Hopefully this year I will actually have some success with experimenting with tomatoes [cue self-depreciating eye-roll]. The race is on! I’ll update this post as it continues… because I know no one cares but me… at least if I continue to mess up on my gardening journey. I learn something new each year, though!
Also if you’re looking for a good variety of heirloom seeds, the white envelopes in the picture below are from David’s Seeds on Amazon. I’ve been pretty impressed. I haven’t been successful in growing all of them every year (I kill a lot of them…) but they’ve all sprouted and I can tell the grower knows his stuff. I don’t get anything for telling you that, just want to spread a good business some love.
3/2/22 planted 54 tomato seeds! 3 each of White, Green, Valencia, Yellow, Brandywine, Rose, Prince, Moskvich, Carbon, Cherokee, Striped, Rutgers, Delicious, and Pear and 6 of Romas and Cherries because you cant go wrong with extras of those and it filled my tray. Also planted 54 peppers! which means all my plants this year are getting a heat treatment! because I learned last year that the reason my peppers didn’t grow was because my house is too cold.
3/8/22 I have sprouts! I looked yesterday and there was nothing, but today I have 3 Cherokee seedling poking their heads out! Way to take the lead, Cherokee Purple! There’s a teeny tiny little yellow and striped sprout, but they’re not actually out, yet. I bet they’ll sprout tomorrow morning.
3/9/22 Yay! Here we go! I see lots of little green things starting to happen in my seed trays! I’ve got 2 Rose, a Yellow, A Valencia, two Green and 1 White, a Striped, a Prince, and even a tiny little Pear starting to come up. Only the 2 Rose and the Yellow are really showing their leaves yet (I looked it up, those little leaves are called Cotyledons), but I bet most of them will be out before tomorrow!
I decided to make myself a little chart to keep track of my seeds. The light green are still sprouts, but the true green squares have become official seedlings (as in they’re upright). I’ll add a dark green once they have their first set of true leaves.
3/10/22 Yesterday was a frustrating one as the mom to lots of sick kiddos that turned into some kind of zombies that just weren’t hearing me or computing anything I said, so it was really nice to be able to look over to these tiny little plants and discover a new one! look at how many are coming up!
It’s funny that the striped are now in second place, as I don’t know if they’ve actually been all that successful in the past. But I think they’ve been more successful than I thought and I have not understood that their mottled coloring actually wasn’t super stripey. Hence why each year this experiment is ineffectual.
And guess what? I have a teeny tiny little Echinacea seedling! They’re supposed to take 2 weeks so I wasn’t expecting one yet. still watching on the peppers. I have had to push a few sprouting seeds back into the dirt, so I know they’re sprouting; now just to convince them to get some leaves.
3/11/22 Even more sprouts today. They make me happy. Yesterday, as I was looking at the chart I noticed that everything had at least 1 sprout except for the Rutgers. I remembered last year I struggled with them, too. I made an executive decision based on the fact that the seeds are from 2013 and that might be the reason they’re not doing too hot. I planted the 18 empty seed pots with 2 seeds each. so if I end up with 42 Rutger plants, I’m gonna have a field day! Really, I’ll just share them. But Rutgers are supposedly the go-to for canning whole tomatoes, so I have to attribute it to the older seeds being the problem. At least, I think… I mean, these seeds are almost 10 years old (yeah, 2013 was almost 10 years ago. I can’t believe it either).
Naturally, a Rutger plant starts showing up after I planted so many seeds… but I am not complaining. I figured it was better to just sow the old seeds anyway because they’ll just get older and older. Better to make too many tomato plants this year than to waste the seeds. Especially since the economy is gonna be tough and I can share with those around me.
So… all of my Rose Brandywines, seeds have sprouted, but one is funky. It’s all kinda curly and wonky. I think it will pull through, but it’s off to a rough start. And another one is missing half of its cotyledons. It just wasn’t wanting to give up the shell! I tried all the tricks; even spitting on the seed (google made me do it). I think it’s got enough left to keep growing, though.
Speaking of losing half of it’s cotyledons, my preschooler helped the poor Valencia out, too, so it’s only got half of it’s leaves; I think there is enough, as well, but ugh! And speaking of stubborn seeds, one of the whites still has a pretty tough shell, too. It’s too soon to try to help it, though. if I helped now it’d die.
still only 1 Echinacea and no peppers.
