Lookin' great! Keep up the good work! =) Mine are about a week or two behind yours. Do you place them outdoors in a cold frame at first or simply just harden them off, then place outdoors after last frost date?

- Steve

I'm in SE NY zone 6 and it's not time to plant tomato seeds until march 20th or so was wondering were you are in NJ. Isn't it a little early to plant? Also what variety did you grow last season that had it's first ripe fruit ~ 94 days after transplant?

Thanks and good luck!

Looking good...

daylily, I've had a lot of my late tomatoes take that long, and it was probably the same reason as Redheads do. When you put out the tomatoes that early, even with a cloche on them, the tomatoes tend to grow more slowly due to the lower temps. But it's worth it for a Memorial Day mater.

No wonder my Big Beefs were on backorder this year ;)

Over the last 5 years my motto had been: 'Put 2 foot plants in the ground by tax day and get your first tomato by the 4th of July'

I'm about 20 miles West of New York City in West Caldwell. I used to purchase 2 foot hybrid plants at certain garden centers (hard to find). Sometimes they would have a tiny tomato pea or two on them. I would plant them on Tax Day and cover them with whatever I had. That first tomato pea would be ripe by the 4th of July (that's about 60 days from first tomato pea).

After a few years I heard about heirloom tomatos and decided to grow from seed. I picked New Years Eve to start (I like holidays and they are easy to remember). I actually kept a log if anyone is interested and my son made me a website www.tomtomato.com/blog

As an engineer I've always been curious about the 'days to maturity' indicated on plants you buy. What exactly is that relative to ? Seed (no), transplant size (it varies), etc. I wanted to measure it from the first sign of a pea tomato (succesful pollination). I know the enviro varies and variety varies but I wanted to get a baseline answer that I can then compare things with. Anyway my answer turned out to be 60 days from first tomato pea. My tomato plants were 3 foot tall with marble tomatoes on them when I put them in the ground.

I'm doing it all again this year and am looking for help to get good yields thru October (by Sept 15th last year I was done).

Anyway some quick answers:

First tomato last year was Aurora (picked 7 on Memorial day)

Yeah, tax day is too early but no pain no gain as they say.

Hey timmy1 you are reason I picked Big Beef as my one hybrid plus 9 other heirlooms

I hardened them off for about a week (outside then inside) it was a pain with thirty 3 foot plants. A nice weekend hit and I dug/sifted/composted my 2 foot deep holes, 18 inch diameter. Put in the plants and covered with a hoop structure and plastic for ~2 weeks. The plans got the crap beat out of them with the heat and or wind when I guessed wrong on keeping the cover on/off. Even with all that by the time nice weather hit they were in fine shape.

I made a little graph of the yield a couple of months ago.

{{gwi:1288983}}

Here is a link that might be useful: My garden log + pics

I'm farther north then you about 30 miles NW of NYC and our last frost date is somewhere between april 30th and may 15th that means an end of march start to get ~ 8 weeks till transplant. I'm assuming you have conditions that are roughly equal so with a January 1st start date your plants have got to be crazy huge by the time it's safe to plant. 8 weeks from January 1st is the first week in march. Even if you were to wait 10 weeks that would be the third week in march for a plant out date thats about when I'm going to start my seeds. your ~ 40 miles SW of me even jumping the gun and planting out on april 15th your waiting 14 weeks from seed to transplant even in very cold weather your plants must be something like 2ft tall. I know if I planted a 2 foot tomato on april 15th I would probally have ripe tomatoes by the first week in june and a dead tomato by the first week in July I thought it was best to aim for a 6-8" transplant wih a 6-10" root system.

so whats your secret? how do you get a 2 foot plant to survive a cold start ?

Thanks....

-DLF

By April 15th my plants are 3 foot tall in 1 gallon pots with a small bamboo stake. It is quite a jungle in my cellar under the lights (see pix). The plants have marble tomatoes on them and are easy to break. I call it a challenge.

I'm not sure why you say "a dead tomato by the first week in July". I put together a picture flow for you to see. I also have kept track of the lowest temperature in my town during the month of April over the last 5 years. I put the tomato plants outside when I feel the lowest overnight temperature is 40 deg F or higher. I put them in the cloche. Note the pix when they got heat stoke (I had to get in there with scissors and they looked pathetic but they survived). I hope to do better this year.

My only secret besides the cloche and thick ground cover to help keep the soil temp warm is that I dig an 18 inch diameter 2 foot deep hole sifted and composted and do not walk on it. I'm certain this gives the roots a real loose well draining bed to grow in.. I added the hay later but will do it sooner this year.

