Big seedlings, ready for the big pots

My approach this year was rather simple.  I used soil-less potting mix for plants with a little fertilizer mixed in. My choice was Jobe's Organic Tomato Fertilizer.  It seemed to have just about everything I needed.  I've read up on all of these techniques people use, with so many different types of fertilizers and additional minerals to include Azomite powder.  Is it overkill?  Maybe... Or perhaps it makes sense if growing a lot of tomato plants.  With my intention to have just 5 altogether, I couldn't see the merit of spending all that money on what might only give me a 10~20% boost in productivity.  I did learn quite a bit from last year.  NO SOIL.  Only potting mix.  And, I started with Jobe's fertilizer right off the bat.

My seedlings took off.  Lots of good weather and also good timing on bringing my plants inside before torrential rainfalls or very chilly nights helped them out quite a bit.

A Variety of Tomato Plants

Russian Oxheart

Sara's Galapagos

And just about a week later, you could see a measurable improvement:

Black Krim in mini Sub Irrigated Pot

Sara's Galapagos

I'm hopeful this will be a really good growing season.  I'm definitely looking forward to the variety of heirlooms I chose this year.

How to tell seedling varieties apart

For the most part, most heirloom tomato leaves look very much alike.  So, when starting out as seedlings it's very difficult to tell them apart. However, there are a few small visual cues that can help.  First is the leaf shape.  They are a kind of "potato leaf" design.  I found that the Black Krim and Black Plum are nearly identical.  The Russian Oxheart is also of the same design, but the leaves are a little more rounded and with more fringing, or spikes.  The Black Krim tends to have larger and slightly irregular shapes.  The Sara's Galapagos were a cinch to tell apart.  This plant looks astonishingly different from the others.

Mature seedlings, ready for transplant

I'm already about 3 weeks behind where I was last year, when I started out with store-bought seedlings.  My failure was being hesitant to start the seedlings too early, where temperatures were still quite cool.  A bit late on dealing with it, I did manage to get a heating pad that helped a lot.  It will come in handy next year and I hope to get germination underway in March next year.

Anyway...

A few weeks ago, I transplanted my seedlings into pots.  I was thrilled with so much germination going on.  I honestly didn't expect more than 50% of the seeds I planted to sprout.  About 75% of the Russian Oxheart sprouted and about 90% of the Black Krim got going.  The Sara's Galapagos took 2 weeks longer to show any signs.  I'll have to remember that next year, to start them earlier.

Thus, with so many seedlings and so little room to grow them, I was saddened to think that so many of these would be tossed out.  THANKFULLY, a friend of mine told me about a lady who was remiss on being late with tomato seed germination.  I gave my left over seedlings to him, to transfer to that lady.  I heard later she was thrilled.  I hope she has a great growing season!  Here's part of the carnage:

This was what I had left over after selecting the tallest and heartiest looking seedlings for my growing.  I honestly didn't expect them to work out so well.  I was lamenting that I didn't buy a commercial seed starter kit, but next year I'm going to go this route again.  Might as well put this Styrofoam to good use!

I was somewhat smart and marked up the existing labels with initials, to help identify the varieties.  BK - Black Krim, RO - Russian Oxheart, BP - Black Plum, and SG - Sara's Galapagos.  Yet, I was also somewhat negligent and managed to leave off a label on the little green pot.  I'm pretty sure it's a Black Krim, but there's a chance it may be a Russian Oxheart.  However, there might be a way to tell... which I'll point out in my next post.

Awakenings

I haven't posted anything since October of last year... took a break over the winter on growing anything.

I got a little behind in my plans for planting... Not only did I start a bit late on germination of the seeds, but I was stalled on getting some new pots to plant them in once ready.  Anyway, based on how well into the autumn my plants were able to grow last year, I'm not terribly concerned about it.  Next year will be different, though.

What caused me to start a bit late on the seedlings was that I hadn't make any provisions to get them started in cool weather. My "grow area" is near a window on the south side of my apartment.  At night it gets a bit chilly over there during the winter and early spring.  So, I ended up buying a heating mat.  This made a huge difference and I was able to help my seedlings thrive in the early stages.  I just wish I'd bought that mat a few weeks earlier.  The mat is like 20" x 9" and cost about $20 shipped.  Well worth it.

Also, I didn't get myself some seedling starter trays.  As you can see below, I used styrofoam egg containers.  Well, quite frankly these worked out terrific.  I used the lid as a water reservoir, and with holes punched into all of the egg slots there was sufficient drainage and moisturizing of the medium.  The seedling medium I used was actually intended for starting basil seeds.  I'd bought a few of these on steep discount last year.  It's like a solid puck that you pour water over, which then quickly swells into 10 times the volume.  The tomato seeds seemed to do just fine with those.

Looks like I may have some decent Black Krim and Russian Oxheart tomato plants to play with this season.

Black Krim seedlings

I also started out some Sara's Galapagos tomato seeds.  I wish I'd remembered to read up on them before I started.  The germination rate is very low on these.  I got about 75+ seeds in my pack, and only 6 actually germinated!  Also, they take at least 2 weeks longer to sprout than your typical heirloom seeds.  Here you can see just how small those cotyledon leaves are in comparison to the other varieties.  I honestly didn't think these would make it:

Sara's Galapagos seedlings