Never Too Old to Learn

Today will be a photo heavy post. But I really think it will be helpful for some of you so I don't think you will mind that much. 

Earlier this week, I went on a field trip! I went to a Farm, a Tomato Farm. I am calling it that because this year alone as of Monday night they had harvested 3,500 pounds of tomatoes! Wow! 

 At the very beginning of the tour, they had this display of some of the recently picked items from their gardens. The tomato section of the garden is the largest area. I wish I had have thought to stand way back and get a good photo to give you an idea of how big the garden it. Each section is 30 ft and they have a 30 ft section then a walk way and then a second 30 foot section in each row. I did not count how many rows of this they had but I am going to guess at least 7-10.

 This is how they grow the tomatoes! Do you notice the string tied to the top 2X4 at the top. Well they tie the piece of string - a thick string at the top and measure it to where it touches the ground.

 Once the tomato plant starts to grow they will start connecting the tomato plant to the string every 6 inches with this black clip. This clip is called a vine clip. 

On these rows they had not quite gotten the top wood attached so they used string across the top. They just started this method this year, so have not gotten it all done yet. 

I don't know if you can tell in this photo but they have the dirt mound up with an indention in the middle. There is a pvc pipe all the way down the 30 feet rows. And on these pipes there are holes drilled so that they can water the row. Notice how each row has this pipe coming up with a hose attached to it. And there is a switch to turn the water on. 

You can read more of the details of how to do the pipes in this photo. 

They have a recipe of a pre-plant mix. At the end of this post - I will have a link to their website so you can get the recipe for this mix. 

These photos are the different ingredients for the fertilizer recipe. 

There is a lot of important information at there website(below). 

By the way, this is basically the Mittleider Method of gardening. You can google this and get a lot more information.
If you would like to go to the website of the place that I went - click HERE. 

So you see - you are never too old to learn.