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.