Today is a day where there is a ton I could write……we have had a predator day from raccoons to foxes, heat heat heat and you name it its happened. BUT, as I was wandering the yard with my little today checking on all the beings, we made our way to the garden to see everything that is growing there. I love his excitement over all the new growth every day and if I can get him to just not pick anything til they’re ripe we will be set!! His favorite area right now is by the tomatoes and I have to admit they’re one of my favorites too. He loves the bunches of green balls and that the plants are far taller than he is; that part is my favorite too. A couple of our plants we got from Home Depot and they have done well since we planted them, but the other four plants I got from a local grower. They were great little plants when we got them, but I bought them before I had the garden planted and with the excitement of Jason being hospitalized at that time, I totally forgot about these plants tucked into my laundry room. I assumed they were goners, but hoped for the best.
Jason and I always do a lot of reading before we start a project, even one like the garden that we do every year. I admit I love all the ideas that are out there but together they just seem like so much work that I end up just doing what I know. Well this year has been different. We are in a far different climate than we have been in before, doing our new French German American Garden and I went with the new. I have tried so many new tricks and tips in this garden!! One that I used on these poor, forgotten tomatoes was the milk jug trick. Grab yourself an empty milk jug, rinse that thing out and grab some scissors or a knife. Cut the top off down to just below the cap area where the jug starts to open up wider. Poke holes all over that thing starting about an inch and a half up from the bottom and stopping about 3 inches from the top. Now take your jug out to your garden, fill thee bottom two inches with soil. Now in the middle of where you want to plant 2-4 tomato plants, dig a hole large enough for the jug to go into up to about an inch from the top. Put that jug in and bury it. Plant your tomatoes around the jug. With this jug in the ground, your deep rooted tomatoes will get the water where they need it faster and you will only have to fill that jug every other day.
I couldn’t believe that those four, dried root ball, sad looking tomato plants have turned into these big, beautiful, producing plants! I have to attribute their success to this trick. I loved it so much I did a smaller version of it with diet coke bottles (16 oz.) for the other two tomato plants (each got their own bottle.) They too have grown better than I have had tomatoes grow before (and we have always been successful with these guys.)
(Can you spot the hidden bottles and milk jug?)
Now, I have to throw in one more testament! We planted something like 20 fruit trees and bushes in January. They all did great despite the uncommon cold we experienced that month and the next. They started turning green and blooming, everything looked great!! Then out of seemingly nowhere, some of our trees started loosing leaves and dying. I honestly took it as hard as when I loose an animal here on our homestead. I read everything, called our arbhorist friend and blamed my sandy, terrible soil. I dug down to see if the root balls were damp at all; on several of the trees they dry, dry, dry which is bad, bad, bad. But they had been watered well the day before, they should’ve been damp! I realized that with our soil, despite me doing long, slow waterings, once or twice a week, the soil wasn’t allowing the water down to the roots. SO…..yep, I decided to use my tomato trick with our new young trees. I used apple juice bottles, milk jugs, whatever, in the same manner that I followed for the tomatoes on these trees. It has saved my trees. I did not do anything else with these trees other than this trick. We did end up loosing three, but we had several more that were on the brink and are thriving now. My little pomegranate tree is my shining example. She was down to like two leaves that were browning. I had come to terms that I would likely loose her and had brushed off all her dead, dried up leaves, but I kept filling her water jugs hoping she’d turn the corner. It took weeks, but she did!!! She is now bushy looking and growing!
I am so happy that this new climate pushed me to try a something new!! Had I not tried it on my tomatoes, I am positive I would have lost a lot more of my young trees (a far greater investment than my little tomatoes.) Here in Texas we are about to start harvesting, but any of you are just coming out of winter; I hope you will take this trick and use it in your own garden. You will NOT regret it!
-M
Faith Family Farm Homestead 
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