Early Tomatoes Progressing with Transplanting

Several people have been asking me about the status of my extra-early tomatoes. I also have received questions about how big they get inside before I move them out. I have been a bit less organized this year so not all of the early tomatoes were planted at the same time. Currently I have some in all three of the first stages. First, I think it would be helpful to explain the process that I take all of my early tomato plants through with this picture montage:

I start the seeds in plastic cell packs by sowing two or three seeds in each cell and then cut out all but the best looking plant. As soon as the plants get their first set of true leaves (not counting the seed leaves) I transplant them to 4 inch peat pots or sometimes newspaper pots. When they get about six inches tall I transplant them to CD spindle covers and then again later to patio planters. Each time I re-pot them I bury the stem all the way up to the leaves to encourage new roots (visible in above pictures 5 and 6).

Why do I transplant so many times and so often? This is the key factor in keeping the plants growing at a fast pace. The plants will stop growing if they run out of root room. If a plant stops growing, it doesn't necessarily hurt the plant, but my goal is to get them to ripen as early as possible. Here is a picture that illustrates this in an amazing way:

What's so amazing? The plants on the left are the exact same age as the one on the right. The only difference is that the one on the right was potted-up about two weeks earlier. The ones on the left stayed in their original cell pack. When the roots ran out of room, their growth was retarded. That is why you must transplant often to keep the plants growing.

I have tried simply starting the seeds in larger containers as well. This works better than allowing the tomato plants to become stunted, but you lose the benefit of planting deeper with each transplant. The plants just get taller and spindly and fall over. The root system is not as strong either because when you bury the stem during transplanting, new roots from from that previous stem. Extra bonus!

This year I am skipping the peat pot stage and transplanting from the cell packs to a 4 inch nursery pot. Here is a recent flat of them:

 Those are my 4th of July, Orange Blossom, and Early Girl seedlings. I have found a method for quick and easy transplanting too. I fill the new pot with new soil mix, leaving the center open. I then can simply remove the plant and root plug from the cell pack and drop it in - filling in the dirt around it and around the stem until the new container is full. This smaller montage shows what I mean:

 

I'm not sure if I'm on target to get ripe tomatoes before June 1st or not. Last year I managed to get my first ripe tomato on June 5th. I hope to beat that this year, but I'm not very confident of that. We'll see. My favorite old gardening book that I often speak about is  The New Victory Garden by Bob Thompson.

In that book, Thompson outlines this process of growing early tomatoes and he gets ripe tomatoes in New England by June 1st! Maybe I need to study the book again to make sure I have the plan right from here on out.

It is very cold here this week, but I can easily imagine a warm May 31st were I visit the garden early in the morning to find this:

That was last year's first tomato. Can't you just taste it? I can hardly wait!

Surpassing our 100th tomato harvested!

My daughters were excited to take a picture of this Orange Blossom tomato because it was the 100th tomato picked this season!

After picking the rest of the 4th of July, Early Girl and New Girl tomatoes the count elevated to 136!

We know for sure that the count is 136 because our kitten Maggie counted them again for us!

Loads of Birthday Tomatoes!

Last year my goal was to have the first ripe tomato by my birthday, June 24th and I had this small tomato to celebrate with:

My actual first ripe tomato last year was June 15th and the birthday one was only the fourth or fifth tomato.

This year's early tomato production has been even better! My first ripe tomato was on June 5th, and today on my birthday we have these:

A whole windowsill full of garden fresh tomatoes!My daughters and I have decided to count how many tomatoes we pick over the entire season. So far we are at 40! The most recent ones are Orange Blossom Tomatoes. They are larger than the early girl variety and much larger than the 4th of July tomatoes.

They are delicious, a great birthday tomato! They are very meaty and flavorful. This year's garden birthday present will be orange blossom BLTs - colorful, delicious and salmonella free!

First Ripe Tomato on June 5th!

The name of the tomato variety is July 4th, but here it can be called June 5th!

Only one is fully red but I guess it still counts as having a ripe tomato on June 5th.

My goal was to have a ripe tomato by June 1st but I didn't quite make it. Last year's first tomato was on June 15th so I beat that mark by 10 days. By June 15th I think we'll have lots of tomatoes ready this year. Last year's first was an Early Girl tomato. This year the Early Girls, New Girl tomatoes, and Orange Blossom tomatoes are all doing well and should be ripe in a week or two.

The first variety of course is the 4th of July tomato. In a week we should have many of them but for today we just have this one little guy.

Not big enough for a tomato sandwich but I bet it will still be delicious! After all it is home grown and organic! Yum!

Ripe Tomatoes by June 1st?

