Congrats, Dawn! You are such a blessing to all on the forum with your endless patience with helpful advice, so I'm sure none would begrudge you the first tomatoes of the season. You deserve it!

Well, I guess I won't begrudge you a few tomatos but my Bacon Vine must be way behind schedual.

WOWIE. I am happy for you and a tiny bit jealous too. Can't help it ;)

Jo

YUM!!! That sounds so good! I'm looking forward to the day we're harvesting our first tomatoes, but its going to be a while. Have you ever tried a catfish BLT or a smoked salmon BLT? The catfish one is made with fried catfish filets and for the smoked salmon one, Larry marinates the salmon in orange juice, honey, and brown sugar before he smokes it. They are both favorites of ours.

Suzie

Suzie, That sounds yummy and we've never tried BLTs that way. Just reading your description of the way Larry marinates the salmon makes my mouth water. I'll file those ideas away for future reference so we can try them. Thanks for the suggestion!

Jo, It's okay to be a tiny bit jealous. I understand.

PunkinHeadJones, Okay, now I am really mad. You mean there is a bacon vine and I don't have one? We've been getting our bacon the old-fashioned way. By slaughtering a pig and making our own bacon? No, silly. We get it at Wal-Mart.

Mia, You are so sweet. One of these years, I'll be lazy in February and not plant early tomato plants in pots, and then y'all will have to listen to me whine and whine until I get the first fruit from in-ground plants in late May or early June!

Dawn

OH WOW!!! I can't type because I'm drooling all over the keyboard.

And to think I was excited because I've got a plant that's just about to bloom! But I've got to give it up to you, Tomatoe Queen. I don't have the time or the patience to haul those heavy plants in and out of the garage at this time of year, therefore, I live vicariously thru your taste buds!

Paula

P.S. This must surely mean that it's not long for the rest of us!!! YEA!!!!

And there I was thinking I had done good by picking three radishes today. Good job Dawn!

Kelly

Thanks, y'all. It means a lot that you are genuinely happy for me and not plotting to come down here and steal my plants. (Well, you know, I already harvested all the almost-ripe maters, so what would be the point of stealing the plants now? Whew! Glad I reminded y'all there's no reason to come snatch away the plants now.)

I was almost a nice person this weekend. I almost brought 2 or 3 of my "older, more mature" early tomato plants in pots to give as doorprizes at the Spring Fling.

I decided against it because (a) I am greedy and wanted all those nearly-ripe tomatoes for myself; (b) I was afraid OkieTim, who has done his share of carrying the pots inside and outside the last couple of months, would be completely opposed to the idea since he loves his BLT sandwiches even more than I do; and (c) I was afraid open warfare would break out between those who won the tomato plant door prizes and those who didn't.

I think I'll plant 4 more early tomato plants next year in February and bring those to the Spring Fling next year. Maybe I should promise one of those 4 to the host/hostess as a 'thank you gift' for hosting the Spring Fling, and bring the other three as door prizes?

Kelly, Congrats on the three radishes! I am always excited about anything that anyone harvests! Between the weather and the pests and the wildlife, sometimes I think it is a wonder that we are able to harvest anything at all!

Dawn

I could never hate you. And besides, I'm right on your coat tails. Almost. My tomatoes might actually make it in the ground this weekend. LOL

Yippee! Once the plants are in the ground, it is so much easier for them to produce fruit!

I actually felt somewhat guilty posting that we're eating tomatoes and all that when I know some of you are just now planting. Just remember how much further south I am and also remember the extraordinary lengths I go to in order to have early tomatoes.

When our son was young, I thought it was perfectly normal to harvest the first tomato in June because I was too busy to try to get fruit any earlier. Wait until your babies have grown up and flown the coop. You'll miss them terribly, but you also will not believe how much more "free time" you'll have to garden.

