Tomato time!

If you live in Melbourne you likely fall into one of two camps when it comes to tomato planting.

There are those that swear by the Plant on Cup Day mantra, which sees those tomatoes going into the ground in early November.

Then there are those who are either overcome with excitement at their team’s performance, or distracting themselves from a dismal season of AFL. In both cases, upon hearing the last siren of the grand final, these folk immediately start digging over their tomato beds. This means tomatoes are hitting the dirt at the end of September.

Our seedlings definitely weren’t ready for planting at the end of September. So this year, we’re hedging our bets and planting in mid-October, exactly halfway between the football and horse-racing enthusiasts.

The garden bed we’d assigned for my tomatoes this summer was still chockablock full of carrots so we’ve done a quick switcharoo to another, less occupied bed. (We didn’t grow tomatoes in this bed last year so the change should be relatively safe from a disease prevention perspective).

We like to cram our tomato plants in and then maintain them on a central leader that is tied to a single stake. I don’t know if this is a better or worse strategy than others but we’re sticking with it this year.

We’ve managed to put 17 stakes in the bed (working around the asparagus crown at one end) and have a great mix of varieties including the kid’s favourite Tommy Toe, black russians, grosse lisse, yellow pear and some Christmas grapes which will, hopefully, be ready by christmas!

We ran out of room so two have also gone into pots and we’ll see how well they do compare with the in ground ones.

We planted them with plenty of the compost/manure/dynamic lifter mixture we used on the pumpkins and zucchini on the weekend and covered with a great layer of sugarcane mulch.

And now the waiting game begins!