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!