Episode 1547: Seg 1 S10E10 Starting your tomatoes off right - The Gardening with Joey and Holly Radio Show

before we get in the program,

how it's time for this week's joke of the week.

All right, so what is the snowman's favorite type of vegetable?

What it would be, wouldn't it be carrot?

Cause he has a carrot for his nose.

That's cannibalistic.

Okay.

A snowpey.

A snowpey.

Cause it's the way that cold for the buttons, isn't it?

Yeah.

And for the eyes.

Oh, okay.

I think normally, whatever you got, you know,

if you can find any grapes on the snow,

then you can use it too.

So this week's garden joke is brought to you by rescue.com.

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So many of us will be starting tomatoes in a few weeks.

So one to talk about that particular topic.

So we can get all on board on the same page.

You want to start your tomatoes.

Now, first of all, there's about 25,000 different varieties,

estimated tomatoes in the world.

Now, not all of them are commercially available,

as some have been passed down through generations,

and then that particular family is stop gardening

or have passed on, and those seeds have died

in the hands of time.

So there is, let's, the thousand still available.

However, you're not going to have enough time in your life

to grow hundreds and thousands of them.

You know that somebody's going to listen to this

and try to figure out how they can grow, like,

one tomato, yeah, yeah, I can grow 100 tomatoes

in my gardenish, yeah, yeah.

For the next 30 years, yeah.

I hope that somebody does do that.

You want to start your tomatoes six to eight weeks

before your last average frost date.

You can find your last average frost date

by going to your favorite search engine

and typing in last average frost date

in your zip code here.

Now, this is a guideline that doesn't mean

if your last average frost date is May 14th,

that May 15th, you can go ahead and plant them.

That's not how that works.

This is a guideline.

So you want to get them planted prior to it.

Six to eight weeks is what we normally do.

And you don't have to start your seeds at all.

You can go to the garden center

and buy them independent or a big commercial box store.

It doesn't make a difference.

However, the varieties are more readily available

for the home gardener rather than the eight or 12

that you may have at your garden center.

So you can start these seeds in seed starting trays

and cups and grow bags, whatever you want.

However, whenever we do a planting of tomatoes

in my root maker seed tray,

we put two seeds in each cell.

And then the strongest one survives.

We wean off the one that's weaker.

If you do this in a party cup where you combine

a 12 or 15 seeds of like variety, beef steak or cherry,

we don't label ours anymore.

And all the beef steak gets grown in one.

All the cherries grow in another.

And then we plant them out in the garden.

We don't label them anything like that.

Once they're in a party cup

and you've got 12 or 15 plants germinating,

which takes about 10 days.

Once they get about three or four inches tall,

you can go ahead and remove them

and then plant them in their individual cells

in your seed tray.

However, you're doing individual party cups.

You can go that route.

Seed starting mix.

Yeah, so you can use anything from potting soil,

potting mix, compost.

You want to do make sure that you have something

that either has a slow release fertilizer in it

or you are adding some sort of liquid fertilizer

about a quarter strength of what you would normally add.

About four weeks after you plants,

whatever you plant,

especially if it's something that doesn't have

any sort of fertilizer in it already,

like those little peak pellets

that a lot of people like those little jiffy peak pellets

or even compost.

You just want to make sure that you are keeping

those seedlings fed.

And you can do that.

Quarter of the strength.

You can use that compost tea.

You can use synthetic organic fertilizer.

However, you want to do it.

But quarter of the strength of what the recommended rate is,

if you do compost tea,

you can just go ahead and water them as normal.

Compose tea is not going to overbearing the seedlings.

You want to plant these.

Most of us are starting them in a climatized environment,

such as a home or insulated garage, whatever that it is.

And you won't need a heat mat.

If you're in a questionable area

where your temperatures are beyond the 64, 72, 74 degree range,

you'll want a horticultural grade heat mat

in order to put under these seeds

for tomatoes, peppers, eggplants,

to warm the soil until the seeds begin to germinate.

Once they begin to germinate,

then you can go ahead and turn that heat off.

Turn the heat off and get them under a grow light.

Now, not all grow lights are created equal

and you need to do your research to find that out.

So because cheap, it doesn't always mean good.

You definitely want to think about

indeterminate and semi-determinate.

So these are types of tomatoes that grow.

So the indeterminate is something like

what is known as the vine tomato.

So these tomatoes will keep putting out fruit

no matter how long they are growing

until frost hits

or you destroy it

or yeah, that's the reason.

And the season, whatever.

Then there's indeterminate,

which is more known as like the bush tomato,

it's going to put on a large fruiting

kind of all at once and then that's it.

And then semi-determinate is a combination of the both.

It's going to put out a lot of tomatoes

and then solely put out more.

If, whenever you transplant your seedlings,

whenever that time is come for you,

you want to plant them out when the soil temperature

is 50 degrees at root zone consistently

for the foreseeable future.

Take your trial, dig a little hole,

take them each thermometer

and put it there and see if you're at 50 degrees

and then if you are between like 48, 49, 51,

look at that 15 day long range forecast.

Is there anything that's going to fall below that 50 degree mark?

We see this all the time

or we've seen this in the past

where on YouTube or videos

where people are planting their tomatoes

weeks and weeks and even months before they should be.

And then you get this cold snap

and they've got load tunnels

and they've got plastic over it.

And they've got space eaters.

It's more work.

It's like a whole mental gymnastics

of keeping your tomatoes warm

and you can just keep it simple

which is what you want to do.

Most people prefer not if you want the challenge

by all means, go ahead.

Oh, don't, don't, don't.

You've got other things

than to go out there and baby at 3 a.m.

making sure the ambient temperature

and the cold frame is at least 50 degrees

so these tomato plants don't freeze.

Right.

So now there are anomalies.

You we plant these at the right time

and all of a sudden we get a snap of coldness

or whatever, I get that.

But plant them at the right time.

Right, absolutely.

So then as you mentioned,

you know, think about your grow lights

and also feed the plants as needed.

We can talk about hardening off.

Hardening off.

Yeah, at the appropriate time,

you want to take your tomato plants

for your particular area

and harden them off,

taking them outside

and acclimate them

from the ambient temperature

from indoors to outdoors

over the course of a week.

This can be a challenge at times

if you are working outside of the home

but what you're wanting to do

is you take them outside

and get them loose to the brightness of the sun

because it's far brighter than the grow lights.

Put them in partial shade

for a couple of hours,

bring them back in,

put them back outside

for longer duration,

then gradually move them into full sun

by the end of the week

when those temperatures are adequate.

So you can have these plants.

Now if you buy them from the garden center,

this is, I'll admit this,

hardening off process.

You don't have to worry about that at all.

This is only for when you start your own.

Let's talk about some of our favorite tomato varieties.

For me, I like the purpley tomatoes,

like the black crim,

the Cherokee purple.

I definitely like those.

I like any sort of cherry tomato

all the time, anytime.

And then I do like Roma tomatoes.

Those are good.

Any sort of paste tomatoes

whether it be Roma,

Amish paste.

Those are typically good

for making your pasta sauce,

variety, type of foods.

I like the black crim.

That's a good one.

Cherokee purple is good.

Giant white.

I always think that's a really sweet one,

as well as snowball.

That's another,

that's a white variety of tomato there.

So there's a lot of different things

in which you can grow.

Try to find what works best for you

for your particular area.