How To Grow Stronger Tomato Plants 🌸 || Tomato, Pepper, & Eggplant Seeds

Everyone knows that I focus mainly on flowers, but I do love some fresh veggies in my garden. Follow along as I show how to start tomato, pepper, and eggplants seeds.

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Planting Zone 8a Wylie, Texas

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Hey y’all it’s Amanda and this is my Texas Zone 8 Garden and today you are going to be watching the flower Gardener preparing vegetable seeds for my 2024 Garden okay so one of my big goals this year is to do a lot more companion planting and be able to mix more flowers and vegetables together I think it’s going to create first of all I think it’s going to create a beautiful look within my garden I like the whimsicle

Quality of having you know vegetables and you know this edible plants mixed in with my flowers I think it just sounds beautiful also think it’s going to do a lot to bring a lot of beneficial insects into my garden which I think is super important especially since I’m someone

Who doesn’t like to like spray for anything um it’s not that I’m like against spraying you know any kind of insecticides or anything it’s not that I’m against it it’s more of laziness I don’t I don’t want to I just don’t want to I don’t want to spend the money on it

And I don’t want to spend the time on it so it very much is just like you know survival of the fittest in my garden and then third I do think that it’s going to add um it’s going to continue to grow the quality soil to create a quality

Soil within my garden if I’m using different types of plants in different places I think that that’s going to help overall for the soil quality within my garden with that being said I’m not real big on giving up very much space for my vegetables I prefer mostly to um grow

Them in pots if possible and I do have a new system I’ll be using this year that I’ll show you all once we get to planting Nel outside I don’t grow tons and tons of vegetables or edible plants at this point in time because it’s just

Not my focus that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy having fresh tomatoes or um bell peppers that’s mainly been my focus in the past is peppers and tomatoes so this year I’m going to be continuing with the tomatoes the bell peppers and I’m going to be adding in eggplants okay so a

Couple of things I’ve been doing um research reading books so a couple of different books this first book I got is the backyard Harvest 50 container gardening projects to grow food flowers and more and that’s been really fun because it just has a lot of like fun silly ideas recyclable ideas for growing

Things like vegetables and flowers within containers so that’s been really fun and this is by the author is Susan patter so um I’ll put this I’ll I’ll add this into my um Amazon storefront if you’re interested and the other one I’m doing is vegetables vegetables love flowers companion planting for beauty and Bounty

And this is by Lisa Mason Ziggler which if you’ve read cool flowers you’ll recognize that name and this has been a fun one the idea of mixing them what what goes well together just things along those lines so it’s been really fun to kind of focus on these two books

To kind of give me a little bit more information yes I can find all of this on YouTubes you don’t have to buy a book you can find tons of information online without buying the book I’m just someone who actually really loves having a book

In hand I think is really fun okay so we’re going to go ahead and start with tomatoes let me talk to you um a little bit about tomatoes and then I’ll talk to you about the varieties I’m growing I just forgot I I forgot to even look in

The mirror before I started filming hopefully it Fly okay I love growing tomatoes I think they are so much fun I have had lots and lots success growing tomatoes and I have had lots of failures growing tomatoes so what I’m going to be doing is really kind of talking to you

About starting tomatoes from seed from a flower Grower’s point of view because I feel like um vegetable gardening or gardening like an Edible Garden is so completely different from a flower garden yet so similar if that makes sense there’s just different strategies for both so this is going to be the

Point of view of a flower Gardener’s mind for starting vegetables by from seed so one of the first things you need to know about tomatoes is indeterminant versus determinant and this is two different types of tomatoes an indeterminant is a tomato that doesn’t have a stopping size does the

Plant does not have a you know a specific size the plant continues to grow and grow and grow and grow and grow could be eight nine 10 feet tall right and it will grow and continue to produce fruit after fruit after fruit after fruit throughout your entire growing

Season until it gets to the point where it either dies off from excessive heat like in Texas or it dies off from the cold now a determinate size is when the tomato plant is going to grow to a certain height and stop it’s going to produce a flush of beautiful fruit and

Then it’s going to be done so it’s just a very determinant stopping point in its growth and production now both indeterminant and determinant have a really cool thing about them tomato plants in general are able to grow lots and lots of roots on the entire length

Of their stem so with that in mind when we are starting tomatoes from seed we’re going to use a process that’s going to help us produce more Roots along the stem of the Tomato therefore producing a more robust healthier plant that’s going to have a higher production yield okay

