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GardenRN
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update on "planting tomatoes in garbage"

For those that remember my attempt at the youtube inspired idea of digging a hole, filling it with fruit scraps, and just barely covering the top of the filled hole with soil, and then using that as a place to plant my tomatoes with the idea that the composting material in the hole would be good ferts for the tomato plant. I say nay.

It was the first tomato plant in the garden. And as of date, is the only one without flowers. every other tomato plant in my garden, even the cherokee purples I have had so much trouble with over the years have at least 2-4 flowers.

It is growing and looks healthy...just no blooms. Leaves seem a bit smaller too but that could be variety so I am not going to credit that to the composting method. Probably won't do this again.

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soil
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the season is not over yet, it could hit you with a huge late crop. ive had it happen to me before.

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GardenRN
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You're right. The final product may change my mind. But the method is not recommended for early production. lol

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applestar
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Are they fresh scraps?

I just trenched the middle of my leeks bed with unfinished compost.
They were chunks of mostly recognizable but decomposed kitchen scraps that I forked out of the compost pile. There were unbelievable number of fat and pregnant earthworms. 8)

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gixxerific
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I hope you have better luck than I did. I planted a bunch of stuff in my garbage and the next thing I knew the garbage man took it all away. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.




Sorry I couldn't resist. :lol: :P

But really if they are fresh scraps they could be fighting the soil with the scraps using all the nitrogen etc. in the decomp process. The balance is off somewhere, possible too much nitrogen which makes green plants but not flowers/fruit.

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GardenRN
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yes they were fresh scraps at the time the were buried. And about 2 weeks old when the plant was added and about a month old now.

A friend of mine, his wife works at a daycare place and the ladies in the kitchen save her the banana peels and apple cores every day in a few bags for their compost pile. My buddy gave me like 4 bags to throw in these holes for my little experiment.

I wonder if just below the surface is a jackpot of earthworms. May have to check it out. Wonder if I can do it without killing the plant....or if it'd be worth the sacrifice.

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gixxerific
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I could save you the trouble and almost guarantee there are abundant earthworms under there. No need to dig around.

OT a bit but.... I have a lot of worms here and noticed when digging a new plant there are worms sometimes a bunch sometimes not so many but still worms. Due to the weather I had to replace a few plants and in the hole that had plants there was a ton more worms than before. I did add a bit of native soil with my own mix to each hole originally. Hmmmmm???? :?:



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