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!