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Florida Gardening

Tom MacCubbin says it's time to start tomato seeds

15 years ago

He writes a column for the Orlando paper and is well known in Florida gardening circles. What do Florida GW'rs think?

Should we do it now?

Here is a link that might be useful: MacCubbin article

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Comments (15)

solstice98
15 years ago
Tom's my hero. If he says it's time to start the seeds, then I would trust him, at least for Central Florida.
cindeea
15 years ago
I am waiting until after surgery, when the hint of a cooler fall and winter approach zone HotTT 10. Denise, I will then start a new crop of your wonderful yellow pears, some Campari seeds I have saved and I also have some 'Sweet Baby Girl' and 'Sugary' cherry seeds I just ordered from Parks this week. Ahhh I go through this tomato longing every summer! At least, I KNOW what tomatoes 'taste' like! (LOL-that's for you Kate! hahaha)
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George, I know that if you were starting plants for yourself, you wouldn't be starting them now....just like y'all know me well enough to know I generally don't start seeds until February. It did take me a few years here to learn the best time to start seeds because at first I started them in late January like I did when we lived in Texas, and that's too early for our area even though we warm up fairly early some years. I'd have tomato and peppers plant that were 18" tall before it was warm enough to get them into the ground. Even in those years when we warm up early, only the days tend to be warm or even hot and the nights still tend to go below freezing. If I plant too early, I pay for it by having to cover up plants on freezing nights for weeks, and that gets old. Ironically, the county in northeastern Texas where the master gardener who was on TV this week is from is under a Winter Weather Advisory and very well may have some sort of wintery mix including snow, sleet or freezing rain as early as Saturday or Sunday. I hope his little seedlings (they looked like pepper seedlings too) get to come inside from the greenhouse to stay warm....or he might run up a big bill heating a greenhouse in those conditions. Apparently my garden's problem is that it does not sit on a pile of rocks, and now I'm wishing it did. Maybe I could fix the drainage issue by excavating soil and putting rocks beneath my garden! Really, the problem is that the neighbors property is a lot higher and their runoff drains onto our property, so I can't fix that. Since their property sits so high above ours, even my raised beds can stay too wet because their water runs off/seeps underground for weeks in heavy rainfall years and then wicks up into my raised beds from the grade level soil. I am glad we're about to get cold. We have had some very, very warm days here scattered throughout December and January and my fruit trees are budding and trying to bloom too early....same story as every other winter here, so I'm hoping a good, cold arctic blast will tell them to 'chill out' and slow down a bit. Dawn
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Thanks, Need2SeeGreen! Really heavy rains every week or so. Some cold but no snow where I am (some in higher areas; I'm only 2200'). The moles are digging in my lawn, and the hairy bittercress (cute little weed which would like to take over the world) is flowering madly. I need to prune the apple trees. The violets are putting out tentative leaves; probably the pink ones are flowering -- they're evergreen, and nothing much stops them. The spring camellia flowered Thursday -- and froze Friday night; this cycle will continue for a while. It looks like this year the scillas/squill will bloom before the Jeanne d'Arc crocuses. I will start some of the tomato seeds this week (indoors).
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Jim I am so glad you have had some memorable hummer experiences this year. The migration is still in full swing and I have three here right now. My last adult male left on Sept 1st. and the last adult female departed about a week ago. I have at least one juvenile male and 2 juvenile females but with the juvies until they start getting some of their adult plumage it is difficult to tell the males from the females. Most of my adult birds this year were strictly feeder birds. They were definitely fast food junkies but once the juvies came on the scene both feeders and flowers were in high use. I have an old clothesline that we cut done to be used in a smaller area for the hummers and they loved perching by the door first thing in the morning after they had breakfast watching and waiting and several would greet me when I walked out the door. If I was replaceing a feeder with a fresh one I always had one come right up to the feeder as I was hanging it back up. They also liked to perch on that line and watch me while I mowed the grass or collected flower seeds. Several times they flew up to me when I was removing dead flower stalks to check out what I was doing. A couple of times I had a female come in so close that I could feel the breeze from her wing flapping against my cheek. Remember to keep those feeders fresh especially when we have had the hot dry temps we had this summer. I never leave a feeder over two days as the nectar will start to ferment and if they do drink it, they can get sick. Often times they will just abandon the feeder. Even if you think all of your hummers have gone for the season, please consider leaving those feeders up for at least 2-3 weeks after your last siting as there are still quite a few migrants north of us that are yet to head south. There are large swarms still in Mich and Wisc. and quite a few swarms still over in Ontario from what I understand. If you can maintain at least one feeder until we get hard freezing temps please consider doing so. There are more and more reports of out of territory migrants showing up all the time. There is a Green-breated Mango Hummingbird that has shown up in Wisconsin whose most northern natural range is Mexico. Here is a picture of the Green-Breasted Mango. There have been Rufous in Ontario, Rufous and Calliopes in Pa. so you never know, a stray, out of range migrant could just as easily show up in NY. They are just the most amazing little creatures and I am so glad to see the growing interest in hummers and including hummer plants in gardens Penny
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Well, I am quite thrilled to read these great responses! I live in Zone 7, but our Winter is still long. The zones just refer to the extremes in temperature, not how long it lasts. I have noticed volunteer tomatoes come out earlier than I would choose to plant out. So, I can watch for that as a sign. I do not have any trouble with legginess of my tomato seedlings. I have a picture window that faces full-South, and shelves there (for seedling starting in Winter) outfitted with shop-lights. I read somewhere that it is important to use fresh bulbs (fluorescent tubes) as the light diminishes over time. I do not get new ones every year, but if one seems to put out less (judging by the plants), I use that on my alpine strawberry seedlings or something else that doesn't mind. I want to start even earlier because I'd like to keep tomato strains true when I grow them out. I plan to grow out severl this year, and if one flowers first for a week, then they are in the clear, and I can mark those fruits, and then not really worry about the rest. I guess what I mean is that an early & staggered start will allow me to focus on each plant as it comes into bloom, selecting from that, and moving on to the next one. I do have some limitations (medically), so it would be easier to focus on them staggered rather then so many at one time. It may not work out the way I hope, but I figure it is a good experiment for this year. By choosing good varieties for this (my un-familiarity with varieties hurts my experiment here) I can better insure success. The funny thing is that I don't really eat tomatoes--except in spaghetti sauce. BUT, everyone else loves them, and I find there is a group involved with tomatoes that have a zeal for the plant like no other vegetable/fruit. A great deal of home-breeding is going on, and I find it the most fascinating thing. Tomatoes provide a great opportunity to study genetics at home, and to look very intensely at varietal development in plants. I guess I am hooked for a reason not common to most, but I am hooked. So, I will try my experiment this year, and see how it works for me. I am thankful at the varieties/categories I see mentioned. When mentioning "use determinate or dwarf" plants, how can I find out which is which? I have consulted some websites, but is there a thorough tomato base out there? Keep the posts coming! Happy Holidays, Robin
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an_ill-mannered_ache
15 years ago
hmph. i just pulled my full-sized tomatoes because of bugs, humidity, and fruit-set failure. i think tom's off by at least a couple weeks, maybe a month. who wants to baby tomatoes through the hazards of fla growing in august???

