The Early Tomato Sowing Thread

[chris]

Had a couple Sungolds pop their heads up last night Heating turned on in that room now, gotta keep the little uns warm

[Florence Fennel]

I'm trying some Red Pear for the first time, but they're slow to germinate, my other varieties are up already.

[CaroltheCarrot]

I have four neat and sweet that were sown in November, all about 6" high and looking good,they are under a growlight in the kitchen. I will sow some more this weekend and then more at `normal` time just to compare how they do

[binley100]

Binley - how warm is your airing cupboard? Mine doesn't seem much warmer than the rest of the house. I'm wondering whether to put a hot water bottle in there.

It's pretty warm in my airing cupboard as both the boiler and the hot water tank are in there..........as soon as I see them start to show I move them onto the kitchen windowsill in an unheated prop......then once they open their seed leaves they get repotted (and sunk) and go into the conservatory which is unheated. So far so good........I have some overwintering cuttings in there as well from last Oct (just in case someone is lurking ) The harbinger toms actually say to sow from January .....

[Two_Sheds]

Doh, I left the trolls, I mean tomatoes on the cold windowsill last night, bad mommy

[binley100]

If you're bad then I'm the epitomy of evil , mine have been in an unheated conservatory for days...........

[zazen999]

If you're bad then I'm the epitomy of evil , mine have been in an unheated conservatory for days...........

I wouldn't worry - they are used to sleeping under cold bridges...they'll be fine

[binley100]

good good .....

[PrideRavyn]

So tempted to sow some seeds now, I have just been given a very antiquated but functional heated propogator and have very itchy faded green fingers, I hate winter! I have had all my xmas carrots, parsnips etc now and my leeks aren't big enough to do anything with yet. But I think I will get moaned at if I start filling the house with plants in January

[binley100]

......but it's nearly February

[PrideRavyn]

So true! And it doesn't hurt to annoy the miserable teenagers a little...keep them on their toes!

[binley100]

oh I'm all for that............it's nice to get your own back
Time to drag out the prop and get sowing then ..........

[PrideRavyn]

I've never used a heated propogator before, it doesn't come with any instructions (to give you an idea, it belonged to my grandfather who died 22 years ago) do I just plant them as normal, put water in the bottom and then I guess the idea being that it works like a heat mat under the plants?

[Sylvan]

Syvlan, even my feeble math deduces that 3 month old plants outside in May were not sown in January.

Did someone say they were? Show me that evil, wicked person and I'll give 'em a sharp telling-off!

As I said in my first post on the thread I didn't think I'd be able to germinate tomato seeds in January in this incredibly chilly house, till Binley mentioned using the airing cupboard, but I've been sowing seeds of the more tender plants in February for decades. We normally have a couple of glorious weeks in May and that's just about it for the rest of the year. All our flowering plants tend to bloom together in June, whatever time of year the experts say they're meant to. With flowering/fruiting vegetables I wouldn't have any fruit if I didn't sow at the beginning of the year.

The tomatoes in the pic were sown on 6th February. They would have been over a foot tall by the time the photo was taken, at the beginning of May, but the pots themselves were 11"-12" high, so there were only a few inches above the surface of the compost. They had a lovely root system by the time they went out in June.

Did you not have the late frosts in June last year that wiped a lot of plants out, I'd have thought in the Pennines you would have got them harder.

Of course we did, silly boy! We've been known to have 6" of snow, in the space of a couple of hours, in June. How could we possibly escape late frosts? They weren't that late anyway. Our last frost date is almost always at the beginning of June.
My cucumbers suffered but my tomatoes were old enough (and therefore strong enough) to survive unscathed. Let's hear it for early sowing, yay!

By the way, I live in the NORTH Pennines, not the Pennines - a fish of a different stripe. Tha mun be one o' they Suvverners, wot finks oop norf starts at Watford, ist tha?

(That was actually a serious question, by the way. You haven't told us in which part of the world your allotment is situated, so we can't visualise your growing conditions)

Oh yes, another pitfall to early sowing that no one has pointed out.

You may well be an extremely experienced gardener but that's the comment of someone who knows nowt about gardening oop north.
Frosts in the third week of June aren't an argument against EARLY sowing. They're an argument against ANY sowing!

...but why else do seed packets contain so many spare seeds?

EDIT: Allotment Joe, I've just noticed the contraction you use for "mathematics" and solved the conundrum of your whereabouts in one swell foop. You're an American!

[Jeanied]

Well, I gather that that particular incarnation of Allotment Joe is no longer with us - so he won't be winding us up with his spurious arguments.
On with the growing!