An Update on All Tomatoes

It's been a long time since I've posted about my tomato garden.  Mostly it's because the first round of seedlings  had all encountered dry crispy deaths once transplanted outside in the unforgiving sun.  However, my determination to have some tomatoes this year resulted in buying some larger plants from Home Depot.  These plants ALREADY had a few tomatoes on them!  Yes, I'm technically "cheating!"  But these plants have fruited more tomatoes since I bought them at the store, so at least I didn't kill the poor plants, right?

I'll post again later today with lots of pics.  :)

1st Round of Tomato Seed Plantings

Hurray!  It's finally time to plant those tomato seeds!

I got a tip from one of my coworkers today.  He said that he was planting his tomato seeds today in some disposable cups.  I didn't have time to go to a different store other than Home Depot today, so I got the biodegradable 2 1/4" cups.  They were $1.99 for a pack of 26 cups.  That's not too bad and it seems like its better for the environment anyway, so I bought them.  I also had some Jiffy peat moss expandable seed pod thingies.  I'm not sure what they're called.  I used them before and they work okay.  I just wanted to use them up.  I don't think they work any better than regular potting soil.

I planted some Super Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, Jellybean cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, Yellow Jubilee tomatoes, Early Girl tomatoes, Purple Tomatillos, and Large Red Cherry tomatoes.  I will let these grow under the indoor grow-bulb.  My coworker will be growing his under a warm south facing window.

I bought a TON of seeds.... so I will probably start the 2nd round of seed plantings next week.  I'll see how these ones do before I go on a planting spree.

Warm Days in January

The last few days this week have been extremely warm. I am almost tempted to plant a few tomato seeds just to see if they can survive. Is everyone getting excited about planting tomatoes this year or is it just me? Probably just me. I am ridiculous when I am interested in something.


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Getting Excited about Seeds!

Yesterday I stopped by Home Depot and bought some seed packets.

I've been reading up on how to grow tomatoes in the Inland Empire.  Here is a great article by Julie McMurchie.  And a more detailed tomato planting article by GardenWeb.  My problem with my tomatoes that I planted earlier this year was that I kept getting blossom drop.  It was so frustrating and sad.  But now I think I know why.  According to this article about Tomato Blossom Drop, it seems like growing the tomato plants indoors was giving them a very high nighttime temperature, definitely above 70 F.  The average temperature in the house is about 73-75 F.

I was overly optimistic and bought 4 packets of the Supersweet 100 on the left.  And just 1 packet of the Roma tomatoes.

So now I will have to monitor night time temps outdoors and see when they are reliably above 55 F and then start planting seeds.  According to yearly/monthly temperatures for my city, March - June is the best time of the year temperature-wise for tomatoes.  Not sure if that's true or not, but I'll try it out.  Or another time of the year, just based on temperatures could be September - November.  But I don't know if it's possible to have a spring planting season and fall planting season here.  I did get a bunch of seed packets, I could split them up and see which one performs better in 2012.  The last frost date in the area is April 10th.  So I could start planting then.

Other seed packets caught my eye at Home Depot.  I got seed packets for cantaloupe, rosemary, squash, peppers, onions, and carrots.

Looking forward to practicing my hand at gardening.  Since it's too cold for planting at the moment, I will use this time to plan out my calendar and figure out where I'm going to put all these guys.  I need to make a gardening seed organization area.  Maybe I'll get some plastic drawers from the store.

Tomato Fail

So I've learned that planting tomatoes at the wrong time are an epic fail.  For some reason, even with the help of the grow bulbs, the tomato plant vines would grow, but the flower buds will always shrivel up and fall off prematurely.  Obviously no tomato fruits will grow if the flower buds die before their time.

So a few questions for the tomato growers out there.  When is the best time for me to plant tomatoes in the desert-like environment of the Inland Empire?  I will try some plants from seeds and some that are already growing from Home Depot.  The winds where I live are pretty strong and cold at times.  What should I do to help protect my plants from the rougher elements?  Any advice would be much appreciated!

Day 18 - Aerogarden Tomato Growth

Welcome back!  I haven't been taking pictures lately.  The lack of photo-ops was a combination of changing where the tomato plants stay and working long and late every day.  So after the heat spell, I brought in all the tomato plants because I was afraid they would bake and die.  Now they are attempting to grow under the Aerogarden lightbulb.  Some of the plants are doing the same, some are doing better.  Let's take a look and see the progress they've made.

Here is the Super Sweet 100 Cherry Tomato Plant #1 - Day 18.  It's 20 inches tall.  It was still standing up fine by itself until yesterday.  Then it flopped over.  I was so surprised that I thought it had gone limp because I hadn't watered it.  Even though I knew that wasn't the case!  I guess this means I'll need to give it some support once it goes back outside.

Here is Super Sweet 100 Cherry Tomato Plant #2 - Day 18.  It's still only 10 inches long.  I don't think this plant has changed at all.  So I changed the arrangement of the plants and put this little guy directly under the Aerogarden lightbulb.  I think this will really stimulate growth.  The weather is not as hot as usual either.  The tomato plants could probably go back outside again.

This little tomato plant had the biggest improvement since the last photo shoot.  My Early Girl tomato plant spent some time directly under the Aerogarden and was able to grow lots of new leaves.  You can still see the old scorched dried leaves at the very base of the plant, but look at all that new green growth!  On Day 18, the Early Girl is 13 inches tall.

Here's the Husky Red Cherry Tomato Plant on Day 18.  It's 9 inches tall.  This little guy doesn't grow very fast at all, but the leaves are so green and pretty.  

Day 3 - 110 Degree Temps

Super Sweet 100 (#1) cherry tomato plant is 12 inches tall.




Super Sweet 100 (#2) cherry tomato plant is 10 inches tall.




Husky Red cherry tomato plant is 7 inches tall.




Early Girl tomato plant is still only 6 inches tall.

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