You can let seedlings get fairly large. The guy in this video gets amazing production out of his tomato plants. I will be using a drip system to water mine but I thought his system was pretty cool for a gravity fed system. Take a look at the size of the plants he plants and how he plants and waters them.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato Watering System - Growing a Vegetable Garden

Wow those were some nice seedling. Thanks for the help. I guess a may start a few more in a couple of weeks just as a back up.

I start mine in 16 oz. plastic beer cups with lots of holes punched in the bottom and on the sides near the bottom. (I use a soldering iron.) I put about 2" of peat in each cup and plant 4 seeds. Then I cover the tops with plastic wrap and put in a warm place for germination. When the plants have true leaves, I fill the soil up to the top leaves. I continue this until the leaves have reached the top and I take off the plastic wrap. (I pinch out all but one plant in each cup.)

Just as soon as we start having warm days, I put them all outdoors for a few hours each day and then all day long but in at night. With this method, I have very big healthy plants that have great root systems without using grow lights. They just sit in a south facing window when indoors. Once the soil temp. outdoors is warm, they all go out full-time since they are already hardened off.

Just be careful your seedlings don't get too leggy. Transplant them regularly to larger containers so they can keep growing deep root systems.http://www.tomatodirt.com/re-potting.html

Work hard to strengthen them. Brushing and blowing seedlings can help them grow strong stems and branches. http://www.tomatodirt.com/strengthen.html

In addition, you can start a second set of seedlings in about a month. This way you can stagger your plantings in the garden, and you'll have a much longer tomato season in the garden.

Here is a link that might be useful: Re-potting tomato seedlings to a bigger container

Hello Bama,

Most people like their transplants to be 6 - 8 weeks old when they put them in the garden, usually because it becomes problematic to keep them from getting way too leggy if they try to keep them indoors much longer than that. Once they get to the 6 - 8 week mark, it becomes difficult to keep enough light on them and air movement to keep them stocky because of the amount of leaf cover they will have at that point.

If you can move them to the green house around March 1st, you should be OK. You might have to pot them up at that point but if you can, that should give you some really nice transplants.

I hope that helps.

Thisisme,

Interesting system. But I think I prefer the drip system because filling those tubes for a large number of plants could be time consuming. My irrigation is on a timer and that makes it so easy. Also, I think the gentleman in the video would benefit from the use of some mulch.

Betsy

Betsy I said I will be using a drip system. The guy in the video has acres of crops though and it would be a full time job for him just to maintain a drip irrigation system for everything. Besides driving his tractor and gulf cart over the drip lines may do them harm.

I use mulch of one kind or another on most everything and agree with you on that too. The main reason I posted the videos was to show how deep you can/should plant tomatoes. Almost very tomato site says plant them deep but that was the only video I could find and I think it makes its point. In other videos you would see the plants he planted grow huge and produce buckets of tomatoes from healthy plants. I don't know why he gets such great results without mulching. My guess though is that it has something to do with how deep the plant is rooted do to the deep planting.

I don't believe transplanting tomato seedlings is on par with rocket science. Dig a hole, or a trench, and stick them in dirt up to their bottom leaves, burying the stem.

Mike

Not sure where the rocket science comment comes from or what its supposed to mean. Just sounds like a childish remark to me. I'm not a rocket scientist but I can follow instructions. The proper way is to plant them deep as roots will form along the deeply planted stem. It makes for a stronger more drought tolerant plant.

You may be able to get by without planting deep where you grow as I'm sure many others do. Where I grow during our long hot summers its 100-110 every day with 10% humidity. A couple years ago we had 100 days in a row of 110 degree temps or higher. Here simply sticking them in the ground often means nothing but weak struggling plants and few edible fruit while struggling to keep the plant alive.

Thank-you. Everyone that helped me. I definatly plan to pot up a couple of times before they make it into the garden.

thisisme,

Not meant to be childish or demeaning. Reality is that lots of people make it sound like one has to be a Master Gardener to get good tomato plants and lots of fruit.

You can bury the roots 8" deep or make a trench 3" deep. The roots that will form will grow toward moisture. If the top of the ground stays wet, they will not need to burrow deeper. If the ground doesn't get a lot of rain, the roots spread out and grow downward. Last year was one of those time when, in our area, May, June and July was far above average rainfall while August and September we probably were lucky to get a total of 1/2". The result was that unless one watered their garden they didn't have much ripe fruit to eat.

Mike