Tomato Hole

[Lemonboy]

Brat, maybe. Spoiled, considering we get less than half the rain you do and haven't made it to two inches yet this year, I don't think so. It takes more than dirt to spoil me. I'm hoping for a few good rains between now and mid May. But if I don't get them it won't even be worth trying to grow everything I've started, because the weeds are much better at fighting for available moisture than the maters are. And there's a limit to how much water I'm willing to pump from the well to share with the flora.

[bower]

Brat, maybe. Spoiled, considering we get less than half the rain you do and haven't made it to two inches yet this year, I don't think so. It takes more than dirt to spoil me. I'm hoping for a few good rains between now and mid May. But if I don't get them it won't even be worth trying to grow everything I've started, because the weeds are much better at fighting for available moisture than the maters are. And there's a limit to how much water I'm willing to pump from the well to share with the flora.

No offense intended. I never knew the kind of dirt people had to work with until I got on the internet. People talking about tomatoes rooting four feet down!! And such. Unimaginable deep soil, for me.
We are still recovering here from the last ice age, which 10,000 years ago stripped all the topsoil off the place and dumped it in the grand banks.
Here I have nowhere to go but up. All the carbon I can push into the ground is going to be sequestering afaict so it's good for the planet. Our agricultural capacity is low and needs to come up for the region. And I have water galore. I am really fortunate in the water. When they drilled my well, the man said, if we have to go deeper than 350 ft I won't charge you the per foot extra.
The well was 345 feet deep. But I have a ton of flow. No shortage ever.
My closest neighbor, they had to driill 500 ft, and all he got was a trickle.
The foothill we are on is probably solid rock, with the few bits of boulders and dirt on top.
The town hooked up to regional water supply (which is ponds) and my neighbors were happy to have it, but I refused. Many summers they are given orders not to water their lawns etc. due to depletion of the ponds. The ground water is deep and I am never short, and never on a leash for it.
That being said, my main garden is rain fed and rarely watered (perennial herb permaculture) but when the chips were down last year, with unprecedented heat and low precip, I also learned what my garden water footprint means to wildlife. They were in need and that deep well left some relief, everywhere it fell on the ground.
But you're right, we are spoiled for water. Never short really. Only extreme events give a glimpse of what you might endure.
Hope you get those rains you were looking for.

[GoDawgs]

I guess I'm a Group 3 gardener. The soil is pretty sandy and so over time I've been amending it as I can by adding compost etc to each planting hole. Those would be general veggie planting holes, not tomatoes which are grown in buckets filled with a planting mix bought by the pickup load. With 16 beds I don't have the stuff to cover each with inches of compost and till it in so I put the good stuff to work in planting holes with the hope that over time it will help the beds as a whole.

I try to mulch well since it does triple duty by keeping plant roots cool in these sweltering summers we have down here, helps with soil moisture and keeps the weeds at bay .

And yes to regular watering, mostly in the summer when it's so hot and especially when a lot of wind happens at the same time and sucks everything dry regardless of mulch. Now, it's porbably not "regular". I always try to gauge how moist or not the soil is before deciding on watering. No sense in wasting water if it's not needed!