July 5

Today was tomato day. We spend pretty much the whole day putting more trellises up for the (hundreds) of plants we put in May 18 & 19.

She's trying a new support system for some of them. It's called a "California weave". We put in large metal stakes, about 16' apart. Toward the bottom of stake #1 we tied twine, then weaved it back and forth around all the plants up to stake #2, then, around stake #2 and back around each plant on the other side, creating a figure-8 pattern. Because the plants have been in the ground so long, we were ready for the second step in supporting them: attaching more twine up about 8"-10" from the first. This one isn't weaved around the plant, but just circles them between the stakes. We will continue to watch their growth and add more circles of twine as they get bigger.

In a perfect world, shortly after they had been planted, the neighbor would have come over and made hay from her back field. This would have been spread as mulch under them by the neighbor, just driving down the rows. Then we would have put up the trellis before they got very big.

You may have noticed, though, that the world is not perfect. Since she is mostly bartering for the neighbor's haying services, her field has been low on his list of fields. Now, even though he's been able to do it for a couple weeks, the timing on the rain here has been off and he can't do it. In the meantime, the tomatoes are just doing what nature intended: Growing. Because we waited so long for the trellis, the plants are already going a little crazy and aren't too keen on being tied up in "strange" positions! The stakes and twine are up now, which is good, but when we do get some mulch for the tomatoes it will have to be hand-shoveled in the rows.

Overall they look good, we got a lot of weeds out of the rows, too, and they will be happier with a little breathing room. (And, I think between the 3 of us, there's a couple dozen fewer potato beetles chowing on the poor leaves.)

We saw quite a few fruits on the plants, too! That was exciting!