The Before and After Tomato seedling project

Remember my Egg Shell experiment? You know the one that I combined possible salmonella, dirt, and seeds- Seriously, clean empty egg shells, dirt, and tomato seeds. All was going well for awhile until it rained too much and we couldn't transplant those seedlings into the garden on the week we had planned.

These guys were doing great at first. One day they looked a little pale. I knew that the little nourishment in the soil was about used up so I had this great idea to put a little "half way" composted chicken manure on the plants. After all, chicken manure is powerful stuff (or at least I had been told so). You know what, the chicken manure killed my poor little plants almost by the next day. (The upset mama bird didn't help matters either.)

To make a long story short, this is what happened to my heirloom tomato plants:

Dead, gone, bit the dust, kicked the bucket, destined for the compost pile.

Lesson learned. Chicken manure if too strong for tomatoes. Next year, I'm going to have this magnificent compost pile ready to go. That compost is going to feed my seedlings instead of chicken manure. But that, of course, is another story.....