I envy the folks that have a greenhouse/hoophouse setup or wonderfully placed windows in their houses so that tomatoes and other vegetables can be started from seed. I have even tried artificial lighting to help with my insufficient natural lighting but the seedlings still turn out all leggy, spindly and awful. Course, it could be due to more than the lack of lighting, lol, but anyway I have given up and just buy plants, even though you can't find the wonderful variety that you can when you are able to grow from seed.

Quite impressed by the lists of tomatoes that people were planning to grow this year, as shown in the Tomatoes 2016 thread you linked, Steve. Just reading the lists made me hungry! I guess most of you must have more than half a city lot upon which to grow your veggies - I was only planning to grow a few, given the space constraints, but now I am inspired and may have to find room for more!

Hope Skybird gets to this thread and lets us know if all 200 plants did well for her (OK, so there weren't 200 on her list but there were quite a few.) How did yours do, Steve? (And I am hoping to get a plant or two from you at the swap, Zach, if the weather cooperates and you have some to spare. :-D )

Holly

I envy the greenhouse/actual hoophouse folks, too, Holly. There's actually a member who hangs around the tomatoes forum from Wyoming that is already harvesting tomatoes this year! It would sure make winter a lot more bearable if I had a set up that allowed me to do that!

As for space, well, I grow just a couple, sometimes even just one, of each variety I have. This year is the most total plants I have ever grown, 12, 6 varieties. I started about twice that this year, so yes, the good Lord willing and the creek don't rise (or the hail don't fall) I will be bringing some to the swap!

Weeellll. Today, I nearly killed one of those tomatillos I was goin' on about on another thread. Maybe those things are terribly sensitive to sunlight! Two days out in the sweetest of my sweet spots and half the leaves are yellow. I intended to give it to a neighbor. I'd still be able to see it constantly, even if I don't grow any ... see it bite the dust, maybe!

My tomato patch looks pretty ragged right now.

We have had entirely too much wind since the plants went out. They were hardened off but adversity isn't overcome just by experiencing it. They need to have better circumstances!

Steve

I managed to restrain myself this year and only started a few more than I would have space for, and only had a couple of fatalities (or ones that just didn't sprout) along the way. I hardened them off this week with great plans to plant them this weekend, but Zach, like you said, with the current forecast for Sunday-Tuesday I'm not sure it's worth the risk. They'll be fine inside under the light for another week.

I just grow veggies for myself and friends/family, I don't depend upon my garden to make a living. I don't know how farmers can deal with the frustrations and set backs that Mother Nature gives us all since their livelihood and the "survival" of their family depends upon what they can grow and produce. They have much stronger constitutions than I do!

I hope the weather cooperates for us, but I am planting this weekend no matter what! Well, so I hope, anyway; somehow time off just flashes by and of the 10 things I have planned for the weekend, only 2 or 3 actually get done. (Too many breaks?!?)

Luck to all of us that already have plants in the ground and Happy Planting to those that dare!

Holly

I'll be starting my hardening off process tomorrow (May 14) and will continue it until at least next Friday. The longer range forecast beyond Tuesday looks very favorable with highs in the 80s possible by next weekend. The Sun-Tues time frame actually looks great since I'll only be setting plants out for a few hours during those days.

I remember last season being terrible for hardening off, or so I thought, as I believe I did it during the same period. It was rainy, cloudy, cool and we had snow just days before. I was so upset about it. I ended up not planting the week after hardening them off, instead putting them in the garage for another week. I took them out occasionally to get some fresh air, but that cold, damp weather just wouldn't go away! It finally cleared enough just before Memorial Day weekend and I was able to plant. My green light to actually plant is when we have consistent nights above 40. Since we generally have cool nights anyway (very few nights stay above 60 at my house in Erie), I find I have much stronger plants if they've been acclimated to temps in the upper 30s and lower 40s during the hardening off process before being planted.

