Well it is that time of year again – tomato time. Yes it is time to think about starting your tomato seeds growing so you can get a bumper harvest this year.
Where I live it is still far too cold to start tomato seeds growing outside. You can either think of growing them in the house on a sunny windowsill or growing them in a greenhouse but inside a heated propagator. I use both methods but prefer the kitchen windowsill method. This room is a lot warmer than my greenhouse and the temperature is more even. And the light from the window isn’t too bad.
You need to sow your seeds on the surface of a good quality potting mix and can either do this in small flats or in cells in plug trays. I prefer to use plug trays as it is easy to just get one tomato seed in each cell. If you do use flats, then rather than sprinkle the seeds from the packet again try spacing the tomato seed out in rows. If you do just sprinkle them out of the packet you will end with lots of your tomatoes growing together and crowding each other. Spacing them out individually helps them grow better, makes them easier to transplant and will help lessen disease.
Once you have then on the surface of your seed potting mix, sieve some more on them, just enough to cover them or use a covering of fine grade vermiculite. You need to water the seeds. Many people do this with a watering can but I prefer to stand the plug tray or flat in a tray of water and let it soak up water like a sponge. The will make the seed moist. After that stand it somewhere warm at 65F to 75F until the seeds germinate then reduce the temperature a little.
I stand mine on the kitchen windowsill and to make sure they do not get too stretched looking for the brightest light, I stand them on an upside-down flat (or seed tray). This raises them up slightly above the window frame and the other thing I do is turn the plug trays every day so the tomato plants do not get bent towards the light but grow as straight as possible.
When the seedlings first emerge from the potting mix they put up a shoot with two seed leaves on. These are not the true leaves of the tomato plant but these will appear after a few days to a week. Once the real leaves appear your baby tomatoes plants wait until there are two pairs and then these need transplanting into larger pots.