Our indoor gardening projects at school

[jennifer28]

We're growing a few fun things in my classroom at school. My classroom is kind of like a greenhouse... lots of fluorescent light and an average ambient temperature of 75 degrees. The heat is always on. I can open the windows like greenhouse vent windows when it hits around 85 to cool it off a bit. Anyway it is a fantastic place to start tomatoes.

We are growing the following:
1. Floragold Basket. From Tatiana's. We are growing this to keep inside.
2. Micro Tom. Another just for fun project, you can see it already has a little tomato on it!
3. Rozalinda. From ContainerTed. We will keep this inside in a container for the kids.
4. Tommy Toe. From ContainerTed. We will keep this inside in a container too.
5. NOT Krasnodor Titans, Regular leaf. From containerTed. He thought it was Krasnodor Titans, and I wouldn't have known any better, except I also got some potato leafed plants from the same batch of seed. See #6.
6. NOT Krasnodor Titans, Potato leaf. From ContainerTed. These were in with the seeds labeled Krasnodor Titans. I messaged Ted about it and I am keeping the potato and the regular leaf plants, and I will see what comes from them. But I won't be passing on any seeds from them because I don't know what they are and I don't want to pass around seed that I don't know what it is, and call it the wrong thing.
7. Ground cherry seedlings. For outside. They take forever to germinate so I started them already.

You can see them in photos 1-7 respectively.

Thanks to your generosity, we have a lot of these plants growing. I just took one photo of each to show you our progress.

[vagardener434]

Nice pics Jenn. That's some quality photo work you did, very nice.

How old is the MicroTom? I have some seeds that a friend sent me, but I haven't done anything with them. I'm wondering how fast they start producing.

[maf]

Sounds like a good project, I hope the kids enjoy it.

Just a heads up on Tommy Toe, that thing grows a huge vine, not a candidate for a long term indoor plant unless you have plenty of space.

[jennifer28]

Originally Posted by vagardener434

Nice pics Jenn. That's some quality photo work you did, very nice.

How old is the MicroTom? I have some seeds that a friend sent me, but I haven't done anything with them. I'm wondering how fast they start producing.

Thank you. I took the pics with my cellphone, I wasn't sure how they would come out.
I believe I planted the micro toms with my students around 8 weeks ago. They just took off. I just started them in Jiffy plugs and then transplanted them to 6 inch pots with my own soil mix.

I really think the rapid growth for the plants is due to the fact that they are sitting on a stone slab above a long hot radiator that heats the classroom. The radiator is always on. The room temp does get close to 90 degrees if I don't open the window. I have a large thermometer next to the plants and I use it to know when to open the windows. Also they are in a south facing window sill and my students turn the plants every day to keep the stems strong.

These plants are really ornamental (the tomatoes are like the size of a pea) but I have so many growing that all the kids will be able to taste them.

[jennifer28]

Originally Posted by maf

Sounds like a good project, I hope the kids enjoy it.

Just a heads up on Tommy Toe, that thing grows a huge vine, not a candidate for a long term indoor plant unless you have plenty of space.

Thank you for the advice about the tommy toe. We have a large garden outside, so if it comes down to it we can put them there or I can give them to families who need them for food. I've never grown tommy toes before.

[stonysoilseeds]

those are amazing pictures and such a worthwhile project for your sstudents they are lucky to have you as a teacher. i was wondering alsso what type of growing media do you have them planted in it looks loaded with compost

[Worth1]

In grade school I used to grow flowers for the teacher.
The rest of the kids hated me and were jealous.
Then the fresh apples from our orchard.

Worth

[RebelRidin]

Way cool Jennifer! The kids have got to be interested in that. No easy feat in this digital age.

[ContainerTed]

Just found this thread. Don't know how I missed it. Great pictures.

Yes, the Tommy Toe plant will be a very large plant indeed. The problem on Krasnador Titans goes back to the thread about Lincoln Adams. I had received seeds from Carolyn for Lincoln Adams and only grew out one plant. It was regular leaf which is wrong for LA, but the tomato it produced was absolutely delicious. After looking at all the data we could find on it, we seemed to agree that it might be Krasnador Titans. Well, now it must be a cross of some sort.

I hope Jennifer will keep one regular leaf for her own garden. The tomato we got was an 8 or so ounce slightly flattened globe and definitely RED. But it was a taste of 8.5 or better.

Glad to see the kids are seeing how easily they can grow something for themselves and then eat it AND it tastes good and is good for them.

My seedbox is always open to Jennifer and her students.

Ted

[jennifer28]

Thanks Ted!
Here is a photo of some of the purple foliage on that "Titans" seedling.
It was hard to get a photo of it, the seedlings are perfectly healthy.

[jennifer28]

Originally Posted by stonysoilseeds

those are amazing pictures and such a worthwhile project for your sstudents they are lucky to have you as a teacher. i was wondering alsso what type of growing media do you have them planted in it looks loaded with compost

Ira,

I use a mix of worm castings (we have a worm farm here at school), perlite, and some other fillers. I have the recipe written down, I'll get it when I get home and post it here.