We are now in the section of the book which is looking at cultivation under glass. Last week we looked at structures, this week we move onto the section on Soil:
The ideal soil for tomatoes is a fairly rich, well-drained medium loam, containing sufficient humus to retain moisture and thus maintain a steady growth of the plants with a reasonable amount of watering.
Actually, tomatoes will grow quite successfully in soils of widely differing character, and good crops have been raised on soils ranging from very sandy loam to very heavy clay. Gardeners are a long-suffering tribe and soon get used to making do with what they have! Old turves cut from grass overlying a good medium loam and stacked upside down in a heap for a period of several months are the best material to form the base of a compost for tomatoes in pots, boxes, or in made-up beds under glass. I say “best” – but it is by no means the only soil basis.
Ordinary garden soil, suitably treated, will provide an excellent medium for indoor tomatoes. Such soil should be sweet and clean and reasonably free from stones. If it is naturually “heavy”, i.e clay, it may be necessary to mix some leaf-mould and coarse sand or clean road-grit with it. Above all it is essential that it should be free of pests and diseases and it should therefore be sterilized. This may sound very complicated and technical but it is a simple and extremely important procedure. Clean “healthy” soil is indispensable to the growing of good tomatoes. The two most practicable methods are to bake the soil in shallow tins in an oven; or to saturate it with a solution of formaldehyde. I prefer the latter method and my recipe is as follows. Mix 1 pint of 40 per cent formaldehyde with 10 gallons of water. This should be sufficient to treat one large wheelbarrow load of soil. The soil should be throughly saturated, then made into a heap and covered with some old lino or similar material to keep in the fumes for forty-eight hours. These fumes are apt to be somewhat unpleasant and it is therefore advisable not to carry out this task in the confined space of a greenhouse. After treatment, the soil should then be spread out in a think layer to enable it to sweeten and it is safe to use as soon as the smell of formaldehyde has gone.
Well that all sounds delicious – not !
Whilst Mr. C has chosen ‘in the greenhouse with the poison’ as his sterilizing method of choice. I can’t help but wonder if we are seeing the invisible intervening hand of Mrs. C at work – wheelbarrows of soil baking in the oven ? – out, out damn loam!
And with the ‘somewhat unpleasant’ fumes of formaldehyde on the air I’m beginning to see why greenhouses were traditionally sited at the end of the garden.
Still apart from ‘methods consigned to the past’ I also learnt that the plural for turf is turves…. so all is not lost !
