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Let's Get Our Tomato On

Well this is a little late in coming, since it's now June.  Despite our blight breakdown, we decided to finish planting all our warm-weather plants over Memorial weekend with the exception of cucumber, I still feel our soil isn't quite the 65 degrees necessary for successful germination.   

I went out to O'Toole's Garden Center to buy our tomatoes.  I have some mixed feelings about this.  O'Toole's is a really well-known nursery here in Denver and I found them cheaper then Tagawa Gardens, but I found their selection a bit lacking.  I had to hunt high and low to find two suitable Celebrity tomatoes, which I know exactly where to find at Tagawa.

After some searching, I purchased the following plants:
  • 2 Celebrity Tomatoes
  • 2 Early Girl Tomatoes
  • 2 Roma Tomatoes
  • An heirloom cherry tomato (name escapes me)
  • 3 peppers (also don't remember the varieties)
I also picked up a few herbs to supplement our herb transplants - specifically basil, chives, and parsley.  To be honest, our basil totally bit it once transplanted.  And our chives never quite took off either - we have one.  Our parsley is looking good, but I wanted more of it and at 3 herbs for $10, I decided to go that route versus start new seeds.

I'll do a post later this week with a full status update of garden happenings (including video!) and broccoli fungus status.


In the meantime, here is a pic of one of our 9 tomato plants:


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