If you wonder if I dig that hill, the answer is yes, I dig it with my bare hands, using various tools such are shovels, hoes and other tools to get this area flattened for the greenhouse for tomatoes. The greenhouse itself is not yet finished, and there is a lot more to do first in order to make it fully functional, but I will use the construction later on.
The soil itself is not much of a quality, especially as you go deeper, where the most of the hill was removed. First things first, so the entire area where the tomatoes and peppers will be, has to be dug using the hoe. The result is shown in the picture below.
After I dig it all up, I'm now ready to enrich the poor soil. First, I will add some calx (a white caustic alkaline substance consisting of calcium oxide) to clean the soil from various pests, stabilise soil PH value, but also, to enrich the soil with calcium oxide. Then I add compost (fertile soil), especially at the end of the garden since the soil is fully brown there (where the most of the hill was removed). That is all that I did the first day. The garden is about 8 x 4 meters and will be enough for about 30 tomato and 30 pepper plants. At the outer side of the greenhouse construction, I plan to seed peas the whole length of the garden, which also enriches the soil for the next year.
Picture showing soil enriched with CALX
Picture showing use of my organic compost
Next thing I'm going to do is: tie cords up, along the greenhouse construction, in places where the plants are going to line up, then add some natural soil fertiliser, and then, plan the beams with a rake. When tomato plants are grown later on into big plants, I will tie the garden rope around them, that will be attached to the cords above and thus, we do not need any stakes. The reason I do that is because we have a mild and humid climate here, which is not the best thing for tomatoes. From my previous experiences, too much humid gets trapped on a stake, especially when it rains, which resulted in many diseases for poor tomato plants.Hope you liked my first "official" post about something I love and do. I would appreciate it much if you share some of your experiences with tomatoes and peppers; what sorts do you use and why.
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