Wow Dawn, you are awesome genius! you know I used to grow only 2-3 tomatoes plants in the past. Now I am growing more than 60 types. All that credit goes to you. With your constant tips, tricks, encouragement and frequent posts on first harvest made me to dream big. I hope I will harvest some tastiest tomatoes in due course..mean while I am just enjoying your First Harvests. Keep posting your picks.
Cheers -Chandra

Dawn,

While browsing for organic gardening products, one of my friend mentioned about the site http://www.gardensalive.com they have many organic gardening products. One of them is Tomatoes Alive!� Plus 100% All-Natural Fertilizer
Produces 150% more tomatoes by weight

Do you have any experience on these products?

regards -Chandra

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomatoes Alive!� Plus 100% All-Natural Fertilizer

Dawn, I would like to say thanks for all the time and wisdom you put into the forum. It would not be the same without you. And congratulations on the tomatoes, I have very few plants that even have a tomato on them.

PHJ, I want some Bacon Vine seed also. My DW, late brother, sister and their families are all Seventh Day Adventist and wont eat the good bacon, they buy the kind that is card board with a little olive oil on it. If I had some bacon vine seed I think I could reduce my wife's sinning. When the tomatoes are ripe DW lust after the old fashion bacon to put on her BLT. But I will have to admit that a fresh tomato even makes the card board taste better.

My wife does not push her beliefs on me, I just tell her that I like sinning with a pig.

Larry

Keith

I was'nt going to say anything and now OkieDawn has admitted to harvesting big tomatoes.

I cheated and used some of my tiny tim tomatoes and had a BLT last week. It was a little tricky keeping the tomatoes on the sandwich.

As far as slicing tomatoes it will be a long time before i get any of them. I'm so far behind getting this garden going.

Enjoy the tomatoes, you deserve it.

Ooh, exciting!!! I'm finally ready to plant mine out in a week or two. I'm living through you in the meantime!

Diane

OhMyGosh, I am totally green with envy. I don't even have my plants in the ground yet!!

Dawn, do you mulch your plants in the ground? I'm deciding if I should give that a try this year.

Thanks

E

Chandra, I've never used their products, never have and never will.

Any company that does not list their product ingredients on their label and/or their website doesn't get a dollar of my money. I want to know what I am putting into or onto the soil where we grow our plants.

Any tomato plant fed any decent fertilizer is likely to give significantly higher yields than a plant that is not fertilized, assuming the plants receive adequare sunshine and moisture. So their claim of 150% better production or more tomatoes or bigger tomatoes or whatever else they say is meaningless and is just ad hype. Any good fertilizer, applied properly, can give you similar results, and most likely for a much lower cost. I believe the reason they don't list their ingredients is because they want people to think there is something extra-special in their products so they'll be willing to buy them and to pay their prices, which seem high to me. Is there something extra-special in their products? My personal opinion is no, there is not anything there that you can't get in other organic fertilizers. Caveat emptor.

Before I buy from a company that is new to me, I check their reviews at the popular watchdog site often used by gardeners. I can't name that website here because it is a competing website and you aren't supposed to mention it or link it here. (E-mail me if you don't know the name of that site and I'll tell you.) If a company has a lot of negative reviews, I avoid it and search for a company that sells a similar product but that gets better reviews.

Larry, Thank you. You are so very kind.

If eating real bacon is a sin, I'm headed straight for a very bad place! I love bacon. I'd eat bacon ice cream if they made it. (And, yes, I bet somebody does make bacon ice cream)

Keith, You are so, so bad! lol I bet Peg has her hands full trying to keep you in line.

Busy1, You win the "First BLT" prize! I can imagine it took a bunch of Tiny Tims to make one sandwich.

Wasn't it yummy? Nothing says "spring" like the first delicious BLT with your own home-grown tomatoes.

I don't know how you'll ever get caught up on planting with all the moisture now in your ground, but I'm sure you'll find a way. It is still too wet to plant anything else here, but not too wet for the weeds to grow, so I'll spend my afternoon pulling weeds.

Thank you for your kind words. I hope you know that I appreciate you so much.

Diane, I wish you'd been here to have a sandwich with us. I'm excited you're getting ready to plant. You know, once the plants are in the ground, they will grow like weeds. Your plants will be catching up with ours in no time at all. I really believe that.

Erod, If I can't eat tomatoes from April through December, then (alas! woe is me!) life just isn't worth living. Well, that's a slight exaggeration, but only a very slight one.

