The last 2 or 3 days have been kind of crappy weather here so I haven't been outside to do much of anything. Even the greenhouse has been cold for the past few days with the overcast, so I haven't wanted to go out there to do any work. I've been going out to the greenhouse every day to check on the plants and give them water if necessary, but that's about it.
Last week, I started the process of getting the big container pots ready for the coming growing season. I had decided that I should replace half of the dirt in the big pots with fresh dirt, both for the fertility and to lower the plant disease potential in the pots. I've been growing tomatoes in those pots for several years now, and the dirt is probably not very fertile, and may have an increased risk of tomato blight. In my last greenhouse post,
https://steemit.com/greenhouse/@amberyooper/working-in-the-greenhouse-preparing-for-the-growing-season
I talked about buying some bags of raised bed soil to use to refill the pots. The first thing I had to do was to dig half the old dirt out of the pots before I could put new dirt in. I brought one of my wheelbarrows into the greenhouse to put the old dirt in. The plan is to put the old dirt out in the main garden, no sense in wasting all the soil amendments in the dirt.
Here, I have the wheelbarrow just about full of dirt from the pots.
I also decided to rearrange a few of the pots in the greenhouse. I have mostly 15 gallon pots for the tomatoes, but I also have 2 of the 20 gallon pots. They don't really fit that well with the other pots along the front wall of the greenhouse, so I decided to move them while I had them mostly empty. They're too heavy to move when full.
I decided to try putting one of the bigger pots in the corner to see how it would fit. I mix the vermiculite in with the soil as I refill the pot to give it more looseness.
Another view of the pots in the south east corner of the greenhouse.
I have since decided that I don't want to have the big pot in the corner, it's size leaves a gap in the line of pots along the front wall. I'm thinking about the possibility of taking the big pots out of the greenhouse and putting them in my outdoor container garden, but I haven't decided on that yet. I do need to buy 2 more of the 15 gallon pots to put along the front wall to fill the space. the extra space that is now available comes from having taken the big fish tank out of the greenhouse, as you might have seen in a previous post.
As soon as the weather warms up a bit more, I'll be back out into the greenhouse to continue the project. I should be able to start putting tomato plants into the big pots by the end of next week, so I need to get at least some of the pots refilled pretty soon. Right now, I have 3 tomato plants waiting to go into the big pots. I have 2 Early Girl plants and a cherry tomato plant, which may end up outside instead of in the greenhouse.
I have the tomato plants on a stand up against the heat wall in the greenhouse right now to help keep them a bit warmer at night when it gets cold outside.
Well, that's all I have for this post, I hope you found it interesting!
Thanks for stopping by my page to check out my greenhouse post!
