Starting Tomatoes: A Day on the Farm

Beautiful March day with sun shining and small breeze.  I can just feel spring wanting to come.  So today I started my tomatoes  and annual flower seeds indoors and cleared out the front flower bed.

Tulips making their appearance.

Starts of onions, leeks, celery, artichoke, kale, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and lettuce are already up.  Once the seedlings are up I put fan on them to strengthen the stems.  It's also important to keep the light 2-3 inches above the plants.  

Once the seedlings make their appearance it is time to thin.  Thin out each cell so only one seedling is growing per cell.  Do this with scissors instead of pulling out the seedlings so you don't damage the roots of the one you want to keep.

The first leaves that appear are cotyledons.  Until the true leaves appear there is no need to fertilize.

Tomatoes are one of my favorite crops to grow.  There are so many varieties, colors,  and shapes.  I have my favorites I plant every year and then I always plant new ones.  

Here is a list of the finalist that will have a spot in my garden in 2017:

Paste Tomatoes:  Amish Paste, Sheboygan, Principe Borghese, Hungarian Heart, Martino Roma

New Paste Tomatoes:  Black Icicle, Orange Icicle, Hungarian Grushork

Cherry and Salad Tomatoes:  Sungold Select, Chocolate Pear, Nyagous, Ivory Egg, Green Doctor, Topaz Or Huau U, Fourth of July

New Varieties of Cherry and Salad Tomatoes:  Yellow Currant, Red Currant, Pink Tiger, Green Tiger, Pink Bumble Bee

Slicing Tomatoes:  Paul Robeson,Caspian Pink, Taxi F1, Green Zebra, Ananas Noire, Blue Beauty, Pineapple, Celebrity F1

New Slicing Tomatoes:  Rose De Berne, Golden King of Siberia,Amana Orange,Carbon, Cour di Bue, Dixie Golden, Kentucky Beefsteak

Flowers:  Nictotania, Stocks, Snapdragon, Impatiens

My does enjoying the sunshine.

These two does are due within the week.