Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 38 Entries. Sunday, February 19 View Page I’ve started my competition tomatoes. My life has been a whirlwind lately. I’m glad I’ve figured out how to automate the seed starting process with the lighting, heating and cooling so I can concentrate on other things going on. I’ve used Superthrive and Rapidstart in the water and Root Riot cubes. In case you can’t read the names of the seeds in the photo I will name them in a list: 1. 7.28 Young x 3 2. 5.95 Young x 3 3. 7.95 Young x 3 4. 6.97 Spaziani lineage seed from Greg Peine 5. 6.79 Sutherland 6. 8.41 Maccoy 7. 5.95 Konieczny x2 8. 5.91 Murphy offspring seed from Greg Peine 9. 5.54 Greene 10. T3T Cross - Greene 11. M2D Cross - Greene   Thursday, February 23 View Page Some of my tomatoes are starting to sprout! Exciting!   Wednesday, March 1 View Page More popped up!   Friday, March 3 View Page I’ve got pitchers back on my desktop carnivorous plants! I’ve misted them everyday and used a desk lamp for their light. Seems to have paid off.   Friday, March 3 View Page My wife picked some of the veggies last night from the veggie garden.   Friday, March 3 View Page I’ve got work to do. I was going to try to construct a different greenhouse in a dome shape but I’ve decided to rehabilitate my hoop house for the project due to time limitations.   Friday, March 3 View Page The fresh plastic is up! Some of the weeds are plucked.   Friday, March 3 View Page It’s going to rain for about a week over here so I’m glad I had a moment to put this up at least. Still need to do the end walls and ventilation. Also I will be training my thornless boysenberries on the left up the sides of the greenhouse. My sprouts are getting big already so I need to till this greenhouse up soon and get ‘em in the ground.   Friday, March 3 View Page It’s going to rain for about a week over here so I’m glad I had a moment to put this up at least. Still need to do the end walls and ventilation. Also I will be training my thornless boysenberries on the left up the sides of the greenhouse. My sprouts are getting big already so I need to till this greenhouse up soon and get ‘em in the ground.   Sunday, March 5 View Page Well Shoot! The whole sheet of plastic flew off in the middle of the night and popped all of the clips off. And it looks like it snowed/hailed which is super bizarre for my area.   Sunday, March 5 View Page Yep, i had to shove the plastic inside the hoophouse and head out to a funeral, no time to mess with it until later.   Sunday, March 5 View Page Look at this snow in Grass Valley. Had to drive my wife to work up there in the jeep. This is just 45 mins from my house.   Sunday, March 5 View Page I ran off to Ace Hardware and bought some Tie-Down D-rings. I used stainless steel zipties to secure them to the corners and i zigzagged the nylon rope over the top of the plastic a few times. Had to race the sunset but I finished securing it right when the sun when down. seems secure now, we'll see if the coming rains will blow it off again.   Monday, March 6 View Page I ordered this exhaust fan to help with the ventilation, along with a thermostat and a stick on zipper to create a door on the end wall of the greenhouse.   Monday, March 6 View Page These little stinkers outgrew their sprouting cubes. It was mostly the Young seeds that were sending trails of roots through the tray. So now the up-potting...   Monday, March 6 View Page I'm using the Wallace Organic Wonder Myco sprinkled on the root plugs and mixed into the miracle grow potting soil. I also used the Soil and Plant Booster from W.O.W. It is 5:45pm and the smell of my wife's delicious rosemary butter chicken is wafting throughout the house. I had to tear myself away from the intoxicating aroma to get these guys into the dirt. The sacrifices we make...   Monday, March 6 View Page All tucked in to their new beds. But first my little sweeties need a drink of reverse osmosis water which I tested at 15ppm. I added a little bit of Superthrive and RapidStart to their water.   Monday, March 6 View Page Another view. The lights turned off for the evening. Back to my chicken dinner and gas station wine :) Stay tuned. Fan coming Thursday. Hopefully there will be a reprieve from the rain and I can add a sidewall or two.   Sunday, March 12 View Page We took our Solis Campervan to St. Orres restaurant in Gualala for a special dinner and then drove back down highway one which was terrifying. It was dark and the roads were very twisty and the fog gave us about 20 feet of visibility. Also, on the drive to the restaurant we were wondering "why are there all of these Cow Grates on the road? its a freeway with cliffs everywhere. how is a cow going to get around here on a 55mph road?" then on the way back in the dark they reared their delicious heads and freaked us out by standing about 2 feet from the road. couldnt tell if there was a fence or not. Then deer jumped in front of us not once but twice. Also, the road was under construction and one lane in several areas. Although it was nice that we were basically the only people there at the restaurant.   