Dosing and Watering - July 2, 2022

I went out looking for tomato plants after work yesterday - just wanted a little 6-pack to replace the Hossinators that died.  The big hardware store had big plants in gallon pots, but the price tags were faded, and I did not have my readers on; they might be on sale, but the last time I checked the price, the big ones were expensive, and I wouldn't buy them.  The next place I checked - a "real" garden center - didn't have ANY vegetable plants AT ALL (I would've bought a couple of zucchini plants if they'd had them).  There's a lady up the road that grows them in a greenhouse in her yard.  I may hit her up tomorrow.

It's been a week since I dosed the existing tomato plants with a microbial inoculent.  I was quite shocked when I saw the Hossinators earlier this week.  When I planted them two weeks ago, they were only 2" tall, and for days they just sat there, pale, and doing nothing, even though I was watering them.  And then I hit them with the Em-1, and they shot up 2" within a couple of days, and they're green.  

Now, let's not get excited.  Those Hossinator plants were like miniature bonsais when I put them in the ground.  Stunted.  They'd been growing in 6-pack trays for two months, on a concrete patio table that gets mid-day sun.  They'd been rained on, stormed on, washed out of the soil and punched back in.  The ones that survived must be tough customers.   It may be that once they got over the shock of being transplanted to the garden, they stretched out their roots and got busy growing.  The Em-1 might not have had a thing to do with their sudden growth spurt.  But it might have.

So I dosed them again this evening, along with the rest of the tomatoes, and the squash (which currently looks pitiful, btw) and the peppers.

Then I watered everything but the purple hull peas.  They need it and will get it this weekend, one way or another.