First off, I'd like to post what I promised last time about "link to come later" or whatever. I have a little "links clearinghouse" that includes not only the promised Podcast link but links to this blog as well as my main blog: Knittingfoolelinks. Ok, there you go. Now, on to Tomato Business ™. Putting in more plant food was today's task. I keep a little shot glass next to the Aerogarden to make things super easy. It has little markings on the side so I know how much I'm pouring. I got the bright idea to put a little water in the shot glass (using the watering can I also keep right there) after pouring the plant food in, swishing it, and pouring that in before topping off the water. That way the shot glass can stay in its place longer before the journey to the kitchen sink has to occur. I know it's really simple, but sometimes things like this just don't occur to me right away. They say Einstein had the same problem. No, no he didn't. I made that part up. At any rate.......I made a tinfoil light reflector to put behind the tomatoes and reflect that all-important light back to the little guys so they would ripen. I took it off, though, to take the main picture. It's just too "reflecty" sometimes. Looking around, I noticed that little guy. Hi Little Guy! Basically the tomatoes and I have settled into a comfortable routine of coming by to check on them daily, snipping off branches that grow into the lights, feeding when necessary, etc. The routine is becoming comfy, like the aforementioned pajamas. The tomatoes are not so exciting anymore. But that's not a bad thing. The tomatoes seem to doing pretty well. We'll see if we get some more tomatoes that were as big as the first ones. Comparing the sizes of the first few tomatoes to what I expected not only from descriptions on the Aerogarden website but also reports from other Aerogarden tomato growers, I think I must have gotten extremely lucky. I was told to prepare for VERY small cherry tomatoes. That's not a problem for me. I like these little guys. A final picture for today. More about the tinfoil later. I've got some other things to do now, and I've taken way too long with this little post. Eventually I'll figure things out so I can streamline the blogging process, then I can get into some more things that I want to do with this garden.
In the meantime, Happy tomatoing!
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If you listen to my podcast (link to come later) you know I had a thing last week that totally threw me off. That's why there wasn't anything last Thursday and that's why I'm posting this early this week. See you next week. There's not much happening with the tomatoes, anyway.
Happy Tomatoing! Hi! My arthritic hand hurts, so no pics today, just a short text update.
The tomato on the windowsill looks like it might finally ripen! That's pretty exciting. I had another bigger tomato that was living in the middle of the tomato mess ripen, so I put that in my salad yesterday. It tasted like a tomato. I don't think it was all that spectacular. It was good, I don't really see much difference between it and some store bought cherry tomatoes, to be honest. The tomatoes are growing up into the lights again. I'm going to have to prune them again. It seems like pruning needs to be done at least weekly now, if not more frequently. I'm going to have to build up some kind of tinfoil walls around this thing to reflect light back into the tomatoes on the edges so that they'll ripen. Light does matter, no matter what the articles I've read lately have said. Most said that the amount of sunlight or grow light does not matter at all in tomato ripening, that it is totally the temp the tomatoes are at. That is untrue. My first tomato was at the proper temperature (I actually checked with a thermometer) and didn't ripen until I used a string to prop up the plant so the tomato was directly under the grow lights. Well, that's it for now. I'll have pictures next week. Happy Tomatoing! I lost another tomato. My daughter (my grown daughter) visited with me, and poked one of the little tomatoes that had started to ripen. It fell off. I told her she could eat it. Oh well. At least some are ripening. Here's some pictures of the tomatoes. Today was the day I needed to add more plant food. I did a full wash of the reservoir and refreshed the water. I also trimmed the roots somewhat. I also have some of the plants tied up with yarn to try and bring them under the lights better. Now I know why people have tinfoil all around their Aerogardens. I will probably do that soon. I'm just too tired to do it right now. Last week I pulled off one of the unripe tomatoes to see if it would ripen on the windowsill. So far, no go. That's about it for now. I know it's not much, but this is the stage in the game that is really just boring. The plants grow, they make fruit, maybe it ripens, you do boring upkeep stuff, that's all.
Keep checking in. Since things are getting so boring, I will maybe try to do the tinfoil setup or whatever. Perhaps I can find some more resources to post in the resources section. Happy Tomatoing! I can't believe this day has come. I had to do some pruning, the very first tomato still resolutely stays green, but time marches on and waits for no man....or tomato, so it would seem. See, just doesn't want to ripen. It thinks it's better than all the other tomatoes or something. Anyway, I pruned like crazy because these things were growing up into the lights even worse. And I had to put some more plant food into the reservoir. I even grabbed some yarn to try and prop up some of the branches in the back that seemed to be falling over a bit too much. But did you catch that little bit of color right there in the front? Did you? Did you? See, now this tomato knows what's going on. What it's supposed to do. It may be smaller than the rest, it may be fighting through a maze of branches, but darn it, it's going to freaking ripen no matter what. All these pictures were from a couple of days ago. Today, the tomato looked pretty good. Hi there! Lookin' good. Like, really good. Tasted pretty good, too. I might have jumped the gun. You can't really tell, but there was a little bit of green on the top, just a little. I'm not sure picking and eating this tomato right in front of the Aerogarden was a good way to encourage them to ripen, however. At any rate, there you go. I will probably trim the roots back sometime in the next week or so when I refresh the water and add nutrients again.
