Early Tomato Sowing and Growing thread - poll added please vote

[butter fingers]

Hurray !
At last my first pink thai egg and moscovitch tomato seedlings just come through. I think this is due to my astute buying of a heated propogater from E bay this week.Looking foward to many more soon.

[pigletwillie]

Yesterday I pricked out into 3" pots

15 Amish paste
45 Urbikany
30 White rabbit
30 RomaVF
15 Black heart
15 French Black
15 Millefleur
30 Aunt Judys German Green cherry
15 Sungold

There are a few straglers still germinating and they will be potted up when big enough.

The Ferline and Shirley were sown a bit later so will be pricked out probably next weekend.

[lavender lou]

finally potted on my Tomatoes that was sown in december

i now have

18 Alicante
2 Tumbling Toms

i have some gardeners delight to sow and some beefsteak but run out of space at the minute so will so some of those next month i think?

Zazen what are the moon dates for next month please?

My pepper seeds sown on the same day are not doing to good wil have to keep an eye on those.

[SlugLobber]

Still only 4 Tumbling Toms, but these are last year's seedlings, so still pleased. They will need potting on next weekend, I think.

Now have 9 Gardener's Pearl
3 x Gardener's delight. The latter also being last year's seeds, so very chuffed. There will be many, many tomatoes in my little house!

[tamsin]

This is my tumbling tom (sown 15/1) I'm going to do some more today

[maytreefrannie]

This is my tumbling tom (sown 15/1) I'm going to do some more today

Are tumbling toms tomatoes that grow downwards? - I've heard there are some that can be grown in a hanging basket - are these them and what's the name of the variety?

[shirlthegirl43]

Well, I got a surprise - day before yesterday I spotted another Shirley seedling after just about giving up on them. then yesterday another appeared. I now have 3 Shirley tomatoes (Madmax is on the verge of a breakdown with 4 Shirley's in the house).

Wish the chillies would get a shift on

[SlugLobber]

Are tumbling toms tomatoes that grow downwards? - I've heard there are some that can be grown in a hanging basket - are these them and what's the name of the variety?

Yup. I grew my tumbling toms in baskets last year.

Got another 3 seedling up since yesterday morning. All gardener's pearl again. Not bad for freebies!

[tamsin]

Are tumbling toms tomatoes that grow downwards? - I've heard there are some that can be grown in a hanging basket - are these them and what's the name of the variety?

Yep, they are called 'Tumbling Tom' Come in red or yellow.

[BarleySugar]

I've just potted up my tomatoes (sown 27th Dec) again, from 3 to 5 inch pots. They are a bit tall, and had filled the pots with roots. I think it has been too warm. Last year and the year before I sowed on 15th Jan, and kept them in the bedroom, which was fine as we didn't have the heating on much. This year OH had felt the cold more (and it's been colder anyway), and insisted on more heating, hence I think the room has been too hot for the amount of light available. I don't think the 2 weeks would have had this much effect otherwise.
I am still going to persevere with them, but I did plant some more a couple of weeks ago, which have been in the kitchen. The temperature fluctuates a bit there, but there is more light. I'll post a pic later perhaps.
I think the variety has a bearing of how tall they get too. The French black are still tichy little things, Green Tiger are next, then Tigerella and finally the Sunburst are so tall they need sticks or they would fall over. They have all had the same growing conditions, and have been rotated in the trays, so I don't think that they have received differing amounts of light. It might be worth considering the variety when trying these early sowing experiments, Sunburst has always seemed to have a longer stem length between joints anyway.
Next year we should have a spare room, so I'll be able to keep that unheated for bringing on seeds. By the way, I decided I could only fit 8 in the greenhouse this year, and growing outside wasn't worth it because of blight. I have 24 tomato plants on the go now

[susieq100]

I have done something very similar to you Barleysugar - I started 6 Red Alert in the spare bedroom where it it is not warm - heating on for an hour first thing in the morning - and they have grown like weeds! They are very leggy so moved them to a completely unheated room for a bit and today I put them into the conservatory - also unheated and cooler than the room. They are very leggy and spindly and I'm hoping that the cooler conservatory will slow them down a bit. If it doesn't I'll just wait a week or two before planting some more seeds in the conservatory.

[maytreefrannie]

I have seven germinated (out of ten sown on 27th Dec) - they seem so small next to the description of others' plants; they're really little but the true leaves have started to grow. I keep them near a window, but we've had mainly overcast weather, so I think they're doing well - I guess with more sunshine (hopefully) they'll be OK.

[zazen999]

My second set of tomato sowings are nearly all up, and the purple venezulan and cayennes both have 2 up each.

[JimmerG]

Unbelievable - I've got a fancy new heated propogator, I planted some Marmande in modules on Sunday afternoon - and the shoots broke the surface on Wednesday!!

Just got to try and avoid leggyness now!

[pigletwillie]

15 sungold were pricked out last night plus half a dozen shirleys. We need about 80 plants but have well over 160 now so plenty to give away.