Hello from New Tomato Grower & Member

[chgokim]

Hello, this is my first post, although I have spent many hours reading this forum. Just wanted to introduce myself and hopefully get some comments/additional knowledge from the friendly experts here.

I have never grown a tomato plant in my life, but will be working with a friend this summer to grow a 50 x 30 ft garden, primarily heirloom tomatoes, hopefully to sell at our local suburban farmers market. My friend has grown many vegetables, but never from seed.

I was longing for some green during this long winter season, so I ordered seeds from Seed Savers Exchange and Baker's Creek and using a planting kit from Menards (Planters Pride - 72 Cell Greenhouse Kit with Coir Pellets - around $6) started some seeds Jan 23 - eggplant, a few pepper varieties and some herbs (thyme, sage and rosemary) and then Feb 3rd started swiss chard, onions and oakleaf lettuce. These were grown in a south facing window, with no added heat, only the plastic lids and careful watering. Not sure how they will end up by end of frost time, I know the onions and lettuce can go out early.





Now onto the tomatoes - the varieties we are going to try (and we have the seeds from Knapp's Fresh Veggies) are:

Amish Paste
Black Krim
Black from Tula
Brandywine Sudduth
Cowlicks Brandywine
Early Rouge
German Johnson
Gold Medal
Granny Cantrel German Red
Kellogs Breakfast Gold
Mortgage Lifter
Neves Azorean Red
Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge
Paul Robeson
Polish Linguisa Plum
Purple Calabash
Shannons Past

So that's 17 varieties, maybe 4 plants each, or if anyone would recommend more of any variety and less of another, I would love to hear comments. I selected the varieties based on things I read both here and at Dave's Garden. We hope to start the tomato seeds in the next few weeks, or possibly sooner. I am still unsure about late vs. early varieties - I know that Neves Azorean and Gold Medal are "late" - does that mean we should start the seeds earlier?

Thanks for reading!

[Goldie]

Welcome...yes this is a friendly place! I am not in your zone so cannot comment on when to start transplants, but "late" means the tomato will take longer to produce fruit from transplant time. Don't let that discourage you from planting late varieties though, because they often taste much better than the earlier ones. Of course the earlier ones still taste better than the grocery store.

[chgokim]

I've tried to correct the funny spelling of Hello in my title, it's not working, so we'll just say that's my new fancy way to say hi!

[chgokim]

Thanks Goldie, that makes sense. They all go out at the same time but produce fruit at different times. So we'll start all the seeds at the same time! We are all about the taste and will be patient with those late varieties. I remember my Dad's delicious home grown tomatoes from when I was a kid, right off the vine with salt. He's long gone and I haven't had a good tomato since.

[b54red]

Welcome, to the home of the true tomato addicts. I envy you just starting out growing tomatoes with this forum for help. It took me many frustrating years to learn less than you will be able to pick up on this site in a few hours of reading.

You will have to find out by trial and error what types of tomatoes do best in your area and that have the taste that suits you so eventually you may also become a tomato fiend. You have some good ones on your list but there are so, so, so many more that you just have to try.

[danwigz]

Hey ChgoKim, welcome to Tomatoville, its a great place for resources!

I lived in Sheboygan WI last year, and I believe its pretty similar to Chicago, I was about a mile or so away from Lake Michigan.

Last year I started the bulk of my tomato plants in the middle of March. For the most part my plants were around 1' tall when I planted in Mid/late may. (As a long aside I staggered my plantings from April 29-May30 to see how the early outside start affected plants. Obviously April is still to early, as I didn't bother to try and cover those early ones and it got to cold. If you can keep your plants warm, planting in very early May probably won't be a problem-assuming we have no frosts after may 1st. I found that all my plants produced well and pretty similarly, but the ones planted by about mid May were in the "zone.")

I don't have as much experience as others around here, but my advice would be to start seed as early as you think you can manage. I found the thing that made the most difference early on was enough room for the roots of the seedlings, which meant the plants given the most amount of room produced the earliest. I used some 1 gallon containers for some of my plants and they grew much larger and produced (albeit only slightly) earlier than the others.

I'm not sure if I'm just ranting now lol, or if this is any help to you at all. You've got a great looking list there though. I definitely agree with b54red, you'll have to do some trial and error to see what people in your area are looking for in a tomato. I'm sure you'll find some that you absolutely love, and that'll make it easier to sell for you. This is why all my friends are getting a Cherokee Purple plant this year, they just have to have some.

GL!

Danwigz

[chgokim]

Thanks all for your replies! B54Red, I am so grateful for the internet in general and especially this forum! It has made the winter months more pleasant as I have something to look forward to, and can use the time to learn - I wish I had been able to do this twenty years ago, but better late than never, and I wouldn't have had this forum back then! I know we'll make mistakes but hopefully we'll end up with something good in the end, we shall see!

Dan, thanks for sharing your past experiences - I think we'll wait until middle to late March as we don't have good space to keep all of those larger plants in possible one gallon containers happy indoors. We've just had a nice warmup here that melted the two feet of snow from our blizzard in a matter of only a few days and it's tricking me into thinking spring is here, but I'll be patient and keep reading and learning for the next month... Uggh!

[jwr6404]

Anyong Ha Seyo ChgoKIM. I'm sure you will find this site friendly,informative and happy to have you on Board.