Happy tomatoing! Since an obelisk pretty much was out of the question, I figured the next best thing would be to glue a rose to the cover over the tomato's former home. I mean, that's just as good as an obelisk, right? Now, onto other things. The original tomato is still not red. I put some coffee water in the reservoir of the Aeorgarden, I may do it again the next time I change out the water. I don't want to do it too much. We'll see how that goes. Also, the Aerogarden website says something about pruning branches so the plant has more energy to expend on ripening the tomato as opposed to putting energy into growing those branches. Plus, the darn things were growing up into the lights. So, some pruning was done. I even pruned some branches that had flowers on them! The were right up in the lights. I hope that was OK. I've got a lot of tomatoes, so I figure these plants have as much as they can handle right now. Here are some pics of what is going on with the tomatoes now. The pic in the top right very clearing shows the original tomato. Actually, I think I made a mistake and the picture in the lower right might be that same tomato instead of a different one. Oh well. I'll take more pics soon. The point is, I'm finding more of them every day. I don't want these things to have a blowout. Can they get too many tomatoes? Will the plants have to expend too much energy to grow and ripen these things? I guess I'll have to read up some more. Well, that's basically it. I'm having a little trouble concentrating. I usually listen to classical while I'm writing, this time I tried the "Jazz Focus" playlist instead and it's pretty distracting. Back to classical! See you next time, happy tomatoing!
We have our first casualty. RIP little tomato plant, we hardly knew ye. This little one seemed to be doing better. It started looking more hardy, so I pruned back some of the branches of the other plants so it could get more light. It didn't work. As you can see in the images, I removed it and had to cover its spot. Just making a cover didn't work, so I made a little circle of black-colored cardboard, covered that with clear tape, and used the basket and dome to hold it in place. I'm sure there's an easier solution, but I'll figure that out later. Now, on to the good news. We have a lot of tomatoes. In fact, these pictures were taken yesterday, and since then I've noticed even more little tomato buds. I've also noticed these white hard nodules at the base of the plants, which after a little research, I've determined are root nodules which are often a result of ...... DUN DUN DUN overwatering. ??? This is a hydroponic system..... So, more research will be necessary. That's where I'm at now. That first tomato doesn't appear to have any desire to become an actual red tomato. How long does that take? Not sure. Hopefully the plant isn't so stressed that it won't ripen. I also have to apologize for the fact that I didn't get this out yesterday, the appointed Tomato Day. I wasn't really feeling up to it. At least I'm only one day late.
Happy Tomatoing!! Well looky there! The tomatoes are popping up all over, it seems. These are some pics from earlier this week. The largest picture shows tomato #3. But wait! There's more! But first, a little housekeeping. Just this morning, the red light for the plant food was blinking, so I took the opportunity to clean out the bowl part of the Aerogarden, look at the roots, put in the plant food, and switch out the quilt on the table. Things didn't look quite as slimy this time. I didn't let it go for 30 days like last time, though. Oh! This is a picture of the bowl after I cleaned it, by the way. I was SMARTER this time, as I cleaned out the bowl, put a LITTLE fresh water in, put in the plant food and swished the water a bit, then carried the bowl to the tomato table with only a LITTLE water in. Much easier. SMARTER. They seem to be holding up fairly well. I know what I'm going to do next time to improve the situation. Everybody says that I should take the plants and transplant them outside. I'd rather just see what I can do with them in the Aerogarden for now. I still have to get a dedicated plastic bin for this purpose, I had to clean out my fabric scrap bin for this. Not a problem, just inconvenient. Remember at the beginning when I said there was more? Well, right next to tomato #3, this morning I discovered tomato #4! I guess I was pretty good at pollinating. No wise cracks! Sorry it's a bit blurry, I couldn't get the camera on my phone to focus just right. I switched out the quilt for this nice doily that I made some years ago. Do you like it? The quilt got a bit wet when I moved the tomatoes off the bin so I took it off the table to dry for a bit. Perhaps I'll switch it back for next week's blog. The quilt probably needs a wash as well. All in all, today's adventure was very tame. Here's one last look at the two most recent tomatoes. Perhaps by next week tomato #1 will ripen and I can relate my experience with a taste test.
The plants are beginning to grow up into the lights, but with all the blossoms near the top, I am loathe to start pruning again just yet. I'll probably save that for a bit still. Happy Tomatoing! Not much to tell today, except TA-DAA! An actual tomato! I had been worried that I wasn't pollinating the tomato plants properly, but I got it right on at least one. One thing that makes tomatoes easier to get to the "I've got a tomato" stage is that they are self-pollinators. This means they have flowers on them with both a stamen and a pistil in the same bloom. This means you could have just one tomato plant and it could still pollinate itself with a slight breeze (or a little gentle help from a human!) I read about a few different ways to do this and decided to just use a cotton swab (or my finger) to transfer pollen around on the blooms. It looks like I did OK. The plants are starting to grow up into the lights a bit, but I am worried about pruning, as most of the blooms are appearing at or near the tops of the plants, unsurprisingly. That will probably be next week's topic. Maybe the tomato will be ripe by then and I can tell you how it tasted! Ciao! Happy "tomatoing"! Not much to report. Some of the plants aren't looking great, but I do have a lot of blooms. I'm attempting to pollinate them. I'll let you know how that goes!
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AuthorJust a person growing stuff in an Aerogarden Archives
October 2021
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