Originally Posted by Old_Toot
Originally Posted by Bristoe
Just finished, actually. I've got enough tomatoes for a couple more boil downs. But I'm done. I've got 16 quart containers frozen. Each quart has a pound of ground chuck stirred up in it. I figure one spaghetti night a week all winter long.

Nobody would believe the quantity of tomatoes I've gotten off of 4 plants. Hit the compost mixture right and keep them watered, and 4 plants will bury you in tomatoes.


Bristoe you mentioned the size of your garden with only 4 plants and you’re right it doesn’t take much with the right compost.

A friend does somewhat similar in that he tills as deep as his Troy tiller will go and does it in a 6’ diameter circle. He adds Epsom salts and some lime and some 13-13-13 and tills that In then waters it.

In the center of the circle he digs a hole with his post hole digger about 1. 1/2’ foot deep and fills that hole with more 13-13-13 and waters it heavily.

Covers everything with pine straw. Later when it’s time to plant he places 6 Big Boy tomato plants around the center hole about 2’ out from the center.

What those 6 plants produce is considerable and he’s always giving away tomatoes . He does use Sevin dust sparingly and waters daily.

I’m gonna try his method next year.


I just mixed topsoil with compost and scratched it up good. This is the third year I've been working the soil in my little raised bed.

I had another compost bed several years ago. A friend of a friend had some kind of job with the agriculture dept. at the University. He told me to put my grass clippings on the bed, then till them under in the fall. After a couple of years it was some crazy soil. Anything you planted in it just rocketed up out of the ground.

I'm trying to get the same results now by using commercial compost mixed with topsoil. I hit it pretty close this year. It doesn't need any fertilizer if you hit the right mixture.