Now that youall know what indeterminant and determinant is let’s talk about the varieties I’m going to be starting okay the first one is a deter per minute so it’s going to grow to a specific size specific um round of production and then stop and this is called a 42 day tomato

And I bought it for the exact reason you’re hearing it’s a you know produces in a very short amount of time it is one of the world’s earliest tomatoes and is also has excellent flavor small 1 oz fruits are bright red and have very few seeds while most early Tomatoes

Originate from cooler climates the 42 day tomato is believed to have come from Mexico it is unique as it does well in both cool and warm climates climates an excellent choice for pots so the reason I chose this is It’s number one does well in pots secondly it can handle a

Little bit of cooler climate so I can get it out a little bit earlier and it handles hotter climates as well so I actually extend this whole growing season for this tomato one thing about my particular area is there’s really kind of two distinct growing Seasons we

Have spring into early summer then we have everything d eyes and the Heat of the summer and then we start again late summer into fall is our second round so while a lot of people have a huge amount of production in the middle of their summer that’s the big time here for me

In this area that’s when we have 30 plus days of triple degree temps and we’re not really putting seeing a lot of production from um plants such as my tomatoes and or Peppers now that is certainly been my experience there are some of you guys who are more seasoned

Vegetable Growers probably have had different experiences or have tips and tricks for helping limp these plants through the hottest parts of the summer if you do make sure you drop that information below in the comments okay so um I did want to say all of these are

From Mi Gardener love Mi Gardener love the prices love the information that’s provided um the next variety is an indeterminate so it will grow and grow and grow and grow and grow and it is called orange Ox heart tomato and this Virginia heirloom is a stunning Ox heart

Shaped variety beef steak Style tomato with very little seeds or gel plants produce many tomatoes weighing around 16 to 32 ounces on average the plants are very disease resistant and will produce late into the season the well balanced flavor of this variety makes it ideal

For any recipe so I picked this one of the specific things I picked this for is because it says that it’s um disease resistant which I’m all for that if my plants aren’t finicky I I’m all for that I also chose it because it’s beautiful absolutely beautiful

Gorgeous I’ve seen a couple of other gardeners grow it and I just I want it in my garden okay the next one I purchased completely for the look of it so I hope it tastes good too it is called con conut conut conut it is called contillo geneves

Tomato and it is an indeterminate as well and this Italian slicing tomato Bears High disease resistant yields the fruits are red and ribbed a unique shape compared to the traditional round tomato use this sweet and juicy variety as a right off the vine snack or slice up to

Toss into a salad and um I was really excited to start this one I just really loved the look of it’s kind of like crinkly form I thought would be really fun and then the final variety I’m starting is called Money Maker tomato and this is an indeterminant and this

English garden kitchen favorite is they must have for lovers of the traditional tomato flavor known for its versatility this variety loves hot humid weather and grows well in green houses the color and flesh are deep crimson and are full of amazing acidic flavor so um and this one

Looks a little bit more like a cherry tomato maybe a little bit larger um than a cherry tomato but I’m excited to try this one as well okay with that being said let’s talk about how I’m going to be planting up my tomato seeds because

This process is going to be a little bit different than how you pretty much seen all of my other seeds starting going so let me show you now I am going to as always start start with my burger bm7 potting soil I don’t typically use a seed starting mix um I

Don’t like to buy the extra um pay for that extra kind of specialty soil when I have located a potting soil that has a really great like loose Airy um feel to it so I feel like my seeds do well enough in that one without having to purchase additional soil

Now a couple of things about having this potting soil versus something like seed starting mix a lot of times seed starting mix or specifically indoor potting mix are sterile so um you’ll have less issues with disease fungus knet things like that I don’t really stress about it I

Don’t see enough of a difference to Warrant myself buying seed starting mix but that’s me that doesn’t mean that you should have to do this potting soil mix you should try both I’ve tried both you should try seed starting mix you should try potting soil find out what works

Best for you and go with that don’t just go off of what all the other Gardener say try it out for yourself and make sure you’re getting what is going to work best for your seed starting process okay A little bit of a different situation I’m not going to be starting

My seeds in my typical little 12 uh seeds starting sell containers from Amazon that I love so much what you want to do with tomato seeds is remember how I talked about how the stems can grow roots we want to start it in a longer taller container as opposed to a

Wider container and the reason being is we’re going to use a specific potting up or starting method on this so that we can get more roots on the stems as these continue to grow and create more robust plants for outside so basically what we’re going to do is I’m starting with

