To-mah-toes Jungle. Made in UK
Summer 2010
Experimenting in the backyard.
How to grow a jungle in the UK, without fertilisers or anything… just rain/tap water.
I’m in Gloucestershire, I think hardiness zone 8.
The green growing bag has Gold Nugget tomatos (UK, “bushy” plant, cherry orange tomatos).
The brown growing bag has
- on the left (the tall ones) tomato seeds I was given by Aaron and Robert (organic beef tomato, USA; http://www.bikeloc.org/ );
- and on the right, Vilma variety (UK; short plant; cherry red tomato).
All tomato plants were sown at the end of April, in egg trays with some ordinary potting soil. To keep the moisture I put the trays in ziplock bags, so I didn’t even have to water them. Within a couple of weeks, some seedlings were already quite developed.
The biggest seedling (from Aaron and Robert) was transplanted first and I made up a sort of hydroponic system, because I was still keeping it indoor and I thought I would forget to water it, for sure.
This is the DIY-hydroponic thing:
http://www.saraburbi.com/2
Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough pots and potting soil so I used milk bottles and started transplanting the seedlings so that I could put them outside. It took a couple of weeks (and some empty milk bottles stealing) to move them all outside.
At first I used big transparent bottles as covers and the greenhouse-like effect helped a little. I also added 1-2 teaspoons of coffee grounds to each new pot. I have no idea if it helped or not, but the plants looked OK.
Then I started having quite a few milk-pots all over the place and it was still a bit rainy, yet sunny enough. So I used an old fish-tank my landlord had in the shed, placed the pots inside and covered with thick plastic to protect from the rain.
After a couple of weeks I had to take the bigger plant out, it was almost touching the plastic, haha!
And then I started looking for a less DIY arrangement. I could find 2 different growing bags. I should have looked for more, bummer! As you can see, the bell peppers are really struggling (the tiny plants in the milk bottles in front of the growing bags).
Watering: when I took the seedlings out of the ziplock bags, I started watering a little every day, but I realised it looked a bit too moist. So I watered every other day.
When I moved them outside, and they were sheltered from rain, I would water them every other day or daily, depending on how sunny the day had been. I would check if the soil was dry or not.
Now (July) they’ve been in the growing bags for about 3 weeks and I watered them every other day, except if it rains, of course. This week I watered them once, and it rained yesterday. But the soil seems moist enough. Maybe it’s the pine stuff that falls on them, it stays on the soil and retain moisture.
They get direct sunlight mostly from noon to 6-7pm. In the morning they are in the shades.