Anyway good luck and keep in touch

Day 45 Feb 14th:

Day 85 March 26th:

Day 108 April 18th:

Day 110 April 20th HEAT DAMAGE:

Day 110 April 20th HEAT DAMAGE:

Day 138 May 18th:

Day 149 Memorial Day FIRST TOMATO:

Day 149 Memorial Day FIRST TOMATO:

Day 157 June 6th:

Day 157 June 6th:

Day 203 July 24th:

Wow Redheads! in the pictures you don't look a day over 4 years old. Now, your secret for staying so youthful, that's the secret I'd like to hear.

Now I wish I had started my "early" tomatoes earlier! I planted my Ildi and Danko tomatoes earlier than the rest (which I'll be doing this week) in hopes of having a few early tomatoes... I figured I could manage babying two tomatoes along, but not 30 =) Maybe I should have planted those two in January instead of Valentine's Day weekend! Although I won't be planting out until about May 1... slightly cooler out here than in West Caldwell... and being self-employed, I'll already be up late on April 14th!!

I have four plants upstairs that were transplanted into 3" nursery containers on Christmas, then into 7-gallon pots on January 18. Two of them, a Celebrity and a Better Boy have a baby tomato on them, about a week after the flowers appeared.

I also have a Cabernet that was put into the large pot on Feb. 9 and it should have flowers within a couple of days. It was a cutting, though.

Mike

I am so incredibly entertained by the charts and graphs! Thanks for posting these, the whole setup is pretty impressive and represents a mind-boggling amount of work. Way to go!
I am also fascinated by the idea of starting tomato seeds on New Years Day and planting them out as early as mid-April. I may even have to try that too, bearing in mind that the plants will need a lot of coaxing and care until I can plant them out (I'm in a solid Zone 6, Westchester NY).
Did you use any red or black plastic to warm the soil pre-planting? And was there only the plastic row cover on them from the time you planted them out til after last frost? How far before last frost was it when you actually planted them out? Since I think we're a touch colder here, I'm just trying to figure out how much earlier I could possibly push them out the door. I generally put mine out mid-May, the week after Mother's Day, but the idea that your method produced a tomato only 2 weeks after THAT is incredibly tempting.

I dug my holes on April 11th last year and planted April 18th. I dig in the same spots and add compost so the effort is easier each year. Looking at the temperature charts (from accuweather.com) reinforces my memory and helps my psyche. Tending to the plants now at 6-8 inches is easy compared to when they are 24+ inches tall. Bottomline on the soil is that it is usually pretty warm, I dig 20-24 inches deep, put the bottom of the rootball 12+ inches below the surface, mound it up as high as I can and cover with heavy duty black landscape fabric. I didnt go with the black or red plastic. Sorry for the long answer.

Yes, only the plastic row cover. Had that on for 21 days and 10 days after removing it I had to cover each plant with a garbage bag one night cause the temperature went into the high 30s. I just checked on Farmers Almanac and it said the last frost day for Newark NJ (near me) was April 4th ** it also said that this April and May will be warmer than usual YEAH ** So I planted 14 days after the last frost.

I checked the accuweather history for westchester, ny which is only 30 miles north and it is historically ~10 deg cooler there in April. Being that it warms up about 10 degs/month at that time of year, my April 15th is your May 15th (I find that a bit perplexing since we are really not that far away)

Here is a link that might be useful: My Log from last year:

after some borderline heated discussions last winter regarding the detrimental effects of multiple-pottings-up on production, last year I decided to transplant many of my seedlings directly from the seeding tray into 10-inch pots half-filled with potting mix, and growth was significantly accelerated compared to those that were only transplanted into 4-inch pots. Planted March 29, here are pics on May 21 (day 57):

Despite the freezing spring weather and cold weather throughout June, 2009 summer was my best production ever by far, in terms of total # of large mature tomatoes per plant, particularly from Cherokee Purple and Brandywine Sudduth. Taste has been better in prior years, but was still quite good to excellent. Big pots were a pain, but was nice to do one less transplant, and this year I know I can start later and still get large seedlings for our particularly short season.

Hey Toronto,

Looks like we are thinking the same. A couple of questions:

1. Plants look about 3 foot tall (from dirt line) ?
2. Are there flowers and little tomatoes on them?
3. What day did you get your first red tomato ?

Last year:

Day 0 planted seeds in typical 72 cell thingamajig
Day 23 transplanted into 4" square
Day 37 transplanted into 7" round
Day 97 plants are 30-36" high with 1 pea tomato per
Day 150 Picked 1st red tomato after putting outside on Day 108 (April 18)

I really like your idea though and am thinking about trying some right now to see how it goes. When did you first add fertilizer ? I'm thinking of planting 3-4 seeds in my 2.5 gallon pots and yanking all but the strongest. This way I eliminate "all" transplanting.

Hi Reds:

1. they were approx. 3 feet tall in this picture, and I think they reached this height at least 2 weeks earlier than in the past (when I did more potting-ups/potting ups to smaller than 10-inch pots). Actually when I did potting ups in the past it was usually one plant per 4 inch pot, but I had to sometimes put two plants in a 6 or 7 inch pot, and always found that the larger the pot, the faster the plant grew.