This container um I don’t know if these are on my Amazon storefront if not I’ll try to add them it does have drainage at the bottom you can also use like red Solo cups plastic cups something along those something something that’s taller is what you need and basically I’m only

Going to fill this about a third of the way with soil that’s it that’s all I’m putting in it and then at that point I’m just going to take we’ll start with the money maker right here I’m going to come in here and I’m going to take a couple of

Seeds we’ll start with two seeds in here and I’m going to drop them in there easy peasy and then I’m just going to come in I’m going to firm kind of push them down make sure they have really great contact with the soil and then I’m

Just going to come over the top lightly with it a/ qu inch the soil across the top and that’s it all right now why did I not fill this up the idea is that these um seeds will Sprout they’ll put on seedlings and once the seedling grows

Up and over the um uh the lip of the container at that point in time I will back fill with additional soil almost to the top of the container and all that additional stem that will then be underneath the soil will produce additional roots and make it a stronger

Plant at that point you know so we will have you know four or five inches worth of root space and as my SE Le continues growing taller it probably be at least a foot tall by the time I go out to plant it outside at that time I’ll still strip

Off 2/3 the leaves and put plant the rest of that stem underneath the soil as well with just a little bit of leaves at the top and that will give me almost 12 Ines of root structure strong root structure underneath the soil and the more roots that you get the stronger

Your plant’s going to be the more disease resistant your plant’s going to be and perhaps the higher yield your tomato plant is going to be now I am not looking to start a tons and tons and tons of um stuff here so I’m going to start probably three of each um set of

Tomatoes and the reason I’m only doing that is because I don’t have tons and tons of space like y I said it’s really hard for me to give up space um from my flowers for vegetables so s me things so I don’t want to start a ton more plants

Than what I actually need and so I’m just going to probably start three of each vary and then a lot of these I will restart probably end of June July maybe beginning of July I’ll start a whole another round for um the fall for my fall season because all of

These most likely will die off or stop production um Midsummer so you want to start your tomato seeds about 6 to8 weeks before the last frost and then you want to plant them outside about 2 to 3 weeks after the last frost they are very susceptible to cold weather they do not

Do well outside so that’s something that’s super important if you have something like a greenhouse you could probably get yours outside sooner than later okay we’ve got them all planted up and at this point what I’m going to do is put them all into a 10x 20 water reservoir

Just like that and then what I’ll do is go ahead and add water to the bottom of this and allow these to start soaking up water and then once I’ve planted all my other seeds I’ll get these all set up with humidity domes underneath the lights and show youall what that looks

Like okay and tomato SE seeds do benefit from a heating mat um the warmer it is the more likely they’re going to germinate quicker but it’s not absolutely required so so if you want to go ahead and cheat and start your tomato seeds a couple weeks early but not turn

The heating mat on you can maybe get away with that as well they also prefer to be bottom watered all seeds should be bottom watered as well so pour water into the reservoir and allow this plant to suck up the water once it’s had several hours to suck up the water dump

Out any of the extra water so that your seedblings aren’t just sitting in water as always we like to put or I like to put a humidity Dome on top of my seats once the seats have germinated at least 50% of them have germinated then I

Remove the humidity dome for the rest of the growing process if you leave that humidity Dome throughout um the entire growing process you are more likely to have disease and damping off issues things along those lines with your seedlings I did want to also say regarding fertilizing I do fertilize my

Seedlings about every two to three weeks with a liquid fertilizer specifically Alaska Fish Emulsion and I highly suggest you guys do that as well well especially for something like tomatoes which are heavy feeders okay there are two more varieties of seeds we’re going to start today I am going to be starting

A bell pepper it is a Lilac Bell Pepper and it is a stny unique variety that stands out with its vibrant lilac purple Hue the eye catching pepper adds a pop of color to any dish making it an exciting addition to salad stir fries and more its sweet mild flavor makes it

A versatile ingredient in both raw and cook preparations in the Lilac Bell Peppers crunchy texture and delightful taste Elevate The Culinary experience provide a fresh twist to traditional bell pepper dishes with its alluring appearance and delicious taste this pepper is sure to impress and Inspire

Creativity in the kitchen I saw it on in my Gardener and I was like I must have it it’s beautiful that’s literally why I picked it so maybe not I think that’s the flower Gardener me that I picked it that way um the fruits are about three

In in length and um this one um is about 10 to 20 um one day’s germination I forgot to say the tomatoes are typically about 5 to 10 days germination I’m just I’m going back on that so I’m this is the only variety of bell pepper that I