Some people here call me the Tomato Queen, but really I am the Mulch Queen. I mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch. I add mulch to at least one raised bed every week, sometimes every day. I mulch my paths. I mulch my flower beds. I mulch the 'pathways' in my dogs' yard so that they are walking on mulch instead of mud, since three of them get to come inside and sleep in the house at night. (The other three sleep in the garage.) I mulch my the soil surface in all my containers of plants. (They get bark mulch for aesthetic reasons.) I mulch my fruit trees when I have enough mulch to do so, and I mulch my shrub beds. If a dog or cat lies down in a shrub bed or flower bed and doesn't move while I'm mulching, I mulch them. (That does tend to make them get up and move!)

When I am able to do so, I mulch the ground outside the perimeter of my garden fence to help keep down the grass and weeds so they won't sneak through the fence and into my garden. Last year, I didn't do a very good job of mulching around the perimeter, so I'm going to try harder to do a better job of that this year. Usually I run out of mulch inside the garden and don't have any for the perimeter fence. However, thanks to the bales of hay that were a very lovely gift from our friends, Jesse and Joyce, I'll have plenty of mulch this year.

Mulch keeps the soil cooler which is very important once the temperatures are cranking up high. I think mulch is one reason I get high yields from my peppers and tomatoes. Mulch conserves moisture which also helps the plants. Mulches reduces the number of weeds. Most important in terms of having healthy tomato plants and good yields, mulch reduces soil splash which reduces disease. I start out with 2" of mulch on my beds, then add more continually. My goal is to have mulch 4-6" deep on all my tomato beds by mid-June. You don't want to mulch too heavily when the soil is still cold or cool because you want the soil to warm up to a certain extent. That's why I start out with a little mulch and then keep adding more as the ground warms up more.

Some beds don't get as much mulch as the tomatoes. Onions, for example, do better if they are able to sort of pop up out of the ground as they bulb up. If they are able to do that, they seem to produce better bulbs than those planted or mulched so deeply that they cannot "pop up". So, I have mulch in the two onion beds, but it is on the soil between the plants and not necessarily over the bulbing part of the plant, if that makes sense.

I would never, ever attempt to grow without mulching. Mulch is helpful in so many ways. Best of all, as mulch decomposes it turns into compost. Compost enriches the soil. Enriched soil grows better, healthier plants that produce higher yields. I give compost and mulch a great deal of credit for the very high yields I get in my veggie garden. It may seem like I'm always weeding (it is a very large garden!), but without the mulch, I'd likely spend 10 times as much time weeding the garden as I do now. Mulch also reduces erosion which is ultra-important to me because my gardens slopes downhill from west to east and from south to north.

When I first started gardening here, my local rancher friend, Fred, who is a rancher, farmer and gardener himself, gave me tons (I mean literally tons) of hay in big round bales. I mulched heavily with it and it helped get me off to a great start here. I also use chopped/shredded autumn leaves that I collect and bag up in the fall, grass clippings from our own property, and hay or straw but ONLY from safe sources and ONLY after I test it for herbicide residue. I currently have 197 bales of hay undergoing herbicide testing so I can be sure it is safe before I use it.

I used to have a compost pile far from my garden (it is still there and I still use it to some extent) but that means continually hauling stuff out to the pile, then after it has decomposed, I have to haul the compost back to the garden. For me, it is so much easier to pile up organic matter as mulch in my garden beds, pathways, and around the edges of my garden and let it decompose right there.

In the spring, the decomposed mulch from the previous season is mixed into the beds as I plant. Then, after a bed is planted, I scoop up all the decomposed mulch from the pathways adjacent to that bed, using a compost scoop and put it right there on the newly-planted beds, and that's the start of the new season's mulch. Then I lay down cardboard in the pathways, and start layering on mulch. Otherwise, my pathways are just beds of weeds. So, my recommendation is to mulch like crazy, but not just around the plants but also in your paths.

In addition to doing some weeding, I have two rows of tomatoes that need more mulch today, and I have a big pile of grass clippings with which to mulch them. It seems like all I do in May and June is mulch and pull weeds, but both are important to getting good yields.

Dawn