When Should I Plant Tomatoes With My Busy Schedule?
Busy families want to enjoy the pleasure of planting a garden and harvesting
nice, juicy tomatoes for their summer salads and hamburgers. But spring is a busy time and sometimes it feels like it is hard to fit it all in. Here are copies of two articles I wrote for ezine on the topic of gardening time management that might come in be helpful.
When Should I Plant Tomatoes?
by Sue Gnagy Fegan
Sometimes the biggest problems growing tomatoes are not with the planting and caring but with finding the time to prepare the soil and get them into the ground. Gardening time management is just as important as all the other tomato gardening tips you have. For the busy family who also enjoys growing their own vegetables, the question, "When should I plant tomatoes?" might have less to do with with the last projected frost dates and more to do with your free time.
Preparing the soil is the main thing that needs done. Planting your tomatoes doesn't take long. It should not be too hard to devise some gardening time management schedules to get these things done so you can get tomatoes planted as close to the optimum planting dates as possible.
Here are 3 "When Should I Plant Tomatoes?" ideas to consider:
Start your preparations early.
- The soil can be turned over any time. There is no tomato gardening tips that says it has to be worked the same time you are going to plant.
- If your time is limited, you must start thinking about all of this early in the spring and spread out the tasks.
- With daylight saving being moved back to early March free up more daylight hours to work outside. You can turn the soil over the first time in March if that is when you have the time!
Divide the task into small steps.
- There is also no official tomato gardening tips that say the whole garden needs worked at one time.
- Do what you can in the hour or so you have on nice day after work while your spouse cooks dinner, and then the next time you have some free moments go back and do some more.
- There might be a weekend when you can put more time in.
Put garden preparation on the calendar-- with "rain dates."
- Everyone knows once something is on the calendar, it becomes a priority and when conflicts arise it will be re-scheduled.
- An effective gardening time management idea is to put two options right on your calendar for preparing the soil and another two for the actual planting.
- You need one main plan and a back-up for rainy weather.
- As those dates close in, you will figure out the best options, based on the weather, and your schedule.
It will allow you to concentrate on your more important problems growing tomatoes and reading up on the latest tomato gardening tips and advice.
"When should I plant tomatoes if I have a busy family schedule?" can be easily handled with some advance thought and organization. You need to be able to concentrate on the effective maintenance and the problems growing tomatoes that involve pests and drought, not planting issues!
Busy People Should Not Fret About When I Should Plant Tomatoes?
by Sue Gnagy Fegan
When it comes right down to it, most families only have so much free time left to do the things they want or like to do. They learn to fit the things in they want to do around the ones they have to do. It is no different for a busy family dealing with gardening time management as the same principals are involved. There certainly is no use fretting about when I should plant tomatoes, or annuals, or anything else. You want to use all those tomato gardening tips the books tell you about, but you will either find the time to plant a garden or you won't. It will be just fine either way..
One of the gardening time management pieces of advice is to really consider if your time is limited, is to start dealing with all of this early and spread out the tasks over time. With daylight savings being moved back to early March, it frees up daylight hours to get things done on a nice day when you get home from work. You can do a little here and a little more then and before you know it, the garden is turned over and fertilized and ready for transplanting some plant or growing tomatoes from seed. This takes the fretting factor away in a jiffy.
When it gets closer to the no more frost time, when all the tomato gardening tips and advice you have read tells you is the best time to plant tomatoes, you again can only do what you have time to do, when you have the time to do it. You might even think about renting a tiller or paying someone to turn over the garden to save yourself sometime.
It is not worth fretting about the actual date for, "when should I plant tomatoes?" If your tomatoes to not get in until a week or two after you hoped, so be it. All it really means is you will not be growing tomatoes from seed, and you will have to transplant tomatoes. It may end up being a week or two later before you get a nice juicy tomatoes for your burgers and salads.
If the only time you have is a week or two before the suggested last day of frost, so be it. Just plant them when you can. There really should be no problems growing tomatoes that were planted too early if you watch the weather carefully and cover the plants if a late frost is predicted.
By stopping to think through some gardening time management tips like starting early, not growing tomatoes from seed, and not fretting about the actual planting date, it will allow you to concentrate on the more important problems growing tomatoes once they have started to grow by reading up on the latest tomato gardening tips and advice. Yes, there is an optimum time for when should I plant tomatoes, but it is certainly not the end of the world if you miss it by a week or two.
Look Here for Tomato Gardening Tips for plump, juicy tomatoes.