One of my goals in the garden this year was to have red ripe tomatoes by June 1st! I planted the seeds on Valentine's Day, potted them up inside multiple times, warmed the outside tomato bed with black plastic, and planted the tomato plants outside in Early April under a clear plastic tent.

June 1st has now come and gone, so its time for an update. Here are some pictures taken on May 31st:

They are not red yet, despite all of my hard work. It was an unseasonably cold May here. Even giving the plants a huge head start did not overcome the weather. I almost lost the plant on the end when we had consecutive nights of 26 degree lows. Notice how much smaller it is then the others.

Even the main season tomatoes that I planted two weeks ago have not grown a bit. I may still be able to beat last year's early tomato mark of June 15th. One thing is for sure - when I do get early ripe tomatoes, there will be a lot of them! Last year I only had two extra early plants. This year I have 12 plants of 5 different varieties. You can track both year's early tomato progress with this Label.

So am I disappointed that I didn't eat organic garden fresh ripe tomatoes yesterday? Not really. The fun is more in the journey than in the destination. There are two reasons that I am not disappointed. The first is that I still will have loads of ripe tomatoes a full month before my friends and neighbors.

The 2nd reason it didn't bother me that I couldn't enjoy red ripe tomatoes from the garden this weekend is because my family enjoyed red ripe strawberries from the garden instead!

The strawberry defense plan worked! nothing got in to eat the berries except the slugs, and now I have a great way to get rid of them too! Stay tuned for a future post about my new SlugsAway which is a little battery-operated electric fence. Weird but cool!

As for now however, I'm going to enjoy the strawberry harvest and hope that the tomatoes are ripe before June 15th.

Happy June everyone!

My daughters are gardeners too!

I still have much to write about our visit to Baker Creek, but for the last two evenings my time was occupied with spring planting. The best part about it was that my daughters helped.

Tonight my 14 year old helped plant the third and final wave of the early tomatoes. We planted "Siletz" and "World's Earliest". It was a big help having someone help me remove the plants from the recycled CD spindle containers that they were planted in.

We put crushed egg shells in the planting holes to give the tomatoes added calcium.

My 11 year old daughter is great with a rake. Last night she worked up the soil in several of the existing raised beds.

I have different sized beds but I think my daughters like the 4'x4' beds the best. Just like Mel Bartholomew of Square Foot Gardening says, it is easy to reach any part of the bed from all sides. Here my daughters are planting green beans in one 4 foot by 4 foot bed:

Another great thing about raised beds is that you can sit or kneel in the grass and reach in to work the bed. Below my daughter is planting red onions next to the first early tomato batch. Onions are great companion plants for tomatoes.

Gardening with my daughters is great fun. I love when they want to help, but I never make them. When I was a kid, hoeing the garden was part of my chores and I hated it. It took me many years after that to actually like gardening. That is probably also why I don't like hoes (sorry Carol).

I want my daughters to enjoy gardening, and I think they do. They have grown up playing in the garden and helping as much or as little as they want. Now that they are getting older, when they do help, it helps a lot! Why this is great is not because more work gets done. This is great because it gives us some wonderful quality time to talk and be together in nature. I'll gladly take as much of that as possible, even if nothing we planted together grows at all.

Gardening with your children is a priceless gift indeed.

Green Thumb Sunday Tomatoes and Going to Bakersville!

The early tomatoes that were planted outside this week are doing great! Here is my first baby picture:

See it? Its right in the center of the picture, small but oh so cute. Grow quickly little fella!

Around here folks always say that if you don't like the weather just wait a day or two because it changes drastically. It works the same way in reverse too. Thursday and Friday were perfect Spring tomato weather days with highs in the 80's and lows in the 60's. Last night however it got down to 36 degrees and tonight is supposed to be even lower! Yesterday I had to spring into action and construct the temporary lean-to greenhouse. Last night, this it what my early tomatoes looked like:

Here is what they looked like inside:

It was enough to get them through last night. Hopefully tonight and the rest of the cold front will be okay too. If I would have left them out in the open, I probably wouldn't have them today for Green Thumb Sunday!

Don't forget to visit other Green Thumb Sunday participants!

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Next Sunday I will get to be with the man who possibly has the greatest green thumb of all - Jere Gettle of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

What an amazing business he and his wife Emilee have established by collecting and growing 1200 unique heirloom seed varieties. The reason I may get to meet him next Sunday is because I'm headed to Bakersville! Next Sunday and Monday, May 4th and 5th is Baker Creek's Annual Spring Planting and Heritage Festival.

