Tomato Update

As I posted earlier the tomato seeds were planted on the 21st of February. Within three days they started sprouting, but Rich didn't want pictures taken until they were all up, so the last update I included pictures from the 28th of February.

Once the plants are all sprouted, the growing process needs to slow down, otherwise we'll have tall spindle plants. To accomplish this, the warm environment goes away, He keeps the temp in the growing room about 65 degrees, and the lights run 15 hours a day.

So, at the end of week two, there wasn't a whole lot of difference in the plants, except for the leaf development.

Once the plants are sprouted and hardy they need to be transplanted into growing pots.

He started on that yesterday. His original intention was to save the best 200 plants, but he ended up wanting to keep 227, and ran out of pots and mix to do them all, so he'll probably finish those up today.



We run this little operation on a shoestring, so what other people see as furniture, we see as growing opportunities.

The plants, once they are transplanted into growing containers are moved into the second spare bedroom. In this room, that is also the racing room where all our NASCAR stuff is, we have a futon with an overhead bunk bed that I traded my sister for a regular full size bed frame for Robert.

We have laid the futon down, removed the cushion, and stood half of an old ping-pong table over it.

The four foot shop lights are then attached to the underside of the overhead bunk bed.



Back in the Pink bedroom, the tiny plants are being moved into solo cups. Rich uses an old soldering iron that we got in a box of junk at an auction, and pokes holes in the bottom of the cuts for drainage.



The cups are then filled with potting mix, and he burrows a whole down the middle. He will pull the seedling plant out of the grow tray, soil included and set it into the cup. After adding a little more soil, and some water, they will go into the racing room.



This year he is color coding to a certain degree. The blue cups shown here are all Goliath tomatoes. Goliath is his favorite variety. They grow extra large fruits, are disease resistant. These tomatoes are just to put it plainly, pretty. The have consistent shape and color, and develop very few blemishes.



Once transplanted, the plants will grow very quickly. Again they will get several hours a day of artificial light, but the temperatures in the room will be maintained at about 65 degrees.

The plants showing in the pictures above are 100 total, Goliath tomato plants.

The other one hundred plus will be a variety of Heirloom tomatoes. I can't remember all the names as I believe there are six varieties he's using. One is Brandywine, very well known, another is Mortgage Buster, and of course we have the plants from the seeds our friend gave us, that we have no clue what variety they are.

Heirloom tomatoes are harder to grow, they are not disease resistant, so require more care in the garden, and they are not a pretty fruit. While they can produce nice large tomatoes that weigh a pound or more each, they are often mishapen, and will have blemishes.

However, they are what the public wants. We had a gal come to the stand last year, and she wanted UGLY tomatoes. She was talking about the old heirloom varieties that she remembered in her youth that were, well, honestly UGLY.

So, you have to sometimes alter your own taste to meet that of the public. As the summer progresses, I'll show you the differences in the fruits, as it is quite noticeable.