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Hi everyone, and Happy New Year!

Here's a question that I don't believe has ever been posted here. I got some tomato plants from Scenic Express. They are vines on stakes. I want them to look like they are planted in garden soil. Can someone recommend the best/easiest way to make garden soil so I can stick the stakes in the soil? My wife and I work together on the layout, and the tomato plants (and the lilac hedges) are her thing. But then, in the summer, I can whip together a mean tomato sauce from our homegrown tomatoes myself.

Thanks.
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I guess this sounds like a stupid question but why not just use real dirt????????

Nothing else looks like dirt but uh...dirt.I've got a carpet central now but when I was in N scale my layout was sceniced the whole nine yards.

Corse I did this to the whole layout but you could just do the small area of your garden

I first painted the area with a brown latex . Then I bought a cheap flour sifter and put dried dirt in it and sifted that into a bowl.I poured out the rocks that were left behind out of the sifter and poured the sifted dirt back into the sifter.

I painted on a coat of elmers over the laytex and sifted the dirt on top of it.
The sifter will spread it out nice and even, another watered down coat of elmers on top and you've got a nice garden with dirt that looks real.. cause it is real.

Once the dirt is in place and before the top coat you can use the corner of a piece of square rod to make your windrows in the dirt . simply press the corner pointing down into the dirt , you'll have nice well defined rows.

I did the above to my whole layout and it really makes it look real . The dirt was followed by various grasses and ground foams put on splotchy not even and in some areas letting the dirt show thru which is the way the real world is.
In places where I removed it for roads you had grass on top and dirt underneath on the sides of the road just like it should be.

David
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OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Suite 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
www.ogaugerr.com

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