On Your Mark, Get Set, Tomato

I rose too late on Tuesday to get out for the biweekly meeting of volunteers cleaning the wasted woods of Prospect Park. I actually miss it. Mostly because of the social aspects of a great group of people in an unsavory cleanup environment, which can lead to some clever humor. Well, I had an hour to kill before work, and behind on my tomato seeding, I chose to knock it out that morning.

I had no pots and little in the way of paper tubes, but many cereal boxes.  I am a little distrustful of recycled chipboard, a mystery concoction from far away lands, but went for it anyway. Each was large enough for three or four seedlings. I particularly enjoy the barilla box with the single mezzi rigatoni on its end, wide and deep with the little window on its side for viewing root developments (wink).

Outside, on their bake sheet, I filled each box with the planter mix -a mix of composted wood, peat, and perlite. There may be a more earth-friendly alternative, but I haven't found it locally. All in all, about 50 tomato seedlings to be. I can only plant about twelve, so I will be handing out the rest to friends and gardeners. I do have a few interesting new varieties this year -Velvet Leaf, which is more about the foliage than the 2-inch red tomato, and another called Indigo Rose which is really leaning toward a black-green tomato. Hillbilly and Pineapple are both intended to replace my beloved German Striped which I have difficulty locating. Black Krim is, I'm assuming, much like the Black Russian that I also seeded. Speckled Roman is a long roma-type with yellow-orange striations. A Yellow pear type as well, along with several others I grew last year. I think it will be a good year for tomatoes.