Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Master Gardener

I've read that it's really hard to grow tomatoes from seed--particularly from store bought tomatoes--and that all kinds of planning and complicated steps are necessary to accomplish this feat.  This made me sad, because I really wanted to try and grow some Campari tomatoes from seed. (See previous post on Caprese for why I'm such a big fan.)  

So--get this--I pulled it off.  And here's the trick.  Pay close attention because it's so complicated.  I took a Campari tomato I bought at Costco.  I ate the tomato (yum!) and took a few seeds off the cutting board and put them into a plastic bowl. Once they dried out, I scraped them off the bowl with my fingernail and planted them in a plastic cup full of potting soil.  I watered them once and ... voila! ... one week later I have several healthy looking tomato seedlings.  Pretty complicated, eh? This gardening stuff is tough.  Good thing I'm such a genius.  

I guess the moral of that story is:  don't believe what you read, except for this post . . .  

(Photo courtesy of Zeetz Jones on Flickr; available at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/zeetzjones/1014666274/.) 

3 comments:

Jenn said...

We are going to try that!

jennie said...

awesome. hey -- do you happen to know anything about planting late? we'll get to pa late June, and will only be able to plant in lg containers, but I would still love to try it if I have any chance of getting tomatoes. I wonder if it would work to keep them out even in warmish fall if I bring them inside at night??

Tim said...

Hey Jennie: I don't know much, but planting in containers should help, as should planting "early" or "early early" tomato varieties that have a relatively short time to maturity. (The other, more expensive, solution is to buy mature or close to mature plants and plant those.) Lastly, tomatoes should produce quite late into the Fall in the Pennsylvania area barring some freak cold snap.