I strongly dislike the stresses of the hardening off process, but it is pretty cool watching the plants we've babied indoors for months transition to their new homes outdoors. The swift changes in physical characteristics from "relatively" weak to tough and sturdy always surprise me.

I've got about 12 plants of mortgage lifter, german pink, fox cherry and cherokee purple. Started hardening off on about the 10th of May planning to take my time, luckily I have exerted some self restraint on the typical setting-out jones I feel at mothers day since we may get a freeze on Tuesday night after all.

The babies have spent a night outside all by themselves already! And they're loving this direct sunlight, evidently from new growth.

I'm gonna perform the old switcheroo!

Do you have a tomato variety you don't have to set out? In other words, is there a variety that is so early that volunteers can be saved or seeds can be sown, directly in the garden and you will have ripe tomatoes?

Volunteers almost never work for me. I have large gardens and nearly always save a volunteer - at the end of a row or someplace out of the way where the space isn't really needed. Usually, it is from a cherry that was missed. The fruit from the volunteer have too little time to ripen. One year, one year! My volunteer had plenty of ripe, red cherries! Nearly worthlessly, unsweet ... I think that they were from a hybrid, Sweet 100 the year previous ... ripe, tho!

In 2014, I set out Coyote tomatoes. Remarkable little things ... unusual flavor and sweet. I set out Coyote plants last year but there were volunteers and I suspected that they were Coyote ... I hope some have come back this year! If not, I've made a mistake not sowing seed, indoors.

I hope that they are out there. The volunteers last year, I figured were only about 10 days behind the transplants. Now usually, I figure that I gain about half the days indoors from something like a zucchini, if I set out a plant versus, direct-sowing seed. So, a 20 day old zucchini transplant will have fruit 10 days before the other. Well, not to mix my tomatoes and zucchini, that is about what I got with Coyote, just 10 days. I guess transplanting shock plays some role with my 8+ week old tomato starts!

Anyway, I hope there are volunteers. (Have I already said that?) Is there one you have come across? I don't mean my Coyote - what ripened and what you recognized as a volunteer from a variety previously grown? Or, from a plant directly sown?

Here's one which I haven't tried but that might work - Golden Nugget. The things are sooo early! (And, I know that I've talked about this before on RMG. I should just be thankful that I have a greenhouse and can have transplants but this sorta thing is kinda exotic to me. ;o)

Steve

In longer season areas, yes, it would be possible, Steve. Yet, we are constrained by a relatively short season. Siberians, and there are hundreds, would be the best choice for such an experiment. Flavor is lacking in most of the very early varieties. They get you going until the mid-season ones with more flavor start setting.

Mine are on the shelves under the banks of LED lights. Big strong and ready to start the hardening off process. That will wait until next weekend since overnight lows look to dip close to freezing. Then they go out in the hut and I start selling. People were driving by looking as I was putting up the frame yesterday. Patience, people. Good things are worth waiting for and I'm not going to rush it.

A nice setup, Jali ..!

I had a Russian variety one year. This was just after perestroika and varieties began to show up from the USSR. I can't remember it's name but I gotta say that I'm influenced by names and something like "Siberia" doesn't have much appeal ... I think it was a Russian name and not being able to translate it may have saved me angst ...

Anywho! It had some foliage problems. The next year, I didn't start the seeds but, yes, there was a volunteer! Disease absolutely killed it! This doesn't happen very often in my garden! So, there are other factors besides ripening fruit ... Flavor and health would have to be Big Ones.

Steve

Thanks on the shelving. Years of improving on the idea and finally have what I want.

Again, I'd say the short season is a factor even with the disease. Taking that long for the soil to warm, then when the roots start spreading, so do the nasties in the soil. Certainly worth a try with Golden Nugget. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Nature surprises us, quite often.

Some of the Russians and Siberians are quite nice, but they are later season. Biyskaya Roza (Rose of Biysk) is a luscious beefsteak. I've trialed a lot of them. Some winners. Some losers.