1st Attempt at Growing Tomatoes

Last month, I had the idea of trying to grow tomatoes, something that I have never done before, my Mom is the one who is the gardener in the family.  My wife and I were at the local Wal-Mart and saw the small little pod kits in the gardening section.  There was 12 of these pods in one kit and I picked up 1 package of tomato seeds.  The instructions were pretty clear, so before I left to go back offshore, I seeded them as the instructions stated, then I threw the rest of the seeds in the yard.   I really didn't think this would do anything but I was surprised when my wife emailed photo's of the plants.

 

These were sprouted at about 12 days, sitting in my kitchen.

The instructions that I cut from the package

I told Krishae to continue to water them as the instructions stated, hoping they would make it until I got home and she did a really good job of it, so much so that she had to remove the lid because they were getting tall.  These photos were at 19 days.

After I got home, I picked up a few small pots to transplant these into and used some Miracle Grow Potting Mix.

Now, out of the 12 pods, only 9 of them actually grew and those are the ones on the left.  The ones on the right are from the seeds that I threw in the yard.  The drain line from my air handler drains into the yard and imagine my surprise to see them growing and better than the ones we started in the house.

Years ago, my Daddy had taken some 55 gallon drums and cut them in half, he had them behind their house.  My kids and him had planted tomatoes in them and when I was looking for something to put these in, my Mom told me that they were still out at her house.

My son and I went to pick them up, we stopped at Wal-Mart, picked up more Potting Mix and some more top soil.  We mixed it up and transplanted these tomato's to the drums.  These drums already had holes drilled in the bottom of them for drainage.

I also took a few pieces of PVC pipe, drilled a few holes near the bottom and put them firmly in the ground.  My thinking on this was that as I filled them up with water, the water would get straight to the roots.

Another thing that I did on this drum is that I took a 5 gallon bucket, drilled a few holes in the bottom and the sides, put in the mix and soil.  Now when I fill it up with water, it slowly drains to feed the roots.