My Thoughts

Well all in all the past seven days have been pretty glum. Being a bank holiday weekend I suppose it is not that much of a surprise. Mid week we had some sun, but the rest of the week has been overcast and extremely wet. The pond in the back garden is nearly overflowing because of all the rain. Any tan I had from my holiday in Italy has been well and truly washed away!

Still it is not all bad news, I have found fruit on my tomato plants! Only a three at the moment but it is a good sign no less. Once the second truss starts to set I will begin feeding the plants once a week with fertiliser.

Plant feeding, particularly for those plants with flowers, fruit or large leaves, is an important job which must not be overlooked. In nature, important minerals such as Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous (P) and Potassium (K) amongst others are absorbed by the plants through their roots during the cycle of death and decay from rotting plant matter. Since my plants are grown in a grow bag the likelihood of the plants being able to absorb the required levels of nutrients is minimal, this is why you must fertilise once the fruit begins to set to ensure the plant gets all the goodness it can to maximise the tomato's growth.

I know from last year feeding the tomato plants will ensure they are stronger and healthier. It is important to choose the right fertiliser for the tomato plants. I used Levington Tomorite last year which seemed to work well, as I ended up with a real bumper crop.

I will investigate a little over the coming weeks and see if there are other kinds of fertiliser which I can use or whether Tomorite is the right product for the job.

Posted by Dean at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well I think I picked a good week to go away on my summer holidays, whilst my family and I have been sunning ourselves on Lake Garda in Italy my tomato plants have been exposed to some real heavy rain fall. Apparently in 2 days there was 80% of the entire months average rain fall. The good news is though having added the extra string to support the plants last week, the grotty weather does not appear to have affected my plants at all.

In fact the heavy rain seems to have helped bring the plants on, there are now 3 trusses of flowers on each plant and the signs are encouraging for yet more to starting setting over the next couple of weeks.

The weird thing I have noticed is that the plant on the left appears to be significantly smaller than the other two plants. Up until now the plants have all been of equal size.

Posted by Dean at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The tomato plants have been growing at a steady pace, the sun has not been shining that much compared to a few weeks back, but I know they have grown because I have had to add more string to the plants to help keep them sturdy when the wind gets up.

It looks like the second truss of flowers are just starting to appear at the top of each of the plants, I will have a much better idea next week of whether this is the case.

Posted by Dean at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well we have had a sprinkling of rain this week, and the skies have been a little gloomier than the past few weeks. However the tomato plants have been still growing at a steady rate and the first flowers are beginning to open.

The aphid problem seems to have settled down without too much intervention, in fact I have not seen one for a few days prior to writing to this post, so hopefully they have moved on to pastures new and will leave the tomato plants to continue their development in peace.

There is not much else to write about this week, so it looks like it is a short and sweet one!

Posted by Dean at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have been working a website which required me to display a checkbox but disable it, to ensure nobody viewing the page is able to toggle it before they submit the form.

I thought I would achieve this with javascript, but to my surprise you can actually do this using the disable property of the checkbox. See the examples below.

Disabled Checkbox Enabled Checkbox

Code to disable a checkbox

<input name="checkbox" type="checkbox" value="checkbox" checked="checked" disabled="disabled" />

Posted by Dean at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)