Am starting this year with the reasoning because if you guys remember I overwintered my peppers and they’re doing awesome so I don’t I mean there’s a freaking jalapeno pepper on here right now so I overwintered um Jedi uh hot peppers and esimo sweet peppers and I loved both of those varieties last year

I overwintered the plants the plants are doing beautifully I don’t feel the need to start additional bell pepper plants of those varieties um so that’s why I’m the only one I’m starting is the Lilac Bell Pepper now I am going to be starting my bell peppers in my

Traditional um trays uh my 12 seed cell trays from Amazon and and I’m just running my soil over here using my fingers to gently pack it down a little bit now these seeds need about be about a four of an inch deep some people have asked do I need to

Pre-soak my tomato or um bell pepper or eggplant seeds that is something that helps with some seeds um but I wouldn’t stress about doing it with the tomato or Bel pepper seeds I think what I’m going to do put a little bit more in there that one I hesitate to start 12 plants

However I do have friends my friends Christal and Richard they love to grow things like this so if I go ahead and start this for them they can have some my friend Kristen will love these because they’re beautiful purple tone she’ll love that in her garden so I’ll

Go ahead and start a full tray so I’m just going to push down on these making sure they have really good contact with the soil just like that and then we’re going to come back across the top just like that all right and then I’m just going

To add water about 40% halfway into the water reservoir put that there okay and add my humidity Dome okay and then for the bell peppers my humidity dome is closed and I will leave it um the humidity Dome on until at least 50% of the seeds have

Germinated at that point in time I will take the community Dome off bell peppers can also benefit from a heating mat so I’m going to put mine on the heating mat they typically like to be 75 to 85° for germination so definitely a heating mat and these will germinate in about 10 to

21 days okay and then the new to me vegetable that I’m starting from seed this year is eggplant and once again the flower grower and me saw these and were like they’re so pretty so I that’s why I got them I don’t eat a lot of eggplant I

Think if it was like readily available in my garden I definitely would because I like vegetables we eat them all the time they’re supposed to be pretty good for stir fry and in several different um types of food I eat a lot of stir fry in

This house we eat a lot of fresh vegetables and a lot of fresh protein um so we do tons of stir fry so the variety I ended up with is called Lada de gandia eggplant and it’s a beautiful Italian heirloom eggplant has gorgeous Violet and white streaks this sweet eggplant is

Oval shaped and easy to cook as it requires no peeling which that was one of the other reasons I got this one is because I as little prep as possible with my vegetables I’m here for that um the plant size on these it’s only 20 to

30 in tall so I like the smaller size because this can be grown in a container and grown as like a patio type of plant for germination it is 60 to 85 degrees so I will go ahead and put it on a germination on a heating mat and

Germinates in 7 to 14 days now all of these vegetables require full sun Tomatoes bell peppers all of them are full sun I didn’t bring that up at the beginning but yes they’re all full sun and with this one since these are new to me and the plants are so small I’m

Probably going to start a full tray of them as well because like I said if I end up not wanting all of them I can always give them to friends or other gardeners one of my um another Gardener in my area is like every day I go to

Pick up my son from elementary school and one of the teachers in the pickup line she has a garden as well and I just asked her the other day I was like hey are you growing again this year and she’s like yep I am she was talking

About the stuff that she already has in the ground ready to go and I was like if I have extra seedlings do you want them she was like absolutely so this would be fun as well now these seeds are planted about A4 of an inch deep as

Well and I’m putting two per um Container and then once again I’m going to pour about 40% to halfway in the water reservoir and for those of you who are new to my channel you might notice that I don’t pre moist my soil I don’t like to I think it’s really messy and I do

All this inside so I just um used the dry soil and then I put the water in the reservoir and allow it to soak up does a really good job working out any air bubbles things along those lines and I don’t feel feel like starting with the

Dry and then having the water Wick up from the bottom has you know had any kind of direct impact on the amount of seed leads that I’ve grown or the quality okay and then humidity Dome goes on with humidity Dome close and um we will leave this on until at

Least 50% of the seeds are um germinated and at that time we’ll remove it so one thing I wish I had done when ordering these cups um a year or so ago I wish I’d confirm that they fit well into the this uh 8 by um or this uh 10x

20 tray because they really don’t not very well and so I always have to end up kind of leaning one of them uh this back row which is not necessarily ideal now if I don’t have a humidity down you can absolutely just come over the top of this with Rand wrap plastic

Wrap you just want to make sure you have a nice really good seal that press and seal would be really really good too so and then if you’ve got that plastic wrap on and you’re like H it feels like too much humidity you can always just poke a

