I have been asked that question many times recently. This of course refers to the size of the areas that are being worked. The section that was first broken up at the beginning of April measures out to be 362 square meters (3898 square feet) and the section that was broken up at the end of April is 290 square meters (3120 square feet). This makes for an area just shy of 1/6th of an acre, 652 square meters. As far as farming goes, this is “micro” scale. Compared to an ordinary residential vegetable garden, this is on the large side. I can tell you this: when I grab a shovel and head outside to work in the garden, it is mighty big.

I have finally finished the tomato planting phase of the project. I began planting outdoors on April 28th. The digging is slow and the ground rocky. Nothing has ever been planted here before, this is an area that has been growing trees and brush. It took me 15 different planting days over four and a half weeks to finish putting in this tomato patch. Some days were quite productive, others not very.

The new Tomato Patch

I normally wouldn’t plant 96 tomato plants but this is an experimental garden. I want to see how different varieties work out as well as try out a few different planting techniques. Consequently the number of plants kind of mushroomed on me. I started out buying 15 different types of seed. As a bonus, two seed companies provided complimentary packets of tomato seeds so I wound up starting 17 different varieties. In order of earliness, I selected Stupice, Willamette, Brandywine OTV, Pink Accordion, Heinz 2653, Pruden’s Purple, Heart of Compassion, Costoluto Genovese, Japanese Black Trifele, Striped Stuffer, Palestinian, Olena Ukrainian, Mortgage Lifter, Dinner Plate and Marvel Striped. Then I inherited Yellow Brandywine and an unknown hybrid variety from Shumway seed that I nicknamed Shumway Surprise.
Seed was sourced from Territorial Seed, Nichols Garden Nursery, Tomato Fest, and Burpee. I will be keeping notes on the performance of these plants all summer long.
I am just grateful that I don’t have to dig in any more tomato plants.

These rocks came out of the tomato patch

The very first thing I did was hurt my back on April 6th when I was going to plant the onion sets. Typical you know, stuck inside all winter and then the time to get the garden going comes along and – wham – strain the back right off the bat. I did get the onions planted and it took nearly 4 weeks to recover to the point where I can get working seriously again. I lost out on getting some early stuff planted like the peas and some greens. Now that I am focused on getting the tomato plants in the ground, I happened to look over at the onions that I planted and noticed that they are doing quite well.

Yellow and red onions planted April 6th

My May Day celebration was spent in the yard, digging out rock and planting tomato plants. The nights have been cold, and theoretically the last frost has passed. This is one rough looking patch of ground. There is no shortage of rocks though.

Only the strong survive