We have been graced by another beautiful weekend and the tomatoes, now completely transplanted into 72s, are doing quite well.

I met with Connor and Steve today (the farm manager and one of the faculty involved with the project) and spoke with them, in detail, about the possibilities for the experimental design. We went into detail on topics such as bed size vs. plant spacing, maximum utilization of space, and the number of replicated plots that we can fit into our bed.

Our given bed length is 88ft, and 20ft of that is going to be occupied with cut flowers, leaving us with 68ft of bed length at 32 inches wide. (Not including the paths on either side) We are going to put two rows of tomatoes in the bed, which means that there will be 136 total feet for planting (68’x2). The standard for in-field tomato plant spacing is 1.5ft; if we put 1 tomato plant every 1.5 ft, we are left with enough space for 90 total plants. Now, assuming that we choose 12 of the 13 tomato varieties to plant in the field, we can expect to have space for 7-8  plants of each variety. **All of these numbers are subject to change**

We are limited in bed space, and because of that, there is a concern about the number of replications that be can have within our given space, leaving us with an issue of producing accurately transferable data. In an ideal setting, we could replicate the trial in multiple spots across the farm. Not only would this give us a larger data set, it would also help us to account for environmental variations between plots. With the space that we are currently given, there is little to no chance of us being able to differentiate between inter-varietal differences of the tomatoes and environmental variations such as direct sunlight and soil temperatures. As always, we can only work with what we are given, I raise these concerns only to catalog my thoughts on the matter.

From here, I will continue to collaborate with the farm staff on the necessary steps to preparing our planting bed, as well as continue building the experimental design. I expect the seedlings to remain in the heated green house for another week, where they will then be moved to a more open green house to harden them up to the elements.

Stay sunny.