Last week I got my four tomatoes planted, but I had to do it two different days. I started on Wednesday evening, but only managed to get two of them done before a thunderstorm came up.

First, I had to hydrate the coir. I took a block of it and put it in a plastic tote I'd bought at IKEA for just this purpose.



I then started adding water to it. It took about 8 gallons or so, overall, and I kept breaking it up by hand every so often. This is what it looked like after I added the first two gallons of water:



I later found out that I'd have been better off to add the water then go do something else for a while. It will hydrate just fine on its own, and doesn't need any "manual assistance". I thought it would speed up the process, but instead it just wore me out-- I was exhausted by the time I was done with the first two plants! Here's the coir about halfway to being completely hydrated:



I then started filling the growbags. Here's an empty one:



And here's one filled with coir:



I then simply made a hole in the middle of the coir and put some organic fertilizer (Espoma's Plant Tone) in and mixed it into the coir in the hole. I then pinched off the bottom half of the branches/leaves on each plant, and placed the plant into the coir. I filled the hole, pressing the coir gently against the plant stem and making sure to cover the stem up to the level of the bottom leaves. The parts of the stem where I pinched off branches that are buried will send out roots, making a larger and stronger root system than the plant would have if I simply plonked it into the hole "as is". Here is the first plant, Marianna's Peace:



And here are both plants after I finished the second. You can see how dark it was getting because of the oncoming storm:



I finished the other two on Friday, and felt quite accomplished when I was done. It took me a lot longer to do the first two than the second two, I'm sure because I had no idea what I was doing at first! Here are all four of them, finished and ready to turn into monster vines bearing lots and lots of tomatoes (I hope!):



Once I figured out how to plant in the growbags, it was very easy and I enjoyed it. I actually found myself wishing I had more things to plant. I do still have one bag and enough coir to fill it, and I sure don't want it to go to waste. Thierry and I are still trying to decide what to plant. Right now I'm leaning toward carrots, but I'm very tempted to try Belgian endive... it's one of Thierry's favorite vegetables, and expensive to buy in the store. He's been visiting family in Belgium for the last two weeks-- we'll decide about what to plant after he gets home this Sunday!