Yes, Baker Creek is in Missouri and I live in Kentucky. They are 9 hours away but I can't think of a better gardening pilgrimage. Last year they had over 5000 people attend and many vendors. It will be neat to see their set up, the town they have built and the period costumes and demonstrations. The speakers at the festival should be spectacular as well. If you live anywhere near Mansfield Missouri or are willing to drive long distances like me, you should really check out this event. I would love to hear from anyone who has attended in the past and find out if anyone I know is going this year. It would be fun to meet up with a fellow garden blogger or someone who reads this blog.

I am pretty excited about going. My family and I are making a whole vacation out of it. See you in Bakersville!

Big Grow Light Stand Annex

Much has been going on in the garden lately. I have planted broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, chard, peas, potatoes and my first installment of extra-early tomatoes outside. Inside has been even busier. I now have peppers, cucumbers, zucchini and over 100 tomato seedlings under the lights. The problem is that I still have 10 giant extra-early tomato plants also under the lights. Things were getting pretty crowded!

I couldn't fit everything in and I couldn't get the lower lights to go any higher. The plants were growing into and over the lights.

The only way to fix this without abandoning my extra-early tomato plan was to build a light stand annex. I rounded up another old table, some more hooks chains and shop lights and presto - a lovely annex on the other side of the room!

They are already growing up to touch the lights, but I can keep moving the lights up higher now.

Moving these plants around has reminded me that I never shared with you my creative container choices. Anything goes when I get into the larger pot size.

I won't be able to use these double pots again since I had to cut out the bottom. I have already planted some of these out in the garden and I had to completely cut away the pot to get the plant out. The sand pail is a better idea. Just remember, if you use something that wasn't originally intended to be a planter, you need to drill holes in the bottom for drainage. This sand bucket won't hold water anymore!

I have already transplanted five tomato plants in the prepared outside bed. Soon I will have pictures of them. They were Early Girl, New Girl, Orange Blossom, and two 4th of July plants. I did manage to put black plastic down over the bed to heat up the soil but I have not yet built my makeshift lean-to greenhouse to go over them. I haven't had to yet because it has been unseasonably warm this week in the mid 80's! Next week's weather will not be so tomato friendly though. It is supposed to only get to about 50 degrees with overnight lows in the 30s - yikes! That is why it is crazy to plant tomatoes outside here in April. I hope I can get my plastic up soon and it works!

In the meantime I will be potting up the inside tomatoes to even bigger containers. They are looking very happy in their cozy warm indoor environment.

Too bad I can't grow them to fruit stage inside. Sooner or later they have to brave the elements outside. I am still dreaming of ripe tomatoes here in northern zone 5 by June 1st! Wish me luck!

How to grow healthy seedlings under lights

There were several questions asked on my last early tomato post so I thought I should expound on what has worked well for me. I have grown most of my vegetables and annuals from seed under lights for years. I have made many mistakes along the way and have developed a system that works well for me. There are a few simple tips that I have learned that might be helpful to you.

The five most often overlooked tips for growing successful seedlings:

1. Use a lot of light!

If you think your seedlings aren't getting enough light, you're right. And if you think they have enough light, they could still use more. With florescent light fixtures I am trying to mimic the bright and powerful sun, so the more the merrier. I like to have two fixtures per flat (four 40 watt bulbs). I don't use special light spectrum grow bulbs. They are an unnecessary expense. Although it is important to use new bulbs each year because the light bulbs lose some of their brightness as they age. I keep the lights on between 16 and 18 hours per day.

2. Keep the plants close to the lights!

I make sure the light fixtures are only an inch or so above the top of the plants. Remember, we are trying to give them the power of the sun, not the moon. Don't think in terms of how much light we need. I would rather err on the side of the plants touching the bulbs than too far away from them. Being too far from the bulbs causes tall spindly plants.

3. Use good growing medium!

I use the soil-less seed starting mix in the beginning and transplant up to a mixture of potting soil and peat moss. Do not use straight potting soil because it doesn't hold water well enough. You need the peat to keep the roots constantly watered.

4. Give them plenty to drink with bottom watering!

All of my containers have holes in the bottoms to allow water in (or out). Peat pots work the best for this. I put the cell packs, newspaper pots or peat pots in a plant tray that will hold water. Then I fill the tray up about half way and the porous soil medium wicks up the water to feed the roots. I water almost every day. I am convinced that this is where the most mistakes are made with growing seedlings. Constant light can dry out the soil quickly which stresses the plants. If you try to spray your plants from above, they probably don't get enough water. This is why I am struggling with using soil blocks. Since they aren't in a pot you can't bottom water them. I haven't used them for my early tomatoes. I will try again with the main season tomatoes.

