Super sweet Flavor Bombs cherry tomatoes after seven days.
Tony
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Does anybody have experience with Paul Robeson? I seeded 7 types of tomatoes on March 23, all but Paul Robeson are up. Do they take longer to come up than others? Or I got bad seeds…
Not for us, same time as the rest. Yet it has not even been a week since you seeded them. Sometimes tomato seeds take longer than a week, for us it takes about 5 days for the first seeds to show up,
you are only at day 6. How new are the seeds?
I bought them after New year to make sure they a not marked “plant in 2018”, but I do not trust now days almost anybody. Even reputable seller now is not a guarantee.
tomato seeds can last many many years so something sold that says plant in 2018 is no big deal. i have planted seeds that are at least 15 years old and they sprouted for me this year. i guess it would depend a lot how they are stored.
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Properly dried and stored tomato seed should germinate very well up to 5 years, acceptably well up to 10 years, some should germinate up to 15 years, then from 15 years on is usually very low and/or very slow.
The key is to store them dry and cool. I dry seed to about 5% moisture, then pack them in a jar with dessicant and place the sealed jar in the freezer. With this method, I have produced healthy seedlings from 20 year old seed.
Galinas, Seed sellers in the U.S. are required to test germination each year prior to sale. There can be a lot of variation with tomatoes, but generally they should emerge within 10 days. I would not worry about seed from 2018.
I do not worry about seeds from 2018). What I worry about is the fact that at the end of the year they can sell seeds that will never germinate because of any reason, like bad storage, and when customer complains tell that they are for 2018 and already expired)))
If you buy from a place that most years can only sell in limited small quantities of most varieties, especially if the place exists to merely preserve rare varieties, those places are way less likely to sell old seeds, try buying from places like https://www.victoryseeds.com/ , they have high standards.
@39thparallel was kind enough to start a few tomatoes for me. Im growing my own but starting them much later and starting another crop again a little later. By staggering the start dates its not as much work to put them out at once and tomatoes will come in consistently throughout the year.
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I wish my season was long enough to stagger plantings of tomatoes. I just started cabbage, peppers and tomato seed today. I held off because we still have so much snow on the ground. @clarkinks do you grow your tomatoes under cover?
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I have had two years when keeping my reject plants under my porch and reluctantly watering them and ignoring them let me have back up plants after hails in may/june and a small tomato/pepper harvest before frost. So im a huge fan of back ups and staggered plantings here although covering would probably work too just need to make something that can stay for the hail months and still handle the wind.
Andy have you tried the wall of waters for your tomatoes? we make it through snows easy with them.
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If i plant them on April 15th i put them under a milk carton for a couple of weeks. On May 1st the frost alerts have passed.
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I haven’t, but I’ll have over 100 tomato plants this year. We still have 2 feet of snow in some spots right now and it’s just not melting off as quick as I would hope. We’re finally getting some better temps, and rain is forecast, so it should change significantly soon.
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Wow, I hate when it rains on the snow here always too much water when we don’t need it. For that many unless its a permanent and money making thing clarks idea is best and maybe a school or somewhere would have a bunch of extra milk cartons you could grab. I used to be able to buy them from the dairy i worked at for $1 per case (i think 9) and they made excellent dog toys and were at least food grade plastic.
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My seedlings will remain in the unheated 2nd story of the garage in a 4’x8’ foam box with lights and heater until night temperatures are mild enough for them to survive in a cheapo greenhouse outside. That allows me to zip off the top of the greenhouse during the day to harden them off, and then once nighttime frost has passed they’ll get planted out in the big garden. The tomatoes handle this well, but last year the peppers were subjected to a couple weeks of temps in the 40’s and it stunted them enough that they didn’t flower or fruit.
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I cant tell you how many 1 foot tall sweet peppers i have grown that just look super ridiculous producing 3 peppers much larger than them. It was almost always from starting them too early or getting them too large for there container. I have terrible luck with sweet peppers.
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Here is an update to what we are growing this year.
Slicing tomatoes:
Black:
Black from Tula
Cherokee Purple
Paul Robeson
Pinkish:
German Johnson
Guernsey Island
Cherry Tomatoes:
Helsing Junction Blues
Black Cherry
As well as some roma tomatoes
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Has anyone tried Ruby Monster featured in the Gurney’s catalog?
Also, can anyone recommend a cherry tomato with a very thin skin?
As I mentioned in another thread, I started my tomatoes yesterday. I started them this late as we have had late freeze issues the last few years, combined with really wet soil. While waiting for it to dry up and get warmer, the plants get really big and unwieldy even with them being transplanted into cups.
If the weather continues to stay relatively warm, I may just direct sow these instead of transplanting them into cups. I may do it anyway as that step is just a bit too much extra work.
Anyway, here’s a list of what we’re trying this year, a few of them my wife started a couple weeks ago to maybe put out early for containers. Total plants would be 38, if all these sprout. Those with a " * " are new varieties for us:
Romeo
Boxcar Willie
Chocolate Cherry
Jaune Flamme
Dr Wyche’s Yelllow
Gordost Sibiri
Hillbilly *
Omar’s Lebanese *
German Strawberry *
Better Boy *
Girl Girl’s Weird Thing
Watermelon
Pink Brandywine
Azoychka *
Sister Miriam *
Black Brandywine
Aunt Ruby’s German Green
Warren’s Yellow Cherry
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Anyone who grows reisentraube, are the plants compact? Got mine from ohio heirloom seeds and the seedlings are like 4-5 inches and really bushy, most everyone else is at least twice that size or more, lanky, and sprawling…everyone is growing but the rest look like moderate light greenhouse starts, reisentraube is way smaller but picture-perfect planl seedlings…