#tomatoes2018

March 21, 2018

Happy equinox! 🌗 and happy last frost! ❄ (for me lol)

Seedling update! On day 29 my tomatoes are doing okay. I’m still not sure which plants are which variety, but I have a hunch based on the fact that I had 2 Red Zebras and 4 San Marzanos, and 4 of my plants appear to have more reddish veins in their leaves. I think those are the San Marzanos. Aside from that, their growth seems to have slowed and their leaves are developing a purplish color, so I think it is time to feed them again. My best friend, who has a new apartment and patio, has been expressing interest in growing vegetables, and I offered my extra Red Zebra to her. She accepted, so now all my tomato plants will have a home! I’m glad I don’t have to cull any of them.

The snap peas are 12 days old and growing like weeds! I will probably have to transplant them soon because they are growing quite fast and their roots have been pushing through the bottom of their egg cartons for a week! I had intended to build a trellis for them, but my mom ended up buying me a trellis as a gift so I’ll be using that instead and seeing how well the peas like it. One of the seedlings is much lighter and yellow in color than the rest, for whatever reason, but it’s not the smallest plant and it seems to be doing all right so I’ll let it be unless it becomes clear it’s inferior somehow. I had 43 seedlings before I decided to cull 3 of them, which should fill up my two 22" planters nicely. I culled plants which I thought were too close to the other one in the compartment and were also much less vigorous than their twin.

I’m also sprouting sweet peas but they’re taking a long time to germinate, and I think that is because I’ve been lazy about keeping the seeds warm and moist. I have 10 sprouts now and I hope the other 24 seeds sprout with some extra care from me. The growth of the sprouts I do have has quickened since I gave them the heat mat back.

April 30, 2018

Here are some pics of my tomato plants. The first is from 4/18, when I transplanted them from 4″ containers to 6″ containers. The others are from today, and you can see how much they’ve grown in those 12 days! Remember the tomato house I built a while ago? They’ve already outgrown that space! And they smell SO good.

I was waiting to move them outside until the weather got sunnier and warmer, but when that happened last week and I tried putting them outside for a while, it turned out to bee too much for them! They immediately started to wilt, despite being perfectly well-watered. I know you’re supposed to gradually harden off tomatoes, but I guess I don’t know how!

I tried again yesterday, when I again moved them outside into the rain and cool. They’ve been outside for a day and a half and are showing no signs of poor health.

On Wednesday we’re expecting warm, sunny weather, so I will supervise them closely and hope they are better able to stand up to the sun this time.

I really wish I knew which variety each of these are, but I still have no clue. I recently made a mistake on that front: I decided to remove flower buds from the plants so they would focus their energy on foliage and roots, but I realized that if I had let them develop, the shape of the fruit would have told me which variety each plant is. Whoops! I am already learning a lot this year about growing tomatoes that I missed out on last year.

April 18, 2018

Today I transplanted my tomatoes again! I have reluctantly accepted that I started my plants a little too early, since they’re about the right size to go in the ground now but the weather is still not right for them. So instead I moved them into 6″ pots, where they will live until the sun starts cooperating.

Marxh 12, 2018

Holy cow, my tomato seedlings have exploded since I moved them to their new homes!! It’s only been 4 days since I transplanted them from their native egg carton into these 4″ pots and they already look twice as big! When I was transplanting them I was afraid they weren’t ready yet because they weren’t showing a lot of roots, but how wrong I was!

Sadly, as I was transplanting them, I neglected to keep track of which plants are which. There are 4 San Marzano and 2 Red Zebra plants here, but the only one I’m sure of is the smallest one (SM). This could be a problem because I need to give 2 of my San Marzanos to my mom. Also, I only have space for three plants: 2 SM and 1 RZ, so I have to choose an RZ to cull at some point.

I can’t tell them apart now, but I’m hoping that within a couple of months I’ll be able to infer the variety of each plant by the way it grows. The San Marzanos are determinate while the Red Zebras are indeterminate and they should start to exhibit differences in their growth patterns at some point.