Incidentally, making sure my plants are watered frequently enough is why I don't use automatic timers to turn the lights on and off. If I have to do it manually I am more able to monitor the soil moisture.

5. Get your timing right!

Make sure you know when you plan to move the plants outdoors and the growth habit of each kind of plant you are raising. Research the recommended seed-to-transplant time for each vegetable or flower. For instance, tomatoes should only be under lights for 4 to 6 weeks before transplanting and you shouldn't transplant them until all danger of frost has passed. In my area, the average last frost is May 15th. That means that I should wait to plant the seeds of my 27 main season tomato varieties until mid-April. If timed correctly, you do not need to pot-up very often. Of course for my extra-early tomatoes I transplant them two or three times and have them under lights for 8 to 10 weeks but that is unusual. For most of my flower and vegetable seeds, I try to wait as long as possible. Real-estate under grow-lights is at a premium, even for a big bench like mine. Be careful not to take up unnecessary space by planting too early.

Now, If you have never tried starting your own seeds indoors with florescent lights, I hope posts like these don't make it look too complicated. I love managing the plants under lights. For me it is great fun. It is especially rewarding because I know that I can truly raise organic vegetables. I get to control the plants' environment from start to finish. It is also fun to grow seedlings because you get a chance to get your hands dirty when it is still too cold to dig in the outdoor garden. I would recommend any gardener give seed-starting a try.

2008 Extra Early Tomato Update

I often feel like I write too much about my tomato endeavors here, but I have been asked in a comment and in emails about the status of my extra-early tomato plants. If you agree that I write too many tomato posts, I apologize. Its just that there is a bit of satisfaction in trying to beat mother nature and coax something along to an early harvest. For me (and for those asking me to write this), that obsession lies with tomatoes! It is fun to get to eat a nice juicy organic garden fresh tomato a full month earlier than your neighbors. Its even more fun to have enough early tomatoes to share with you neighbors.

So that is what I am shooting for this year. Last year I only grew two early tomato plants. This year I will have a lot more - at least 12. As of now, I have about 30 plants growing under lights. Last year, I raised only Early Girl tomatoes as my early variety. This year I am trying six different varieties. Last year my goal was to have ripe tomatoes by June 24th (my birthday), and got the first ripe tomato on June 15th! This year I am hoping for May 31st!

So how am I doing? Is that goal possible? I'm really not sure. I do feel like I'm further behind than I should be. I started the first seeds on Valentine's Day and I stuck to my holiday theme by transplanting tomato seedlings yesterday on Easter.

The problem is that I wasn't able to start all the early varieties at the same time. I only started Early Girl and New Girl on February 14th. They were transplanted to peat pots on February 28th. I started Orange Blossom and 4th of July on February 17th, but didn't get them transplanted to peat pots until March 10th! The last of my early varieties are Sub Arctic and Siletz. Those seeds didn't come in until late, so they were seeded on February 28th and transplanted to peat pots yesterday, March 23rd. Here is an example of the size difference between the plants transplanted on February 28th and the ones transplanted yesterday.

Big difference. Originally I wanted to grow several different varieties to find out which one is the best early tomato. As you can see, scientifically I have failed all of the varieties except Early Girl and New Girl. They are the only ones that might still be on pace. For them, yesterday was time to transplant again. For this third step they get put into CD spindle covers that are about 7 inches deep. They need to have holes drilled in them first for drainage.

These are great containers for this purpose because they are big enough in diameter and taller than a conventional 4 inch pot. This is great for tomatoes because each time you transplant a tomato plant, you want to plant it deeper than what it was in the pot it came from. You can bury the entire stem up to the first true leaves because roots grow from the buried stem which makes the plant stronger. Here is a before-after comparison of a plant in the peat pot and then in the CD pot.

So am I far enough along to be fortunate enough to harvest before June 1st? That is two full weeks earlier than last year. Judging solely by my indoor transplanting schedule, I don't think I'm two weeks ahead of last year. Where I hope to make up ground is in the outdoor preparation.

I have two raised beds from last year that I will be planting these early tomatoes in. I have put black plastic on the soil to begin warming it. I also plan to erect a frame down the middle of the beds to be able to drape 6 mil clear plastic over. The frame that I'm talking about will look just like the wood of my pea trellis. Later, I will use the wood frame to support the plants like my tomato towers from last year.

But now I'm getting ahead of myself. Hopefully the plants will be put out by the middle of April. Our average last frost date is May 15th, so even with extra protection I will have to watch the weather.

Is this all too much trouble just to reap ripe tomatoes a month or so early? Not if you are a tomato fanatic like me!

I'll let you know more as it develops.