3/12/22 Not a lot of change today. Poor mom is gonna get all of the varieties she doesn’t want and none that she does! She likes the reds and dislikes the purple, green, and white. I’m hoping she will have enough of the second batch of Rutgers that she won’t need the 3 purples… my reds (or almost reds) are Rose, Brandywine (B), Rutgers (Rut), Moskvich (M), and Delicious (D) and, as you can see, those are the ones I’m struggling with the most!
The rose is already straightening out and the yellow is still in the seedling stage because it had a pretty stubborn seed coat and was staying all curled up instead of upright. I noticed a split in the coat, though, so I was able to split it a little more and get those leaves free. Risky move, but luckily it worked.
I was panicking that my peppers haven’t sprouted but then I realized that most seed packets say 10 days at the minimum and that’s today. So I guess I should just hold my horses and give them time… I’m just so nervous that they will follow my normal trend and not sprout. Plus, I figure those calculations are meaning if you leave the soil at 80-90 degrees all day and night and I’m too chicken to leave my heat lamp on that long. I really should invest in heat mats but I haven’t been able to bring myself to that yet.
3/13/22 Definitely unsure on if the rest of these tomatoes are going to sprout. I think, since they’re the ones I’m most interested in testing, I’m going to replant. I mean, seriously, 4 out of 5 of them are my reds! Granted I already replanted the Rutgers. But I need at least another Brandywine and a Delicious to make this experiment valid. Unless I just send the second plant to mom (my control) and hope I get enough fruit on the other plants to harvest seeds. It’s been 11 days, though, and everything else has sprouted, so I went ahead and replanted a Brandywine, Moskvich, Delicious, and the 3 Cherries before I lose any more time. My Cherry seeds are kinda old, too, or I would have just left them alone.
On a happier and definitely exciting note, I’ve got 3 peppers and 2 more echinacea plants sprouting! Yay, yay, yay! 1 Kaleidoscope (so, a random bell) and 2 jalapenos. I’ve had good success growing jalapenos in the past. They must not need as warm of soil. I’m really hoping for some of the lemondrops, though. I’m curious what they’re like. And for the poblanos, because I’m bound and determined to have enough to make a meal out of chiles rellenos.
3/14/22 Upon noticing that I have a few poblanos popping up, I decided it’s time to upgrade my chart to include the peppers! Yay! The thing is… that Kaleidoscope pepper isn’t looking right. First of all, it still is a sprout and not a seedling, and second of all, I looked at it closer today and it’s not even got its head in the ground, it just isn’t doing anything else, either. It’s just a stick! So, who knows but it’s probably a gonner.
I gave up and just re-planted a few seeds yesterday, and now I’ve got a Rutgers, a Pear and a Cherry popping up. At least out of those, I only have to worry about the Cherry seed needing pulled. I’m also getting some second leaves! But not enough to say they’re out of the seedling stage, yet. Naturally, it’s the Cherokees that are winning that race.
And I now have 5 Echinacea.
3/15/2022 See the dark green? Yay! I realized yesterday that counting the “true leaves” was harder than I thought because at what point do I count the leaves as existing? I made my own personal verdict, because google didn’t have any answers. I count true leaves a when the leaf is open/at an angle similar to the cotyledons. There are lots of tiny leaves coming in, but the dark green squares coincide with plants fit my criterion. Once again, the Cherokee take the cake! But actually that pear actually has bigger leaves. and the stripes are my tallest plants, even though they don’t have flat leaves yet. The pear sprout is out of its shell and upright, but the leaves are tiny and all curled in on themselves, so I didn’t want to count it as a little seedling yet. And lo and behold, now that I replanted the Brandywine and now there’s a full-blown seedling in that pot. Oh well. I wish the Delicious and the Moskvich would do the same, but there’s still no movement in those 2 cells.
Still not much progress on the peppers. I’m trying to be patient. Really really trying. The kaleidoscope pepper worked its way out, it just had super thick cotyledons. I’m kinda curious which kind of pepper it is, since the kaleidoscope pepper packet is really just a mix of bells.
And I’m up to seven echinacea! Bonus points: I finally spelled echinacea without having to go back and fix it.
3/17/22 I didn’t do much with my plants yesterday, and tracked the chart but didn’t bother to post it because not much had changed, and the tomatoes are definitely more in a relative stage, so I think skipping a day is warranted. As you can see, my Jalapenos are doing great! I really think they must not need the heat as much as other peppers do. As far as the rest, just as I start to think nothing else will come up, I’ll find another sprout, but the sprout will still take 2-3 days to really turn into a seedling.
