unwatered tomatoes thriving

http://www.permies.com

Forest Shomer at the 2010 Northwest Permaculture Convergence giving a talk on saving seeds comes across a pile of living tomatoes. So he talks about the tomatoes a little.

Forest starts off talking about how you can grow food in active compost piles. A woman in the audience points out that this particular pile is from four months earlier - in May. It is sod that was stacked and had tomatoes stuck in it. So the sod is composting. The tomatoes received no water all summer. Zero water. No irrigation. None. Zip. Nada.




I looked up the weather for that area and saw that there was some rain in june, but starting around July 5th, there was 32 days without rain. Then 0.19 inches in a day. Then 0.03 inches the next day. And then 22 more days without rain.

For those folks that think that their area is dryer and more desert like - I bet your worst summers are about this bad. The key is that what makes these tomatoes last all summer without irrigation is the huge amount of organic matter.

Forest then goes on to talk about tomato seeds. He mentions the viability of a tomato seed being three to seven years.

Music by Jimmy Pardo

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• tomato
• irrigation
• tomatoes
• water
• seeds
• eco
• green
• plants
• growing
• vegetables
• permaculture
• organic
• environment
• garden
• gardens
• gardening
• growing tomatoes
• tomato plants

[drconnole]

I'm wondering what was in the compost pile - Hugelkulture? (sorry about the spelling)

[paulwheaton12]

@drconnole just sod

[CurrentWave]

Thanks for letting me know -

I'm always interested in the location when posts are made about not irrigating vegetables.

[paulwheaton12]

@CurrentWave Some people might think "oh, seattle gets a lot of rain" - but they get nearly all of their rain in the fall, winter and spring. Their summers are typically bone dry. And when you compare that to other places - they have almost the exact same scenario - bone dry in the summer.

[bisonhawk1]

Hugelkulture is awesome just put down another bed yesterday

[Clybrad1]

Thank you Paul!  Good Video. TSP listener

[dehmlowm]

I can't wait to start my tomato pile!

[TheDarjeelingZen]

Way cool! This is just plain neat! I wish I had the kind of space to build a raised bed like that!

[TheDarjeelingZen]

Way cool!



[TheBlueEyeDevil]

Pretty neat

[cyanidearsenic]

@insipdtoast I don't know exactly how they kept from having to water these tomatoes but here, admittedly very far from Seattle (Michigan), our grass is green nearly all year around and we never water it. Ever. The only thing we've ever done to it is cut it.