When I was a young teenager my Dad used to grow tomatoes.
Originally we lived in a big city so being an organic veg / tomato grower was something new for him, as he had never had a garden to grow things in.
It all began one day when he saw our neighbor growing tomatoes in his organic vegetable garden and he handed Dad one to taste. We didn’t know anything about organic veg in those days, but Dad must have loved the taste, because he decided to give organic veg growing a go after that.
He began growing his own tomatoes. First of all he dug over his garden bed, spread fertilizer and raked it in, then off he would go to the plant nursery. Here he would make his selection, usually six Grosse Lisse plants in a plastic container and would bring them home, give them a good watering, plant them in the tomato bed and then water them in.
He would give each one a six foot garden stake and would stand back proudly to admire his handiwork.
On returning from work each evening he would go into the garden and check if the plants needed water, tying to a stake or he would pull out any weeds that had dared to grow amongst his tomatoes in his organic veg garden.
He even got some old cow manure, put it in an old bucket, filled the bucket with water and left it for several days, stirring it up from time to time. He called this ‘Cow Tea.’ When it had been maturing for some weeks he would pour off some of the ‘tea’, dilute it with more water and carefully pour some into the soil around his tomatoes. He would do this about once a fortnight.
The plants grew to the tops of the stakes and it was a job to keep them from falling over. We had the biggest, juiciest, sweetest, ripe, rosy red tomatoes we had ever encountered. Mum had to learn to make tomato sauce, chutney, soup and all sorts of recipes to use up the huge harvest.
Dad grew the best tomatoes in our street and turned his hand to growing other organic veg as well after that. You can’t buy tomatoes in the shops these days that taste anything like those gorgeous, ripe, rosy, red tomatoes.
Dad was so proud of his efforts, he grew them every year after that. Dad was an organic veg gardener and never even knew it!
To find out more about how you can start organic vegetable gardening, click on the green button below and begin your delectably satisfying venture as an organic veg gardener starting TODAY!
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Organic Vegetable Garden Planting | Organic Veg – Once your first lot of seedlings become established and are on their way to yielding their first crop, now would be the time to add “cow tea” …