i still have a goose creek. maybe i'll take some suckers and put them in a quiet spot of the yard, nurse them through until september.
solstice98
15 years ago
Cindee, it's round, it's reddish... does it taste like a beet, but not quite so earthy?
SusieQsie_Fla
15 years ago
So, are we gonna have a tomato seed swap?

Please! Can we, can we?
cindeea
15 years ago
YES, susie, I want to be included too. I remember some of us talking about it earlier. I think Naplesgardner(Denise) and Tomncath(Tom) want in. I am outta here for a week or so with my hip surgery, so maybe someone can organize it and PLEASE give me a chance to participate before everything is taken.
naplesgardener
Original Author
15 years ago
well we can start with a seed swap statewide and then later maybe swap seedlings locally.
I'll look thru my seeds and post my seed list. Part of it is already on my GW page.

Denise
tomncath
15 years ago
I'm in for the seed/seedling swap...I updated my list last night. I didn't list all the odd-ball stuff, just seed that I've heard good things about. Anybody have some Parks Whopper CR? One of those things I want to try but forgot to order....
SusieQsie_Fla
15 years ago
Tom
I'll order some Whopper CRs from Parks in the coming weeks, if I find something else I need from them. Unless someone has them for you, I will send you some - how many do you want? Pkt is 30 seeds.

Susie
tomncath
15 years ago
Hi Susie,

6-8 seeds would be enough, so many maters to try, so little room! If you want to look for other things Tomato Growers also carries the Whopper CR.

Tom
SusieQsie_Fla
15 years ago
Okay then....Park's keeps sending me their sales emails and I have been wanting everything on their site...the hard part is deciding what to choose.....but the tomatoes I can share.

Susie
tomncath
15 years ago
Susie,

Take a look at my list and see what you might want to try. If your going to order from Parks there are a few things I want to try this year that I have not ordered.

1) The Whopper - we discussed

2) Magda squash - Dr. Carolyn Male, Goddess of Tomatoes and all things tomato was discussing other veggies she likes today over on the Tomato forum and brough up this lebanese delight....

3) Veronica - Heat tolerant cross between broccoli and caulifower that just may actually grow here according to some GW-Floridians.

Tom
teka2rjleffel
15 years ago
I'd be interested in a seed swap. I got rid of most of my seeds since they were old. But with a tomato seed swap I can try several different varieties.
Nancy
scents_from_heaven
15 years ago
I am naking a chart o the seeds and who has them if you wish to do a mail swap. I will post a link after I add my own. Linda
happy_fl_gardener; 9a, near DeLand
15 years ago
I ordered some tomato seeds from Tomato Growers Supply today and asked the owner, Linda Sapp, about Tom's comment to start the seeds now. She said that he is right. The talk about a seed swap, I assume, is for heirloom tomatoes. Right?

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