How We’re Planting Tomatoes (Totally Different than Most)

All right, Lily, let's go. Oh, thank you for bringing him in. He's gonna be a big mess. The boys have the little animal chores minus Lily's posse. Lily, we're gonna do your posse and then we're gonna plant Mama's tomato and cucumber garden. How'd the sea monsters do last night? Not one person dead. It's because it's warmer now, and I think, I think that helps, but I think it's because they shipped here so fast. One day, been in here in one day. The other ones got here in 2 days and we lost like 10 or 12 right away, but these guys are going at it.

Are we going to be butchering sea monsters in 3 weeks?

Yep. Better make sure Mama's greenhouse plants get watered. I don't guess there's any germination in this lemon green. We do have some in the snapdragons. These could probably go out to the table. Oh yeah, we killed our lettuce. Let's water these tomatoes so they're good and hydrated for today's stress of transplant. I'm happy to say that our double clipped wing job from 2 days ago has absolutely kept our chickens off the Spanish shore, even the rooster. Free the birds! Where's our brush? It's supposed to be hanging right here. Looks like they had some kind of bucket plan right here. Maybe there's a brush over here. I really don't need to be looking for a brush. I need to be planting these tomatoes before it gets too hot, before milking time. These tomatoes are getting too big for their soil blocks here and need to be transferred, or they're gonna— well, they could die. Lily, do you know where the brush is?

Nope.

There it is. Get in, Josiah. Please go get me 2 rebar stakes, a hammer which is in the tool cabinet, and the twine, the garden twine.

Lily, get in.

They've run off in the electric car.

Let's do this.

You could put your Jeep down there and take some of these tomato plants over. Please carry these. Did somebody move the luchadors this morning? Man, it is hard to get on projects, get all the chores done. Come on, let's move them. Maybe it was hopeful to think I had 2 hours. I've already taken up an hour. One of the main problems is that the sun's gonna come up over that mountain. It's gonna be hot working in that greenhouse. Did you guys grab a flat of tomatoes? Go ahead and do that. Put a flat of tomatoes in the back of Gideon's Jeep. Gideon, you supposed to have that feed stirrer. Can you put it back over here where it goes? No, no, that's not where— no, it goes over here, right here. Gideon, I'll get you a spade, okay? They're gonna inevitably want to dig. You got the tomatoes in the truck? Gideon, you got to get them over to the greenhouse. You guys remember, right? We had our animals, our pigs and our chickens, in this, uh, this hot tunnel. Let's plant some crops behind them. And what better than tomatoes and cucumbers because they love heat? I did a little mixture of Joel Salatin, Having Animals in a Greenhouse, moving— how deep bedding, moving them out. Only I didn't get the mulch out. I'm gonna leave it back to Eden style, uh, wood chip gardening, and then a little JM Forthier market garden with keeping the weeds at bay with the silage tarp. I pulled this tarp up, we had 3 surprises: 2 mice, and probably why I didn't have more mice was this right here. Black snake is Full. See that? See his belly there? He's so full. We're gonna leave him. He's a partner. We're not planting on the edges anywhere. We're gonna start in the middle. Jonah's got our, our posts up. We're gonna go right down the middle with that line. And Jonah, we're planting tomatoes every 2 feet. Josiah, will you go get us a tray of tomatoes? Lily, will you go get us our vermicompost? You guys like to call it worm poop. Which is accurate. Thank you, Josiah, for the tray of tomatoes. Hey, Lily, why are you bringing a pump and goggles?

Because I'm ready to board.

You're going inner tubing? Where are you going?

I'm going to get something.

