Tomato Wine: Transplanted yesterday

I’ve been reading up on blossom end rot, and it turns out that there may be something to the old (I would have called it a “wive’s tale”) practice of putting some powdered antacid in the planting hole of each tomato. The rot is caused by a calcium deficiency in the fruit, and the calcium chloride in antacid tablets might be just the thing my tomatoes need.

Antacid tablet in a bowl ready to be ground up and added to the tomato's planting hole

So each tomato got one ground up antacid tablet. I mixed it, and a handful of my homebrew organic fertilizer, into the soil in the bottom of the planting hole.

Antacid tablet ground, homebrew organic fertilizer scooped, planting hole dug, we're go for transplant!

I ground up the antacid tablet, scooped out a bit of fertilizer, and dug the planting hole. I made the hole deeper than you’d expect just by looking at the plant or the pot it was in. That’s because I planted each tomato deeper in the soil than it was in the pot. I’m taking advantage of the tomato’s ability to easily grow new roots from the stem. Doing this puts the existing roots deep into the soil and stimulates new root growth from the just-buried stem.

Pulling the bottom leaves off the tomato to bury part of the stem

In the above photo, I’m pinching out some of the bottom leaves because that part of the stem will be underground. When all was said and done, I had four tomato plants tucked into their new bed.

Four just transplanted tomato plants and two foreground pepper plants

The two small plants, in the foreground of the photo that don’t look like tomato plants, aren’t tomato plants. They’re peppers, and I know that has nothing to do with tomato wine, or any other kind of wine. I do grow some things to eat, though, and they’ve got to go somewhere. So four pepper plants, I cropped the other two out of the photo, will be sharing some real estate with the “North Block” of my tomato vineyard.



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2 thoughts on “Tomato Wine: Transplanted yesterday

  1. Pingback: Beetle Eyes » Yesterday

  2. Pingback: Washington Winemaker » Blog Archive » Tomato Wine: Transplanted some more last night

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