As far as tomatoes go, I think until the re-planted seeds sprout up, it is what it is. That poor little pear, though. Somehow it came up without any cotyledons. I mean, it does have some, but they’re smaller than a pinhead! even though it is upright and could be considered a seedling, I’m not so sure it is yet. It’s definitely a failure-to-thrive seedling. And remember the wonky rose seedling? Its true leaves are coming in wonky and curled, too! So, I guess it isn’t all “there,” yet. I mean, I still think it’ll be fine, but it’s definitely slower than the other two. I’m getting ready to transplant some of the tomatoes and thinking about how that’ll go and I wish that some of the shorter plants will hurry to catch up because some of the others are getting pretty tall and I can’t decide if I wanna do the whole tray (definitely the easiest for charting) or just the ones that need moved. I don’t want to rush the process, so it’ll still be at least the weekend before I do anything.
And I’m halfway there on the Echinacea! 9 out of 18. 2 little seedlings popped up yesterday. I really want to make about a 25 foot row and they’re supposed to be about 18-24″ apart, so I am still hoping for a bit more, but I’m excited about the 9 I have. That earlybird plant that popped up way before the rest of them did has a single true leaf established, as well.
3/18/22 Most of my tomatoes are ready to transplant. not all but most. I think Monday’ll be the day. I’ll combine the yellow, Moskvich, and delicious into one tray, I think. The peppers that were sprouted are all seedlings now and I have a new Kaleidoscope sprout. Gosh, they make me antsy. And my total echinacea count is 10.
3/19/22 A few more pepper plants! But still of the same varieties. I decided that since the ones not sprouting are the oldest (except for those darn lemondrops that I’ve never had any luck with) I’d try sprouting them in a wet paper towel and see what happens. Now the trick is to keep that paper towel damp. I “planted” 2 each of habanero, cayenne, lemondrop, anaheim, california wonder, chinese giant, banana, and mini belle. The habanero, cayenne, and banana are newer seeds than before, so if they sprout and the rest don’t that explains something. I know pepper seeds do not keep as well as others. I inherited most of the older seeds, so I also don’t know how well they were kept.
As you can see, most of the tomatoes are ready to transplant into bigger cells! I was going to wait until Monday to not rush the process and damage tender plants but it might happen today. And guess what? I have a few new little rutgers! 4 of them. The only problem is that 2 are in one cell, and one is in the same cell as the last rutger to sprout (remember how I replanted and then boom, there was a new tomato? yup). couldn’t have come in the empty cell… that would have been too convenient. I wonder if the same will happen in the cherry cells.
3/20/22 I don’t think I’m going to track my tomatoes starting tomorrow. I plan on transplanting them tomorrow morning but I don’t know the reason to keep charting them. As you can see, I still have 2 rutgers growing in the same cell, and the other cell is still empty. And now I’ve got a cherry in the same cell as one already growing and there’s still a cell (with 2 seeds as well) with nothing happening in it. I have a total of 7 rutgers now from al the other seeds I planted. 7/39 is a disappointing number but I don’t think they’re done sprouting up yet. And the other replants are still not doing anything either! Come on, Delicious and Moskvich! And lets talk about that pear… I counted it as having leaves because it does now… but even those leaves are tiny. the plant is like 1″ tall. It’s tiny. Everything about it is mini.
As far as peppers go, a couple more kaleidoscope sprouts are growing but not much change elsewhere. I have room for 30 pepper plants so I’m gonna have a bare spread! I hope some of the kaleidoscope peppers end up being the cooler varieties so I can try them. Anxious to see how my paper towel starts do.
No new echinacea plants either. I think 10 might be all she wrote. that’s just over 50% so I was hoping for a little better, but I can live with 10 plants.
3/22/22 I spent yesterday ainstead of charting. I have a few changes but the chart seemed superfluous now. So here’s a list of totals: we have 3 rose, 2 Moskvich, 4 (yup, 4!) Brandywine, 3 delicious (the last guy popped up this morning), 12 Rutgers, 3 striped, 3 Valencia, 2 yellow, 3 green, 3 white, 3 Black Prince, 3 carbons, 3 Cherokee purple, 3 pears (counting my mini guy), 8 cherries (another guy came up last night. I guess I didn’t need to replant, lol), and 5 romas. I separated a 6-cell pack for mom to take 1 rose, 1 brandywine, 1 delicous, 2 rutgers, and 1 cherry. So if I don’t count the 2 each I plan for my garden, I have 25 extra plants.