What? Pumping some goggles? That's what we need when we're planting tomatoes. We moved the mulch out of the way and we're just getting big straight down in there. Josiah, grab me a tomato. And then do that every 2 feet down through here. Here we go. And we'll just put that in like that, Lily. Okay, and put the soil around it, but then put a— put a plop of, uh, of worm poop on top of that. Okay, there it is. Jonah found it. Show them how it's done, Lily. Good. We've got one row in. I'm happy about that. I think she wants two, but we do have three varieties, so I want to see if she wants three. I know she wants to put cucumbers in here. She talked about, uh, green beans. But look, there's two rows of tomatoes. So there would be one row of tomato. We started the other row. So then you would only have this much room on either side. She's talking about beans. We got to get cucumbers in and even sweet potatoes. So I don't know if there's enough room. I just kind of had this crazy thought. What if we planted the cucumbers next to the tomatoes and left them on the ground and trained them to vine this way towards the tomatoes. So then you have a companion planting action where the cucumbers shade out any weeds that might want to come up. Hey, you better hurry up and get shoes on if you're going. Okay, we're leaving because the turkeys have arrived. Uh, it's just like that, isn't it? We gotta milk, we gotta put tomatoes in, we gotta get turkeys. You're missing one boot. This is not the time to be missing boots. It's kind of cute when we're up and at them in the morning, but not when we gotta go get turkeys. Rebecca, I'll go get the turkeys.

Okay, do you want me to?

Well, you think you can with Henry?

Well, I would need someone to sit in the back with him to keep him happy.

You got no shortage of chiddlers wanting to get out of regular chores. 3 of them were gonna go with me. Hey, Mr. Henry. Well, we'll keep planting your tomato garden if you go get the turkeys.

Yeah, I need to change— obviously I need to change him.

He's gone. It's not a rush.

And I need to nurse him, and then we can go. All right, you want to go get turkeys?

That's your life, Farmer Henry. Get your yawn in. It's tough growing up. That's being 3 months old. Tiring. I planted one row of tomatoes, but then I realized there's 3 varieties. So do you want 3 rows? But you did say 2, so should I do that second row?

Most of Amish Paste.

I wonder if that's what I did.

I hope it is. And then you could do half and half of the other ones.

Okay. Jonah's getting the brooder ready. Uh, Arun's getting the cows ready. This is a community effort. Did I plant Amish Paste? I hope so. I'm gonna have to take up a— I'm gonna plant 3 rows of these tomatoes. I didn't pay attention, so it would be a 1 in 3 shot. Everybody cross your fingers. I don't think so. Tomato San Marino Red. 1 in 3 is not that great of odds. Tomato Husky Cherry, Tomato Mountain Fresh. So none of those are Amish Paste. Don't think it's the cherry, she wouldn't want a whole row of cherries. Let's see if there's another flat of tomatoes. Okay, there's no more tomatoes. Let's take a picture and show her. I'll never remember the names. I just showed Mom the pics. I had them on this camera so you didn't see that, but She said the San Marzano, whatever it is. Yeah, that's the Amish paste. That's the like Roma tomato, so it's a good sauce.

That's a good sauce tomato. That's the one I wanted the most to have planted. And then the Mountain Fresh is like a slicing, and then the cherry, obviously cherry.

Okay, well then we'll do half and half of Mountain Fresh and cherry. We did good, we did good. The turkey thing is ready. I put turkey feet. Did you do a 1-gallon water You put the heat plates next to it. Probably only need one. There's only, what, 20 turkeys? Get in. You've packed a snack bag to go to town. It's a— it's less than 15 minutes, 10-minute drive. All right, well, just in case. And he's packed a lot of snacks too. Lucky us, we planted the right tomatoes on accident. So just, uh, half and half on this side. It's set up. I feel like it's 8:30, it's milking time, but let's get that done. Maybe, maybe we can get to the queue. I have, I have a lot of office work to do too though, so I don't know, it's a great balance. We got our 2 rows of tomatoes. I think I do want to make time after milking to do the, uh, cucumbers because they're just overgrowing the thing. Speaking of these garlics, I posted this and I was like, we're not getting much of a bulb. And you guys said— one of you said, well, cut the scapes off. Well, yeah, that's right, cut the scapes off. I guess that's where it's going to reseed and, uh, it'll put more energy into the bulbs. All right, well, that might be the difference between a lame bulb and an epic bulb. We'll see. Now it's supposedly going to put its energy into that bulb. I've heard— I don't know if I've ever had garlic scapes, but I've heard they're good. Maybe I'll fry you guys some up with your eggs this morning, Josie. You eating it raw? Arun said it goes good with Indian as well, so it's Indian Wednesday. Maybe he'll cook with some of it tonight. What do you say, Arun? Yeah, I will use this in a Thai. Okay, just— I guess you should keep those. We'll give some to the chickens. I mean, I've heard garlic scapes are good, but if we're honest with ourselves, are they as good as eggs? Chicken eggs? Chicken meat? We had to pull this milking shed up a little bit just to get it a little more sideways. It's hard to milk when the cows are pointing— no, pointing uphill is good. Yeah, because then their back legs are spread. Look, that's where we want to feed her. See how when she's pointing uphill, her legs are down? It's a lot easier to get in there and milk her. Here, let me see that. Oh, you got her? Yeah, good. She's getting wise to it.

