Every good landscape or remodel starts with a plan. After toying around with the landscaping at our Seattle home, I’d learned what worked well, and what needs improving. It’s great to be able to bundle that experience and start with a blank canvas. Our yard and garden in Tacoma is just that — a blank canvas. Well, except for the 1800 square foot concrete driveway that’s hiding a good potion of the dirt!

When I started putting together the landscape plan for our new home, the first major decision I made on paper was that the 180 foot long driveway needed to go. This driveway is large enough for an RV, a boat, a plane and about 4 cars. Altogether unnecessary for two people and a cat. We plan on ripping out 2/3 of the driveway (approximately 1300 square feet). In this reclaimed space, I plan on installing a fruit and berry orchard, a nice size kitchen vegetable garden, and an outdoor kitchen cooking and dining area sandwiched right in the middle. How delightful is the idea of having an outdoor food preparation and dining area surrounded by the fruits of your garden? Sounds like paradise to me!

To see our dream become reality, we’re committed to a pretty aggressive landscape plan for 2009. In 5 months, we’ll be transforming out backyard, which includes bringing in large amounts of soil. Once that’s accomplished, we’ll schedule to have the driveway removed in the late April/early May time frame. At one time we planned on doing this ourselves, but after killing ourselves to remove a very small portion of the driveway last year, we’ve decided that this is a task for the professionals. Once the driveway is gone, we’ll bring in the top coat soil, lay the bricks for the dining/kitchen area, and build the raised vegetable beds. If everything goes as planned, I’ll be able to put in a summertime garden in mid to late May/early June. Whew, what a relief that’ll be.

After two years of being without a vegetable garden that contributes to our food supply, I’ve realized just how important it is to me. Vegetable gardening is a good amount of work to do it successfully, but for me, it’s about the most enjoyable work I can think of. Soon, I’ll have built a little slice of paradise and will be able to reap the benefits of our labor! I look forward to sharing our new beginnings and new garden with readers this year. Stay tuned…

Some basic tips for tomatoes, as stated in Boe’s article, choose varieties suited for growth in your zone and that are designed for your geographic local.
Shop for the best plants, Buy more then one variety. Try to plant in an area that receives 6-8 hours of sunlight throughout the day. In shorter growing zones set the plants out that have been started in larger pots and have a more developed root system. It also helps to rotate tomatoes from year to year and to avoid planting where potatoes or eggplant were planted the previous season. Water at least twice weekly, more often if needed and water from the base of the plant, keeping the leaves dry. It helps to use a support cage or to stake your tomatoes. If you do stake the vines, leave a loop around the vine large enough to allow for continued growth.

Here are two products that help keep the tomatoes warm. The first is Red Plastic Mulch. This is a thin plastic film that performs like black plastic mulch as it warms the soil, suppresses weeds and retains moisture. All that will improve your yield. Another added benefit is it reflects the far-red light up into the plant which besides improving yields can give you earlier fruit as well.

The other product is the Tomato Crater, these are new to me this year, I bought them and installing them was quite easy and I really like them so far. There are two interlocking halves that make it easy to install around the plant. There is a reservoir for direct watering and six slots that evenly distribute the water around the base of the tomato. They are spaced to allow square or round tomato cages.

I got my tomatoes in, 6 plants total, 5 varieties as I put in two of the roma’s. Now lets just figure out a way to keep that Raccoon out of my garden.

These are pictures of my starts and of the two products I am recommending.