By Paul ( April 13, 2011 at 12:28 pm) · Filed under Uncategorized
For the last several years I have offered tomato plants for $1 each, which is easy to track and covers most of my expenses and overhead. This year I considered whether to raise the price a bit to give me more slack in the budget, but I think I’m going to leave it at $1.
Understand that I have to pay tax out of this as well, so it’s really the best deal you’ll ever see on tomato plants. I started this business to fill a need for heirloom plants, under-appreciated varieties, and local knowledge of growing requirements. Price falls under the hope of making them as accessible as possible to people. I want people to feel free to try new things and experiment. I don’t want anything to get in the way of people being able to grow their own food.
I have great plans for this enterprise, dreams of an organization for providing plants and assistance, rather than making money. I’m exploring organizational options, continued expansion, improved processes, and diversified products. With your support, there’s a lot more to come.
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By Paul ( April 12, 2011 at 4:09 pm) · Filed under Uncategorized
It is still to early to put out unprotected tomatoes in our area–we had a good freeze just this morning. But for those brave souls who are willing and able to protect their plants from freeze for a couple of weeks, I will have the following varieties of tomato available, as of Saturday, April 16th:
- Aunt Ginny’s Purple
- Beauty King
- Gardener’s Delight
- Green Doctors
- Green Giant
- Harbinger
- Kosovo
- Lucky Cross
- Opalka
- Persimmon
- Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye
- Sioux
- Sungold (Hybrid)
- White Queen
I will post updates as more varieties become available, with the majority being ready at the beginning of May. Several special order varieties will become available in mid May.
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By Paul ( April 12, 2010 at 12:33 am) · Filed under Uncategorized, planning, seedlings, Tomatoes
Hardening off tomato plants
For the last week I’ve been moving plants out during the day and back into the greenhouse at night. With a solid forecast of high nighttime temperatures I left 20 flats of tomatoes on the benches outside tonight, likely never to return to the greenhouse unless the weather turns nasty. Another five will probably be moved out later this week. Besides the flats that I’ve already sold off, that leaves 40 or so in the greenhouse for the next wave. Each year I aim to have:
- An early selection available in mid April for the people who just can’t wait to get them
- The bulk of the tomatoes ready at the end of April for the last frost date
- A set of stragglers for those who procrastinate, kill off their first plants, or come back for more.
It looks like I’m on track this year so far. A warm spring has made it easy to keep things in the greenhouse happy and growing, allowing me to keep the temperatures in my target zones of 45-55F nights and 80-90F days.
Time to get tagging all of the tomatoes, take an updated inventory (I expect a 10% loss from germination to full-size maturity, but I’ve always come out well ahead of that) and start producing signage and explanatory material. Also, I’m back to obsessive weather watching.
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