Mama brought the turkeys.

And I'm gonna help him unload. 12, 13.

We want at least 15.

Mama, how many died? One.

One died in shipment.

So we have 20 left.

Normally at this time we go in and start work, but like office work. These tomato— these cucumbers, they're just gonna die if we don't get them out. And I don't think anything's gonna die if I don't go to office work right now, so this is gonna have to be a priority. We need to count so we know how far we go down because we plant 2 a foot in a 30-inch row, 30-inch bed. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I counted 39. Let's say 30 because some of them will break maybe. So that would be 15 feet of cucumbers. All right guys, let's go. Well, that's a wrap for this. We've got— we went ahead and watered them. It's gonna be dry in here. Two rows of tomatoes. We end up doing one row of cucumbers because the beautiful one did say she wants to trellis them, so forget my sprawling idea. And I put them all in one row so that we can do one shot of a line down through here. Rebecca and I just approved the vlog. It made me wonder though, I saw the pictures of the ram sack. When's she coming? When's she coming to band it?

Next week. Okay, we don't have a day yet, but she said, she said he would still fit in her bander.

Okay, nice. Cooking with a The question is, were you able to incorporate any scapes? Where is it? So it's already in there. Hard to see it. Yeah, no longer green anymore. Okay, nice. Okay, 45 minutes to supper. It's nice to have Arun cook once a week, you know, because instead of cooking right now, I'm gonna go mow this steep pasture. After the animals get the grass that they didn't get. How are we doing on fuel? Empty. Question of the day: well, people often ask me, how can I improve my pastures if I don't have animals? Or, well, the answer is a mower. Mow the grass. It's like fertilizing. That's one can, got to do another. But how does it fertilize? Well, it stimulates what— simulates what an animal would do. Chomp. Roots die off, feed the soil. Grass clippings on top, organic matter. That's that. I was ready to go mow, but Lily needs to ask me something.

Can we go camping this summer?

Why do you say that?

I asked Mom and she said I want to go camping.

Your mom wants to? Yeah. Okay, well then I guess we're going—

camping before—

then I guess we're going camping this summer. Garden of peace. Let's get out there and mow. 2 gallons of gas. I've got little baby Henry. So sorry, totally forgot to vlog. Eating supper. We are full. It was delicious. I'm trying to make my plan for tomorrow.

I planted my bleeding heart bush, and I don't know what these are, but I must have planted them.

Okay, I want to get the fat chicks out because they just keep getting out up there at the permanent run.

I planted those today. I planted those 4 or those 3, and those need to be just taken up and put on the railings.

Look at that. But do you have any more plants that need to be planted?

Yes, so Fast right here. Okay, I want to plant some— I need to plant the zinnias because I haven't planted it. I haven't planted much of those. Marigolds and sunflowers, and then those are black-eyed susans, so I'd like to plant those. Oh, and I need—

where, in front of the greenhouse?

Um, okay, so the zinnias, the gerbers, and the black-eyed susans need to be planted. The calendula and the sunflowers need to— I need to plant them over there.

Do you need me to do that, or are you gonna do that?

Well, I, I can do it. I have no problem doing it. I just need time when he's—

it's on the record here—

when he's taking a nap.

Go for it, Beck!