Tomato Growing 2024

I sowed these just over a week ago. Two seeds to a cell. I had let them dry out as it would have been too cold for them earlier but it would have worked as well if I sowed them fresh. Orange cherries from Sainsbury's

 

Just slightly off topic [sorry], I bought a packet of perpetual sweet pea seeds, I also kept some from last year, both sets of seeds were sown together at the same time, and treated the same, except the bought seeds never germinated, my home grown seeds have produced 6 plants. It's the same with hollyhocks, my home grown seeds germinated far better. The experience has given me a lot of confidence to harvest my own seeds this year.

@Mrs. B. I'm going to have a go with that this afternoon, I'll slice and plant a sugardrop cherry tomato from Ocado, just for the heck of it.... will let you know if it works.

 

It'll be interesting to see what colour they turn out to be.

 

Sometimes they don't come true, but that's the fun of it. A plant with lovely lantern shaped tomatoes seeded neatly in a suitable container one year. No idea where it came from but they were delicious.

 

I like to experiment and rarely follow the rules.
If I had followed the rules many years ago half the plants in my garden would probably not be there.

 

No it was the US, but tomatoes is tomatoes whichever way you slice 'em.

 

Yeah its just that often they show this stuff on videos and it turns out to be somewhere that has totally different weather from us in the UK.

I was once told very good tomato plants often grow at sewage out falls, Not sure if that is true.

 

They can pass through your system, so to speak, and the seeds can still germinate.

 

I can confirm that's true. Used to walk the dog along a river in Spain, we used to turn around when we got to the sewage plant, the parameter of the sewage plant was covered in tomatoes. Don't really want to dwell on how they got there, but they did. Looks like tomato seeds are resistant to acid, gastric and oxalic.

 

Some seeds are actually designed to pass through an animals gut before germinating I believe.
Cant think of any examples but I have read that somewhere.

 

Tomatoes are a common layby sighting and it's probably nicer to assume they are from dropped sandwiches.


Lots of seeds germinate better when they have been through a digestive system. I know raspberries, blackberries and hawthorn benefit from it with hawthorn being very slow to germinate if not.

 

Harvesting seeds sounds best left to the professionals

 

I think one reason why tomatoes are so popular is that they are relatively easy to grow (indoors if you don't want blight) and don't get too many pests. Even if you don't sideshoot you will get something and slugs and snails eat everything else in my garden but not the toms.
I also find self sown and self saved seeds tend to germinate better. Parsley is supposed to be hard to germinate but if you let it self seed it comes up like a weed and overwinters here.

 

In Essex I grew tomatoes outside and in the greenhouse, here only in the greenhouse, outdoor ones go down with blight very early in the season.