives insects more places to hide and reproduce.. Also for beginners I recommend small fruited varieties cherry tomatoes and sweet 100’s .







Also of interest in the Garden this week is caterpillars , But not ordinary caterpillars these are Black Swallowtail caterpillars . The Life cycle of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly is called Metamorphosis , the caterpillar stage lasts around 2 weeks. In that time they eat your garden plants and get ready to form a Chrysalis. You’ll be happy to know that we relocated them to an other area so they can turn in to Butterflies