Tomatoes are in the Garden

By pbarnett

Published: April 28, 2009

The Tomato plants that I started in the Aerogarden are now planted in our garden. One thing that I have learned is that February 1 is too early to start tomato plants when using an Aerogarden. We had to take them out after 3-4 weeks when they outgrew the Aerogarden. So we have had tomato plants in the house for a couple of months, under an Ott-Lite and the spillover from the Aerogarden lights. We lost a couple to breakage. The major advantage to this system was the thick tomato stems. They never got leggy. Some broke, when they got top-heavy, from us moving them in and outside. All but one are doing fine, and I have two more plants not quite ready to transplant.

I also planted asparagus crowns in my raised bed, after adding more soil with fertilizer and turning all the soil. All the bed had last year were a couple bush green beans and a sweet pepper plant, which flourished despite the fire ant colony.

For my next gardening adventure, I have ordered edamame seeds and soybean inoculant. (Anyone need any? There’s a lot of it.) The edamame are going directly into the ground. No Aerogarden experiments.