Last week I introduced you to my little avocado that I started back in April of 2021 and shows the progress of that little guy and how fast he grew. If you missed it you can read about it HERE.
Today I want to show you my tomato plants that I started from seeds. Yes seeds. Growing your own tomatoes is very rewarding not to mention they taste better than store bought. They are full of flavor.
I germinated 3 Roma tomato seeds in a small condiment cup. It was the kind of cup you might get when you order takeout and ask for extra ketchup. You can get these cups from Amazon, I believe they are 4oz cups.
I placed a small square of a damp paper towel in the bottom of the cup and placed 3 seeds on the paper towel and sealed it with a lid. They germinated in two days. You can see the tiny seeds in the first picture, but the second picture is a close-up. See the white root sticking out of each seed in the photos below. Cool huh?
I planted the seeds in some moist potting mix and set them in the window where they got full sun for 6-8 hours every day. Two of the tomatoes sprouted within two days the other one came up later.
Later they grew so fast, I placed them in red solo cups. The tomato plants pictured below were taken on June 24.
By that time I had to pot them up and put them in larger containers and start hardening them off. Hardening off a plant or plants means to get them used to outside temperatures. On the first day, put them outside for an hour. Somewhere where they will get the required amount of sunshine. After that hour, bring them back in the house, or where they were prior. On the 2nd day they need to be outside for 2 hours. If you are in an area where it is abnormally hot, you may only leave them outside for a couple of hours each day for a week. Otherwise increase it by an hour each day. After my plants were out for 5 hours, I just left them outside all night from then on. They need the sunshine and the heat to help produce fruit. Below are all three in their new pot-homes. Photo was taken on June 24 and that was when I started setting them outside to get use to the heat. They needed support so I found some sturdy branches in the yard and just loosely tied cotton yarn around them to hold them up. Poor babies are used to the air conditioning.
Once I put them outside to harden off, they got stronger and stronger each day. Below, is the first day the plants were left out overnight. The red square pot is basil, the large green one next to it is a tomato. The two light blue pots are bell peppers, and the last two are tomatoes.
After about two weeks, the second last tomato plant was getting larger and stronger. See below, the first picture was taken on July 14 and on the 16th (second & third pictures) you can see it already had blossoms and they are opening. I believe these blossoms came out so fast because I finally put the plant in the sun. Also I should’ve started the seeds in February instead of April.
By August 5 the plants were huge and we had baby tomatoes all over the place.
The tomatoes have continued to grow. Below is August 19, and I have counted 18 tomatoes on 3 plants.
It takes a long time for tomatoes to ripen, the first 2 pictures were taken on September 7 and the 3rd picture was taken on Sept 14.
The pictures below were taken on Oct 22 so I picked a few and made salsa. By the way, just pick them when they are the color you want. If they are still pink or orange, they will ripen in a window sill.
My last harvest was on November 1 because Nov 2 was going to be cloudy all day and I knew they wouldn’t get any sun. Nov 3 would get down to 32 degrees and that would kill my plants. So I picked everything on the vines and we have been eating the tomatoes on sandwiches and salads and salsas, anything so we don’t have to cook them and we can taste the full flavor. If I had a huge garden I wouldn’t mind cooking them to make sauce and such but since we only grew about 40 tomatoes we ate them raw so we could taste them.
Have you ever planted tomatoes? Will you try it? What varieties do you like and what will you try to grow next year? Let me know in the comments below.
Stepping Into The Life 