Little hole um directly over you know wherever you need to to release a little bit of humidity but you don’t have to go purchase Community Dome if you don’t want to you can definitely get away with something like the plastic um Saran Wrap so I’m going to go ahead and put the

Eggplant and the bell pepper under here okay and I cannot find my larger humidity GS it’s because I don’t use them very often cuz I’m always working with the small scale stuff so you get to see me struggle with Saran Wrap I’m so not good with Saran Wrap

Guys the struggle is real so let me see what I can do pulling some of this out and I always have a hard time getting Saran Wrap or plastic wrap to stick so I might actually end up taping some of this on here just to make sure I have a more secure [Applause]

Seal and those of you who are just giggling at me right now tell me your tricks and ways with working with plastic wers wrapper Saran Wrap why is the struggle so real for me and um usually I put a couple of layers because it makes it stronger and

Easier to kind of maneu for a move around and if I go over the side like this I’m going really let me push this back some I went far enough over the side like this I can then kind of take my plastic wrap and tuck it into the side

Of this um water reservoir like that it gives me a little bit better seal that you guys will get to see how they do with plastic wrap I don’t love to use plastic rat one of the main reasons is because it’s hard to reuse and I don’t like one time use

Plastic if I can get away with it okay we’ll go with that okay we are all set getting these started from seeds there are some other fruits and vegetables may growing from seeds this year this is the main ones that I wanted to get started right now anything else

That I’m going to be growing will be new to me stuff I will still document the process but I will not be an expert on it but I’m really excited to get all of these going I’m excited about the look and scale and texture that all of these

Can add to my garden mixed with some of my flowers and worked into some of the flowers I’m going to have some in pots and containers I’m going to have some directly in the rais beds the ones that are going to be in the raids beds are

Just going to be like a single or maybe a double um set in the beds with flowers all around them um it’s not going to be like a whole raised bed of tomatoes or Peppers so I’m going to have a little bit of a different approach try it out

In a you know like one pepper plant in an actual flower bed and then one pepper plant in um a pot see if there’s a difference in the yield of fruit I think it’ll be fun to experiment with all of that so we learned a lot we talked about indeterminant versus determinant on

Tomatoes we talked about how Tomatoes can grow roots on their stem and I showed you my method for getting more roots on the stems for a stronger more robust plant as the tomatoes Contin Lings continue to grow up I’ll be sure to document the process and show you

Guys when I am adding more soil to increase that um amount of roots on the stem we also talked about Bel Peppers getting bell peppers started and why I’m only starting one variety this year because I’ve had such good success with overwintering mine and then also starting a new variety to me eggplant

Which will be super fun we have a lot of really cool stuff coming up in the next couple of weeks I’m going to be doing some spring bulbs that I’m going to be forcing inside we are going to be um potting up all the cholas taking additional propagation cuts from them

Potting up cholas for double the monus that I currently have I’m also going to be planting some be root roses from Walmart and I am starting another round of cut flower seeds so we have a very busy couple of weeks coming up but I’m excited you know I always used to treat

January as a time off for gardening and I think over the years my thought process has shifted for my own garden and my location in that I used to think oh it’s January it’s winter I’ll take it off January is actually a really busy time for Zone 8 for my area we’re

Preparing for the gardening and so I’ve really been way busier picking it up this January where I’m seeing the time where I will be taking more of a break is July and August um there’s just everything’s dead dying and really what you’re doing is preparing for your fall Garden at that

Point in this particular area north Texas Zone a or Zone 8 you know and so I think my attitude has changed a little bit regarding that of when my time off actually is for gardening which is kind of fun all right you all as always make sure you like comment and subscribe to

The channel talk to me about what vegetables you have grown what ones you think I should grow and that would work well in my area it might work well with the style of my garden lots of you’all have been watching for quite a long time so you probably have a really good idea

Or some good suggestions on what you think I should grow as well I would really appreciate that and then if you have any additional tips for starting Tomatoes bell peppers and eggplant make sure you drop those below and share remember that the comment section is like a massive um just kind container of

Wealth of in wealth of information that’s what I’m trying to say it’s it’s a massive wealth of information put your information down there answer questions if you see people asking questions you don’t have to wait for me um a lot of y’all I know of garden probably triple

The amount of time I’ve Garden so you might have some really awesome information and make sure you check me out on Tik Tok Instagram and Facebook as always she’s a mad Gardener or decorator or anything else that she wants to be thanks y’all