Hi all,
My wife and I live in a townhome with a small backyard. The last couple of years we've tried tomatoes in containers and this year I decided to go for broke and plant and actual garden.
The plot is roughly 9X5 and I planted 3 rows of 4 plants and 1 plant is the last row for a total of 13 plants. They are tomatoes and a variety of peppers. We are planning on picking up a couple of more plants tomorrow to fill out the last row probably string beans.
I made on huge mistake in that I did not rent a tiller. I did the hole plot by hand and it took me all morning yesterday and today. On advice from the garden center, a good locally owned place, I mixed peat moss into the soil (Clay heavy) to make a 50% peat soil mix. The plants seem to like it. I watered them after planting and they perked right up. The drainage is kind of slow. I watered each row with what would look like heavy rain from the hose for about a 1-1.5 min per row. It took 5-7 minutes to soak in. I repeated this three times about 1 hour apart until the soil felt moistened.
I guess my question is what next? we back up to a preserved farm which is great but we can get extremely heavy winds(take off your window shutters winds) so I plan on caging my plants both tomatoes and peppers.
Do I need to mulch to cover the bed? How often if at all should I fertilize? what should I use?
Thanks for any advice
Ray