Monday, March 13 View Page I went to bodega bay for a quick vacation for our anniversary and when I came back the tomato plants had gotten huge.   Monday, March 13 View Page After driving home in the rain for 2.5 hours we got home and I had time to get my endwalls on the greenhouse. when I came back from the trip there were giant puddles in the roof where water had collected. the clips had popped off from the weight. I pushed them back up and re-clipped into place. Then I did some zig zagging with string under the plastic at the peak to keep it from collecting water there. Then i cut the endwalls to fit and taped them on with greenhouse plastic repair tape and put the clips over those as well. My stick-on zipper door "got lost in the mail" by amazon so i ordered another one to stick on the entryway. THere was a high wind advisory the very next day on Tuesday of course, right after i finished the greenhouse, but it made it through the night!   Wednesday, March 15 View Page Took out my Broad Fork to do an initial ground breaking. First row done.   Wednesday, March 15 View Page Second row done. Broad fork worked well here.   Wednesday, March 15 View Page Used the small weedeater/tiller ryobi machine to till the dirt up here and get it nice and fluffy.   Wednesday, March 15 View Page Then I added all of this to the top of the soil and additionally a couple pounds of WOW Myco, Wow vegetable booster, 5 pounds bone meal, 5 pounds alfalfa meal, 5 pounds feather meal. It was dark and so dusty in the greenhouse that i had to let it sit for the evening before tilling it in, couldnt breathe in there! I'll till tomorrow with the Ryobi   Friday, March 17 View Page The powdered fertilizers in the ground. I had to leave the greenhouse after this stuff was applied. It poofed up into the air and didn't settle for a while. I tilled it in the next day. On St. Patricks day. This will be the first time I attempt to grow a giant tomato in the ground, as opposed to a pot.   Friday, March 17 View Page All tilled up!   Friday, March 17 View Page I had to plant all of these in the ground during my dad's birthday because I'm strapped for time. But I got em in the ground finally. Maybe the luck of the Irish will be my secret weapon this year. I decided to deep-plant some of the tomatoes and keep the natural root-line on the others based on a book I've been looking over that suggests keeping the natural root line for optimum growth. Who knows what to believe anymore, but i will say that i feel society in general is going downhill, so perhaps the old words of wisdom in my books are better than what is currently being fed to us on the internet.   Friday, March 17 View Page Another view. It was pretty warm in there when i planted these. It started around 90 when i went in and opened the doors and it was 60 degrees outside with few clouds. Cloudy weather in the 50's for the next 10 days is great for these guys to get acclimated.   Friday, March 17 View Page After the planting was done, my dad cooked up his famous steaks for everyone and i made my famous mashed potatoes. Sarah brought a candy cake which was a little too sweet and everything went well.   Saturday, March 18 View Page Had to check on the greenhouse the next day. Madison helped me out.   Saturday, March 18 View Page Madison loves pulling the pots apart and putting them back together.   Monday, March 20 View Page There was some sun when i got home and i had time to add another zipper to the door (since i broke the first one) and install the exhaust fan. I set the temperature controller to 85 degrees so the fan will kick on when it gets over that temperature. In the past my greenhouse was often over a hundred so i'm hoping this will have a very large effect on the health of my tomatoes. Once the temps get really high i will lift the sides of the plastic up so air can travel through the mesh which will still be covering everything.   Monday, March 20 View Page The jumble of wires detailing my fan setup and this shows one of my favorite tools in use, the stainless steel zip tie. Love those. I don't know how i got by without em, but they are awesome.   Tuesday, March 21 View Page I got this to monitor the greenhouse temperatures. This will keep a log of the temps and connect to my phone. Made in the usa. we'll see how it works. There was a wind advisory last night but the greenhouse stayed together. thats good.   Monday, March 27 View Page Huge temperature swings. Frost warning in effect the past few days. Outside temps around 55-60degrees, inside the greenhouse 100 degrees. plants look happy.   Friday, April 7 View Page Here is a bloom from the 7.95 young   Saturday, April 8 View Page 7.95 again. definitely the biggest flower. I personally think these bloomed too early, but we'll see if anything comes of it. pretty much all of my plants have a megabloom on them, which is great. Temp fluctuations are still rather extreme.