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.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Day 2 - Tracking Tomato Plant Growth Every Day

After Day 2 of tomato tracking, both Super Sweet 100s have shown growth, but the Early Girl and Husky Red have not grown much at all.

Super Sweet 100 (#2) is approximately 8 inches tall.  It's grown 1 inch since yesterday.

Husky Red cherry tomato plant is still about 6 inches tall.  Not much growth since yesterday.

Early Girl tomato plant is about 6 inches tall.  No discernible growth since yesterday's measurement.

Super Sweet 100 (#1) is 10 inches tall today.  It has grown about 1 inch since yesterday.


I've been thinking about taking Sweet 100 (#1) outside and bringing in Sweet 100 (#2) inside to get some Aerogarden lighting.

Not much to say about these little guys yet.  Come back tomorrow to see if Early Girl and Husky Red grow at all!

Day 1 - Measuring Cherry Tomato Plants

After a long and grueling day of working all over the Inland Empire, I finally made it home in time to take some pictures of my tiny tomato plants before the sun went down.

Let's start with Super Sweet 100 #2!

This is my Super Sweet 100 (#2) cherry tomato plant.  The plant vine is probably about 7 inches long, but it doesn't stand straight up, it sort of leans along the ground.  This probably means that staking will be necessary at some point in time.
I've been playing around with the iPhone app, Camera +.  There are several neat ways to edit photos in this application.  The lighting wasn't that great by sunset, so I brightened it up a little bit by using the "Night" feature.  I think there were 18 different border options, so I tried to do have a unique frame with each photo.  And there's even a caption option, which I used to show this website's address.  Fun!

Above we have Super Sweet 100 (#1) cherry tomato plant.  This little guy has a bit more stem strength than Sweet 100 (#2).  He is an indoor plant so far and is happily bathing in the light from the Aerogarden.  He appears to be about 9 inches tall.  I couldn't fit my yardstick under the lightbulb contraption, so I found one of those IKEA paper rulers which did the job very well.

Now I'd like to introduce my Husky Red cherry tomato plant.  This little one is short and stocky at only 6 inches tall, but he's beautiful in his own way.  The foliage is robust and dark green.  He just looks very healthy to me.  I hope he rewards my praises with some delicious cherry tomatoes.

And finally, let me introduce my problem child, the Early Girl tomato plant.  I have a feeling the two of us will have a rocky gardener-plant relationship.  First of all, it only took about 24 hours from potting, for the leaves to start turning a crispy yellow.  My only conclusion is that we must have damaged some roots during the potting process.  I think Home Depot has a return policy for plants - although I'm not 100% sure if it's 30 days or 60 days.  Either way, I know I should probably return it and get a better one, but I feel like I can fix her.  Maybe.  We'll see if she manages to grow taller than 6 inches.

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope one day I'll be able to share photos of some actual tomatoes!

Day 0 - Getting Things Started!

My love of veggies and fruit has always been pretty evident to everyone who knows me.  Yet I have never had that much of a green thumb, so it never occurred to me that I could actually grow food in a home garden, much less, harvest and eat anything!

However, any doubts and hesitations about starting my own tomato garden vanished instantly when my coworker brought in some of his "Super Sweet 100" cherry tomatoes harvest.  There on the office counter was a good-sized pile of deliciously ripe and ridiculously tiny cherry tomatoes.  True to their name, the Sweet 100 cherry tomato is sweet and full of flavor.  They were the perfect snack size without being messy.  You know what I'm talking about right?  Some tomatoes are so juicy that they just drip all over your shirt.  Or you'll bite into a cherry tomato and a stream of juice and seeds shoot out across the room.  It's happened to me so many times, I don't think I can recall a time where I haven't had a tomato related accident.

And thus the "seed" was planted.  I had to have those Sweet 100 plants.  Bound and determined to get some more of those delicious home grown tomatoes, I went to Home Depot on Saturday and bought two "Super Sweet 100" cherry tomato plants, one "Early Girl" tomato plant, and one "Husky Red" cherry tomato plant.  I also bought a "Sweet Basil" and an "Orange Bell Pepper" plant, but the tomatoes are the ones that I'm really focused on.

After doing some research online and lurking in tomato growers forums, I've discovered several interesting facts.  The Sweet 100s have grape-like bundles of "toms" (I'm assuming this is the growers' abbreviation for tomatoes, forgive this newbie if I'm using the term incorrectly).  These bundles of "toms" have 100 or more clusters of delicious cherry tomatoes!  In addition, these "Super Sweet 100" cherry tomatoes can grow from 8 inches to approximately 6 feet tall in 30 days!  Some other tomato growers have mentioned that their Sweet 100s got to be about 20' tall by the end of the year!  I have to admit that I was probably close to salivating at that point.  After doing some mental math, it became clear that this particular tomato plant grows 1-2 inches a day!  Obviously, the need to photo-document this ridiculous growth started to well up within me!

Let's start with some baby shots!

Here they are at the local Home Depot.  I forgot how much they cost, maybe around $3-4?  I know they sell the seeds online for $1.59.  I'm not confident in my skills yet to grow plants from seed, so I spent some more bucks for the plants themselves.

This is Super Sweet 100 plant #1.  It's under the Aerogarden light.  The other Super Sweet 100 plant #2 is outside right now in a pot.  I haven't taken a picture of it yet.  But I will start pictures of all the little tomato plants tomorrow including the Early Girl and the Husky Red.

Thanks for visiting my Inland Empire Tomato A Day blog.  I'm hoping to share a little part of my garden with everyone.  If you have any experience or advice with any of the above-mentioned tomato plants, feel free to comment!  I'm too much of a tomato newbie to answer any questions at this point, unfortunately!

Remember to come back to http://ietomato.blogspot.com tomorrow for daily updates!

Have a delicious home-grown day!