Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Day 130 / Day 38 - Tomatoes Getting There...

So, as I know all you loyal reader and/or readers are dying to find out, here's what the tomatoes looks like today.


In honor of the Olympics going on now, I will give this guy on the right a gold...



This Red Heirloom on the left a silver...


And this Golden Harvest in the middle a bronze...


Now that all the plants are about an inch tall, it came time to the first milestone in the Aerogarden manual, which was to thin the seedlings so that there's only one plant per pod. Luckily, this wasn't a hard decision for two of the three pods--in fact, in both pods, the other seeds (I think they put at least 3-4 seeds in each) hardly came up.

In the other pod, though, it was a tougher decision. There was one large plant, but the second plant was going pretty strong. But for the greater good, I chopped the second plant and left the one. It was difficult, as I always want to hang on to all the plants, but like I said last time, it'll ensure that the one plant will get huge, will have room to grow, will get enough nutrients and water, and of course, will hopefully produce a lot of tomatoes.

The plants are definitely not growing as fast as the manual seems to think they're supposed to grow. It's day 38, which even with my poor math skills comes to about 5 weeks. According to the manual, the plants are supposed to be huge enough to have at least 5 branches to prune, and even should have flowers. But my little plants are still in the toddler stage.

No matter, I'll just let it ride and see what happens. Stay tuned.



In basil news, the other day I noticed the Add Water light was flashing and I realized that the resevoir was just about empty, but the plants still looked great. It's amazing how resilient these basil plants are.

In four days, the Add Nutrient Light will go off, and since I have no nutrients to add, I'll be retiring the Basil Aerogarden. While the Aerogarden manual tells you to throw out plants, stay tuned for the next blog, where I'll give a step-by-step of how to transplant Aerogarden plants into traditional dirt plant pots (donated by loyal reader P, to whom I am eternally grateful).

1 comment:

Penelope said...

Yeah tomatoes! I can't wait till it starts to flower.