Transplanting done - some observations...

[nctomatoman]

Whew...started last Friday, just finished - potted up around 2000 tomato seedlings, 300 eggplant, 200 sweet peppers and 300 hot peppers. I have the characteristic permanent staining of the hands and fingers by repeated immersion into MetroMix 360!

Just focusing on tomatoes - 2330 seeds planted (roughly), 2570 seedlings - so my overall germination success this year is 91% (that includes 9% on two cells of Cherokee Green, and 33% on two cells of Red Robin). The oldest seed I used this year for the 25 plus seed cells was from 2000 - I ended up with germination percentages of 90, 100, 100, 96, 56, and 86%.

For my own plantings, I germinated seed from 1996 (70, 90, 65%) and 1997 (100%). And Darrel, your Red Brandywine seed germinated at 100%, as did Black Cherry - Brandywine was in the 80% range.

A few other interesting observations - we talk here and there about leaf shape "flips", changes, etc. About 2000 seedlings of my 2330 were regular leaf varieties - ZERO potato leaf seedlings noted (including 200 Cherokee Purple and 100 Red Brandywine) - no potato leaf at all. This is consistent with what I've seen every year I've done this. So my contention is that if potato leaf is showing up in a regular leaf variety, it is instability from a cross somewhere down the line or stray seed or mix ups, not a genetic inclination for the variety to change leaf shapes.

One more observation - I had one variety that had none of the purplish pigment at all in the stem - it was a very pale green - a yellow pear shaped cherry called Malschor Isura, that I got from Reinhard Kraft. (I grew it last year as well). The only other tomato variety I've seen with this lack of purplish stem pigment is Idli, also a yellow grape type, but smaller, with many more blossoms in the cluster. I wonder if the lack of stem pigment is linked to yellow fruit color?? This is much more common in Eggplant - quite a few varieties have the clear green stems.

Now all we need is a few weeks of consistently warm, sunny weather!