Tomato water wilt?

This seems to be water wilt - wilting from the top down due to waterlogged roots.  Need to improve drainage next year and/or do more "raised" plants, e.g raised rows.  Fortunately the community garden is already raised rows thanks to the way it was plowed.

Post planning / Be a tomato supporter

For supporting the many plants, I am planning on buying 8 ft. 2x2 poles which I can get reasonably cheap at Home Depot, then using twine to do the Florida weave thing.   5 rows: 25 ft; poles each 4ft =5 x 6 = 30 poles;  figure 5 rows x 25 ft x 2 times across each row & back again x say, 6 levels of twine = 1,500 feet of twine.  Whoa.

TIming / home garden

Since I got the plants in the ground about 2 weeks later than last year, the growth is slightly behind vs 2013.    My most important lesson has been to make sure the seedlings are firmly established & hardened before transplanting.  The ones that I sowed last indoors were IR and CG, and they had about 50% or worse survival - too small. The rest had like 90% survival.

The backyard plot has Red Pear, Hawaiian Currant, Cherokee Purple, Black Cherry, cukes and a couple of basil plants.  And I have one pot full of sports I saved from the garden - probably black cherry or HC.  I will put these in a big patio pot.

Weeding

Wow - 2 weeks hiatus and the weeds are exploding in the community garden.  Sooooo, it will take a huge amount of manual labor to weed if I don't put down some static weed control.   (Before & after images below...about 1 hour of work and didn't finish it all.)  Thus I am ordering more pro weed mat.   Now I see the wisdom of putting that stuff down basically all over.  But it's a lot of mat to order, since the good stuff is about $27 per 3x50 feet.  That's enough to block 2x25' rows.  6 total rows to worry about in the 25' square.

The basil plants that I started from seed are barely growing; slightly bigger in the home garden.   A few carrots have emerged in the comm garden but will take care to separate from fast growing weeds.

The good news is that most of the tomatoes are doing OK and growing... The first flowers are emerging.

Mothers' day update 2014

Yesterday and today I did weeding and watering at the big garden.  Learning more stuff:  first,  the IRs and CGs did not do so well after transplanting.  They were smaller because they were sown later, and I think they could have used some more time to establish themselves before transplanting. so about half of the IRs/CGs died, and those that are alive are scrawny.  Next year allow to establish in 5 in pots, another week, outside with sun, before transplanting.  But most of the other plants survived and are doing okay.

May has begun...All plants now in the ground.

So I finally got everything planted in the community garden plot, between last weekend and today.  It's a bit over the top in terms of numbers of plants, but I am guessing the per-plant yield will be lower than in my home garden.  

At home I have 2 HC, 2 RP, 2 CP, 2 BC. Plus cukes, carrots and basil.
At the community garden: about 65-70 plants plus 2 basil and some carrots. !
The totals per variety are:
1 FL, 1 HC, 1 PPP, 2 RP, 4 BC;  3 CP., 6 BFT; 3 AL, 7 SS, 5 CG; 8 ML, 4 BB; 4 KB, 6 OS; 3 GZ. 11 IR
Some of the CP I planted on the first day did not survive.  They were too dry.    I took care after that to moisten the pots thoroughly before planting.   We got a lot of rain last week so soil conditions are better now.
Here's the arragement by row in the community garden:
One. FL. RP. RP. CP. CP. CP. PFT. HC. BFT. BFT. CG. CG. BC. BC. BC.

Two. KB. KB. KB. OS. OS. OS. OS. OS. OS. KB. CG. CG. CG. BC.

Three PFT. PFT. PFT. AL. AL. AL. ML.x 8.

four. BB. BB. BB. BB. SSX7. GZ. GZ. GZ.

Five. Basil. Basil. PPP. IR X 11.

Six. Carrots half row.