First time tomato grower here! To hedge my bets, I grew 6 tomato plants (2 seeds per cell, picked the strongest seedling per cell) indoors and intend to only keep 1 of each variety due to space.
Well, all 6 ended up surviving growing from seed, to seedling, to being potted up in 4" container, and now they all seem to be doing great during their hardening off period (first in full shade, now in partial sun, will get full sun starting Monday).
Are there any indicators that can help me pick the healthiest tomato plant when I put one in a 15g grow bag near the end of the month?
[Edit] Zone 10a. Here are the plants.
by DrunkenSavior
8 Comments
Here are the plants: https://imgur.com/a/FFAwHxl
One of each was put in full sun today (including 1 I damaged during potting up that I use as my hardening off canary).
Which one is your favorite? Do that one and give the others to family and friends
You are blessed with not really having any duds in the bunch! I don’t think you can pick wrong here. Personally, at this stage I look for the thickest stems, followed by the most robust foliage.
Those all look great! Good job! I think you can pick any of them and they will do well for you. Whoever you give the spares to should be thrilled to get such healthy, robust plants.
That is so aggravating, isn’t it? Like “Would at least ONE of you die to make my choice a little bit easier!!!”
I just make the choice randomly, keeping one extra in reserve just in case. If I can’t give them away to people I know, then I them set out by the road with a sign saying “FREE TOMATO (or ZINNIA, whatever) PLANTS”.
I lose a few decent pots doing this, but I can’t just toss a perfectly good plant on the compost pile.
I had a bunch of extras last year. I got kind of a late start so nobody wanted my extra. I just couldn’t bring myself to throw any away. Hung on for a long time and ended up over planting in my garden. Put some on pots.
They’re hard to get rid of.
Just so you know, San Marzano tomatoes are not snacking or eating tomatoes. They’re paste tomatoes that are suitable only for cooking or making sauces. They will be mealy if you tried to eat one raw.
What kind of soil preparation did you use?