There's a newly cleared cement slab in the middle of my apartment complex that gets a LOT of direct sunlight, so I'm going to try a tomato plant. I just went to Home Depot and picked up what I could carry on a bike.

Here's what I got.

• Clean 5 Gallon Bucket
• 1 Gallon hand pump sprayer
• Tomato / Vegetable fertalizer
• Small Spade shovel
• Some sort of prefabricated tomato tressle that's about 5 feet tall and includes three stakes with three sets of cross bars

I want to use a 5 gallon bucket because my apartments are supposed to be getting remodeled one of these days and I want to be able to move it if I need to.

I'm going to scout around my apartments and see if I can find some nice rich dirt somewhere before I buy dirt. It's not as easy as it sounds to find decent dirt in Florida when you're close to the coast though. Lots of "sugar sand" style dirt around. There's a patch of newly uncovered dirt where the the lawn guys tore out a bunch of old plants, I'm not sure what it looks like yet though.

My first word of advice, if you ever want to use a pump sprayer don't buy the cheapest one. I got one for $8 and I'm wishing I would have at least gone with the one that was $12 or so instead. This $8 one seems like it's going to have the pump handle snap off on me before I get through even a single batch of tomatoes. Oddly enough it says something about a 2 year warranty on the box.

I'm going to skip seed and buy a tomato plant that's already been started. Target has some decent looking ones already in 1 gallon containers.

I just throw tomato plants into growbags (cheap!). Three to a bag. Keep them watered, pick out the side shoots, top them when they have three or four lots of flowers so they don't get overstressed (a smaller load of good fruit is better than a huge amount of bad.

They're a really easy plant to grow.

I bought a chilli kit the other day, haven't gotten around to setting it yet. I'm considering mushrooms as a future project too.

If my tomatoes go well, I want to try some bell peppers next and then move on to salsa ingredients for something to dip my corn chips in.

I can't wait to see how this project turns out!

Here's some photos. I ended up just buying a bag of dirt, everything around here has a bunch of rocks in it, or is really sandy, or some other nuisance. I got the tomato plant from Target.

Looking good so far!

Well, it's been 10 days now since your last post joebert... how's the tomato plant coming along?

It's finally got a distinguishable new set of leaves, making it about 2 inches taller. I still have some minor to medium leaf curl under going on, I'm not quite sure whether it's from transplant shock or if I added too much plant food to the top few inches of the soil. I'm guessing transplant shock for now though because it's getting the new growth on top and the Y sections are trying to shoot up vine sprouts (which I keep pinching off for now)

I found a little caterpillar on the underside of a lower leaf this morning when I went out to water the plant. I noticed a few holes in the leaves yesterday but couldn't find the culprit. When I saw more holes today I knew for sure there was something and took more time to find it. Strange littler bugger, it wasn't the usual green tomato caterpillar, it was about the size of my pinky nail when it was curled up, was black or deep dark green, and had a white stripe going down both sides of it. Didn't have any hair or anything. It oozed out some green stuff when I squashed it.

I found this little snail on my tomato plant this morning. I find these little guys all over the apartment complex, I didn't know they like tomatoes though, they might be a problem.

It's starting to get bushier, especially at the top. I found a small green caterpillar on it a day or two after the snail, but that was the last of the pests. I quit seeing holes in my leaves and there isn't little silk strands going around the leaves or snail trails glistening anywhere. It seems like every time I rinse it down with the sprayer to clean the leaves, it gets pests the next day. I've started watering every other morning in an attempt to stop the leaf curl, I still have to find the sweet spot as far as watering goes.

I recently timed my sunlight (which I'm glad I didn't do earlier, it might have turned me off of growing this) and it gets right around 6 hours of direct sunlight where it's at. Just enough. I believe I have it in the best possible spot so it gets sunlight as early, and as late as possible. I have an apartment building on one side and a neighbors tree on the other to work around.

May 18th


June 2nd (2 weeks later)

Eew!!! Sounds like the pests really like your plant. And it looks like the plant is coming along great! Can't wait to see some tomatoes popping out on it!

Lawn maintenance guys ended up covering my plant with dust when they went around with the blower after mowing the grass, so I had no choice but to spray it down with water this morning. On the bright side, there are 4 little blossoms forming on top of the plant today. When I got the plant it had a couple little blossoms on it, which I pinched off until the plant had a chance to recover from being transplanted.

Isn't there some tomato plant food that keeps the pests away, or did you say you already use it?

I've not heard of plant food that keeps pests away. I'm using this stuff.

I haven't seen any tell tale signs of caterpillars, slugs, or other pests that can eat entire leaves in one night lately. I think that as long as I check it for eaten leaf damage every morning I'll be ok there since it's only one plant. I do have a little spider that has taken up residence in one of the little nooks, and spreads its' web between the poles of, the support cage though.

Yay, that's exciting!