Planting the Seedlings: Tomatoes, Peppers, and Cabbages

This weekend I began planting the starts. I planted:

July 11th : tomatoes
July 13th: cabbages and peppers

I also threw the dill plants into the ground because they were looking so wretched. I have little faith that they'll survive, but it's worth a shot. I still have more cole crops to plant, it's just a matter of finding sunny space for them.

Variety-wise, I basically went with what was available at the garden stand. The tomatoes are a random assortment including Better Boy, Brandywine, Rutgers, and some yellow full-size and cherry toms. The cabbages included Savoy, Stonehead, Discover, and Red Acre. The peppers weren't well-labeled, but I think they were all sweet peppers.

For all the seedlings, I tried to mix the varieties around so that I wouldn't have all of one type in a single location, in case that spot's bad for growing.

I also took a few approaches to the planting itself. The tomatoes were really leggy, so I removed their bottom leaves and buried them quite deep. Since they were already so tall, I had to mound soil up around them to keep the stems buried. This might have been a bad approach from a water management perspective. I mulched heavily around the mounds using oat straw. I placed the tomatoes in the second row from the north. They will get excellent sun there, but won't be shaded by taller plants. I may have spaced them a bit close--I used a checkerboard pattern with ~24" between plants, giving 3 offset rows in the mound. If I get a single tomato out of this I will be amazed.

When I watered the tomatoes I noticed that a lot of the water was running into the walkways, so I took a slightly different approach with the peppers. These I placed on the furthest north mound, where they will be next to the green beans, but not in their shadow. Between the peppers and the beans I made a trench, where most of the water flows. I hope this will make a little reservoir of moist soil whenever it rains or I water. I have not mulched these yet and I'm not sure if I will.

For planting the cabbages I got cleverer still. I placed each cabbage plant in a small depression, so that they will be surrounded by moist soil after I water and the water won't run into the walkways. I mulched heavily between the plants to discourage weeds, hold more water, and keep the soil cool. I've heard that cabbage roots are delicate and they often don't survive transplanting. I tried to be gentle with them, but they were terribly root-bound in the pots. I teased the seedlings apart while holding the rootmass in a pail of water--a technique I perfected on swallow-wort, of course. So hopefully these little guys will survive. I would really like to put up a bunch of sauerkraut from my own garden.

Next I need to plant the herbs and I'm trying to monitor the garden to find a sunny spot that's not in high demand from vegetables. I will be receiving my seeds early next week and then I will plant those.