Soil Amendments and Tomatoes

It was grey and in the 70s today. I took advantage of the nice weather by making some soil amendments.

I added a pound of blood meal and a wheelbarrow of compost to the plot where I hope to grow my fall garden. It could still use some more compost.

Garden bucket.

The best thing I could do for the soil is to break up the hard-packed gravel that is six inches down. There are water drainage issues in my garden plot for this reason. The water sits on the surface for a few minutes or runs off right away without being absorbed.

In past years, I have broken up some of the gravel below, but it takes hours to break up even a small area. If only I had the right tools. But not many apartment dwellers have pick axes or jack hammers so I'm stuck with shovels.

My second project of the day was taming the tomatoes. Last year my tomatoes were a good size for the tomato cages that I have. Not this year. This year, they are monsters. Very large monsters that are trying to take over my garden. They have escaped their cages, spreading in every direction, knocking their cages over, and covering every neighboring plant they could find.

Last week I staked up my tomato cages (their legs were too weak to support the plants and they just bent over). Today I pruned the tomatoes back. I will have more than enough tomatoes to eat either way. And, this way, I can walk into my garden without a machete and my other plants will not be completely covered and shaded by my tomatoes.