Jeph's Spot: Tantalizing Tomatoes!

Who doesn't love tomatoes!? There's been some discussion at work amongst the garden geeks new and old about who's most likely to go overboard. I FULLY ADMIT to having "way too many" varieties of tomatoes started this year, but...

...I had to order new seeds of varieties like Black Krim, where even though I had old packs, I didn't want to risk them not sprouting since storage of previous years' seeds had been questionable (ie in the too-hot car for days or weeks after trips to the garden plot).

...there are some new ones (like Lemon Drop, Chocolate Cherry and Snow White) I just couldn't resist trying.

...there were freebie packs (like Giant Tree Tomato) included with my order. These are not my fault.

...there were old, questionable (see above) packs of seed I wanted to "just give a try" to test viability - and you know I'm not going to let them go to waste!

...I was one of the on-line winners of free seeds (see varieties marked with asterisks) at Love Apple Farm / Grow Better Veggies recently. These tomato seeds were "sponsored" by Gary Ibsen's TomatoFest - I'd never heard of this site, but will definitely be checking back next year! And, hey, I can't be held responsible for these (who knew I'd win!), nor could I NOT plant them!

...I think that's all the excuses I can come up with. ;-)

Anyhow - Julie, Mary and Andy at work were discussing numbers of plants we might each be growing, etc...and I was curious. So I came home, grabbed my lists/charts from what's planted, and here it is.

Aunt Ruby's Green Giant (2008)

Beefmaster (2008)

Black Cherry (2006/2007)

Black from Tula (2006)

Black Krim (2008)

Black Prince (2008) *

Bloody Butcher (2008)

Brandywine

Chocolate Cherry (2008)

Dagma's Perfection (2008) *

Giant Tree Tomato (2008)

Green Giant

Green Grape

Green Zebra

Ildi

Isis Candy (2006?)

Juliet (2005)

Lemon Drop (2008)

Marianna's Peace

Park's Whopper (2008)

Persimmon (2008)

San Marzano

Snow White (2008)

Sugary

Sungella

Sunset's Red Horizon (2008) *

Super Steak

Sweet Gold

Tobolsk (2008) *

Wayahead (2007)

White Cherry (2008)

Yellow Pear (2008)

Oy.

That's ONLY 32 varieties...and it's possible two of them (Green Giant and Aunt Ruby's Green Giant) are actually the same...

Last week I snapped some shots of the various seedlings I'd started (there's more since then)... That's when I realized the tomatoes, and some of the other seedlings sharing the same table/grow lights, were looking a bit pale and sickly. Couldn't figure out what was going on. They're getting plenty of light. I didn't THINK they were hurting for fertilizer YET. Hm. Then early this morning I ran down to the basement before work (something I never do) to get something out of the freezer, and realized their lights were on.

The lights are on timers.

They should've been off.

Nuts! That's when I realized that I never plugged the lights into the TIMER when dad and I put the grow area together - I didn't have the right 2-prong to 3-prong connection. Damn! These poor plants haven't had a chance to sleep since they were born several weeks ago - NO WONDER they look tired!

So I shut the lights off for them this morning, and then after getting home rigged it up so their lights are on timers. Since I figure they're also probably thinking it's time for a little food, and I don't have any water-soluble fertilizer right now, I took the jug of TerraCycle Granular Fertilizer (dry fertilizer made from worm castings, sold in recycled milk jugs), poured some in the plant watering pitcher, and kept adding water, stirring, bottom watering plants, repeat. Hopefully none of them got too strong a dosage - I figure I'll know after a day or two if they did. It's not like I was real scientific about it.

Anyhow, on with the pictures...

Lobelia

Various lobelia

Looking through their grow dome as
the peppers are just starting to come up

The tomatoes need to be rotated - they're leaning a bit

Four types of onions - never grown 'em from seed. Dad says I just need to keep cutting them down to about 3 inches tall til I plant them outside - this improves bulb growth apparently.