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Pastimes : Gardening and Especially Tomato Growing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (580)	5/29/1999 9:11:00 PM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3496

Sounds like you got a lot of nice types of tomatoes to try out. It's so much nicer to have a variety rather than just a dozen of one kind. Regarding the straw, yes you could get mold on it... I'm bothered by such things, so I avoid them if possible. The other bad thing about straw and/or hay as mulch is that it often isn't really "clean" and may have something like horsetail in it which will create a weed problem after you mulch the plants. I have a very oddball way of planting my tomatoes... I cut the bottoms out of several of those big fibre pots that trees or large plants come in. I turn them upside down and place them around my tomatoes and then hill a bit of soil around the edge where it meets the earth. This keeps the weeds from growing around the tomatoes. It also makes a retaining wall that holds the water in around the tomato roots and keeps them from drying out in hot weather. Also gives some protection from frost early in the season after transplanting. However, getting back to mulch... some people use plastic... some people use that landscape fabric. A cheap way is to use newspaper weighted down with a few rocks. I like peat moss a lot for mulching around my flowers and vegetable gardens... It does add some acidity to the soil, but it takes time for that to happen. The best thing is that it really helps to keep the soil loose and you can dig it in at the end of the season to improve the tilth of the soil. Peat moss is pretty cheap up here because they cut it within a couple of hundred miles, but it might be costly where you are. Thanks for letting me know the tomato varieties... Now, remember to return to the thread with a "taste" report later in the season... Croc...;-}>