2. There were flowers forming on most plants but I did take off the majority of them. One definitely had small tomatoes on it before I even took the plants outside at the end of May (but once this was out these did not grow or mature properly, next time I think I would pull them off).

3. Answer to 3 has an asterisk, because weather was unbelievably horrible in June 2009. I think we actually had frost or snow in the first week of June (last frost date normally May 24). Plants were outsite in a covered enclosure from last week of May until the end of the first week of June, after which they went in the ground (at one point I lugged all 51 plants back inside when the threat of frost/snow came). A few plants had flowers that pollenized prior/soon after to planting. After that however, the nights were so cool that just about ALL flowers fell off for a period of about 3 weeks. The only ones with fruits that were actually growing were the ones that pollenized before/soon after planting, so I had a few plants with growing tomatoes and the rest with nothing. These early ones were very slow to ripen, and did not taste good. Around the end of June the plants exploded in flowers (presumably reacting to the lack of prior pollenization) after which we had a week of perfect weather...massive pollenization happened at that time, leading to huge production, but just about everything was very late maturing. I will try to remember to take note of time to first ripe fruits for each variety this year.

I wanted to seed directly in my 10-inch pots, but with 50 of them I knew it would be very difficult to (a) keep them at the proper level of moistness and best temp to encourage germination, and (b) once they germinated, the height of the pot would likely prevent any direct sunlight hitting the plants (all my plants get sun from windows, I figured they would be too shaded to grow properly with direct sowing into large pots).

I hope you try it, I would be interested to hear your results. Actually if you are still using mostly 4 inch for first transplant, why not pick some varieties for which you have multiple seedling and put some into 4 inch and some straight into 7 inch and see if you experience faster growth in th 7 inch.

Forgot to answer your fertilizer question. I think I started adding very dilute tomato starter fertilizer (10-52-10, I think this is the product http://shop2.aol.ca/shop/product--catId_1001227__locale_en__productId_1854767.html), started when seedlings had a few sets of true leaves. I probably applied every 7 to 10 days but put on much less than was recommended. Good luck with growing, looks like you have a nice peaceful space to grow your plants (is that netting to keep out smaller readheads?)

Thanks for the reponse Toronto,

The netting is to keep the deer out. I've always kept all my flowers and pea toms on the plant when putting outside. The first toms don't taste the best but are still good and it is fun getting them early. You must get alot of sun from that window. I also only get 6-7 hours of sun and if I don't start with 2-3 foot plants I get tomatoes at the end of July.

Keep in touch,
Tom

Well we have a few large bay windows in the back of the house, and the garden faces pretty much due south, so good exposure while they are inside and great exposure once they are out (my biggest problem is trying to prevent sunburn which seems to affect the plants even after attempts at hardening off). Will be interesting to see stats at the end of this season, fingers crossed that we dont get the cold and wet from the last two years.

Have you thought about using a "hoop house". If you do a search on Timmy1 and hunt through his posts you will find some pictures of his setup. He is a commercial guy but really hasn't answered my queries about how he goes about selling what must be thousands of tomatoes (from Rhode Island) which is North of me. He keeps "all" rain off his plants and "fertigates" them.

I'd love to do it but my backyard would be an eyesore.

My neighbours would probably shoot me (and then steal the plants)

sorry for the late reply....... The reason I said that if I planted 3' tomatoes they would be dead by july is that it seems to me (I may be wrong about this) that when the first real stress of summer what ever that is heat, bugs, Thunderstorm etc.. the plants wouldn't be able to take it. I know I was exaggerating a little but wouldn't it at least slow down production a lot? If you plant a 3 foot plant thats ready to flower it has a lot more recovering to do then an 8" plant that won't be ready to flower for 3 weeks. It seems to me that most of the flowers would drop from the 3' plant leaving you with a few June tomatoes but the plant would be in so much transplant shock it would either die at the first sign of stress or production would stop. I also thought that an 8" plant or so would transplant better. However I don't really know if any of the above speculation is true.

My real concern with the starting seeds early is the plant out date. If your planting the plants in mid or early april the soil temperature is really cold usually. I'm a weather nut and pay very close attention to soil temperatures. now I know I'm much further north then you (30 miles) however I've noticed here at least the soil is not truly at 55* until at least may 15th and on april first its usually hovering around 45* now I thought that was way to cold for tomatoes. I guess I'm wrong since you have obviously had success but I just wanted to know if you did anything special.

For me, only problem with larger transplants has been with sunburn, and I assume the plants are less able to recover as you mentioned due to the amount of foliage vs. roots or the fact that roots have not established themselves in the garden when the sun first attacks the fresh large transplants. I TRY to encourage root development by using 10-52-10 fert, not sure how much it helps. This year will be the test to see whether last year's seedling growth and plant growth/production was a fluke.