Once the pots were bleached (tipped upside down to air dry), I started attacking the 15 bags of growing mix and 15 bags of composted cow manure. The big pots were moved into position along the periphery of the driveway, then it was off to find my notebook so I could go through the seedlings and decide which plants to put where. With my strategy set, the pots were filled and the tomatoes planted....the 29 varieties in the largest driveway pots have significance, as they are the ones I am featuring in my upcoming book as being particularly relevant to my progression into heirloom tomato growing through the years; many of them were either initial discoveries, back in the mid 1980s, flavor favorites, or tomatoes I either named, developed, or rescued from oblivion. I will provide a list some time soon in an upcoming blog post.
After giving the newly planted seedlings a nice drink of water, I headed back to growing mix bags, grabbed some of the white grow bags and a tray of the first dwarfs to be planted, filled the bags, planted and then placed and watered those tomatoes. This is only a fraction of the Dwarf varieties to be grown this year; today's planted seedlings represent the complete set of all of those varieties we developed and released through various seed companies. I placed them in front of some of the large pot ; indeterminates, and will support them via short stakes in the indeterminate pots; this worked well last year and prevented the grow bag dwarfs from tipping (which is what eventually happens to those planted in the center of the driveway).
Tomorrow I hope to plant the rest of the white grow bags with dwarfs, then bleach my black, no-handled grow bags and plant more of the dwarfs, this time earlier generations of works in progress for our project. Once those are planted, I will work on the small pot, extreme prune indeterminates for the driveway, then move on to sweet and hot peppers and eggplant. My hope is to get all of that planted - essentially all of the driveway pots, except the very small pot experimental hot peppers (which can easily wait until last). This will give some time for the big waterlogged garden to dry out; early next week that will be the focus of my next planting, ensuring all of the featured book tomatoes and released dwarfs are grown there, as well as the driveway, providing a bit of insurance and hopefully ensuring that each of the varieties will grow and produce tomatoes (that will of course need to be photographed, probably in mid to late July).
I am really sore, tired, but quite pleased at the progress I made today....with more scheduled for tomorrow. I will take and post some pictures once I get a bit of time and things are a little further along.
Happy gardening!