I have 6 poblanos (yay! 2 new sprouts), 6 jalapenos, 2 orange, and 8 kaleidoscope peppers. I am having trouble getting my paper towel seeds to be warm. they’re too far from the heat lamp. I just forced my (11…1 new sprout this morning) echinacea plants to a colder spot (sorry guys) so that the peppers are closer.
Also, I pulled out my lavender seeds from the fridge, yesterday. They’ve been in my fridge for 3 weeks. I might be fooling myself but I think I already see sprouts this morning! Teeny tiny white spots on the seeds. I have no idea if that’s what I’m seeing but I’ve longed for a lavender hedge for years and buying the plants one at a time and crossing my fingers that they survive just wasn’t turning out to be cost effective. So here’s hoping that my 1200 seeds give me enough to get a good hedge quickly. supposedly they only have a 20% growth rate (hence the extreme seed count), but stratifying them is supposed to help with that number.
6/21/22 This is a big gap but my website crashed when the host site decided to transfer my ip address on me. So, let’s play major catchup. First, I repotted the tomatoes to Costco potting soil. And that was the worse thing I’ve done since I left my starts in starting soil too long and fried them (that was years ago). Costco soil almost killed them! So many leaves had to be pruned. I don’t know if it was a soil deficiency or a bacteria, but it was bad. So disappointed. So after replanting into better soil, I had them all the way into half-gallon pots before eventually transplanting into the garden. I was going to sell the extra rutger plants but instead I planted everything healthy into my garden and gave the other 12 plants away. Including a yellow and a brandywine because they were hit hardest by the soil. It seems to be that potato leaf plants are finicky. But I gave all 6 red varieties to my mom for a control, along with an extra carbon.
They’re still struggling in my garden. I just put some fertilizer spikes in with them, in hopes it will help. I’ve got a couple of cherry tomatoes that have been growing for a while but aren’t in a hurry to ripen, and a few tiny Cherokee tomatoes. I’ve been quite happy with the growth of the cherokees. They’ve even seemed to pull through the best. And the Romas… I think they’re okay. But they’re purple? like, the leaves are purple. I don’t know. Either they’re missing nutrients, too, or the roots got too cold? Which is totally feasible, since it got so cold at night for so long. It’s just not proving to be a good tomato year. Which is a shame because I’m pretty desperate for tomatoes. If I don’t get a good harvest this year, I will have to buy tomatoes and I will plant 2 rows (72 plants) next year. Also, I’ve already decided that I will plant peppers and flowers at the beginning of March and then not plant tomatoes until the end of March. Because it seems that I start well on tomatoes but then something happens right before it’s time to get them in the garden every year. maybe if the plants start later, there will be less problems.
7/11/22 I’ve harvested a few cherry and pear tomatoes (and they’re legitimately cherry tomatoes. last year I somehow ended up with carbon-colored grape tomatoes. they were seeds from my brother so I think there was some random combining of seeds, there). I’m thinking I will get lots more soon, because I added some tomato fertilizer stakes to my garden and my plants are looking *so much* better (no paid promotion. I’m not an Amazon affiliate)! I only put one in the ground for every other plant so they had to share, but it helped! I will never buy Costco miracle-gro soil again! It was bad news! And when I feel like I have a second to even breathe I’ll look into what planting soil I want to buy in bulk next year because I guess it pays to be picky.
I have a few Cherokee purples growing, too. Not huge, but they’re growing! And the plants are blooming instead of struggling, so hopefully everything starts to catch up.
9/1/22 Well the tomatoes are finally coming in! I harvested a handful today, mostly cherry. I usually have a ton of tomatoes by now but all the tomato growers around me have been struggling, too. And apparently the states are planning for a national tomato shortage (conspiracy theory: I think someone is planning all the shortages. I think if individual people were able to run their own lives we wouldn’t be in this situation. But a handful of people have all the power and are clenching their proverbial fists). But I think (fingers crosssed) I’ll have enough tomatoes if they all ripen. I think next year I’m going to double my tomato row and if I do, I’ll put cherry, pear, and rutgers in their own row. Right now they’re so bushy! And since rutgers are determinate I can’t pull the suckers. I’ll give them more space between plants, too. And they’d be happier in a cage than tied to a post like I’m doing with my tomato plants this year. Then maybe they’ll all be easier to manage. We’ll see what happens, though. I don’t think I can manage more plants unless I actually get my greenhouse in place.
