When to plant for the earliest ripe tomato
We enjoyed our first ripe tomato on the summer solstice from the plant that Daddy started ultra-early
(on the left above). But our second tomato is probably going to
come from our own Stupice (on the right above), started inside nearly
two months later at the end of February.
The
big question for tomato-lovers is --- what's the happy compromise
between starting your plants early enough to beat your neighbors to the
first fruits, but not so early you're babying a plant that should have
been in the ground weeks ago? For us, it looks like the end of
February is a pretty good time for starting tomatoes if I'm willing to pot up and nurture them a bit, netting ripe tomatoes up to three weeks earlier than if I'd started the seeds under quick hoops
at the beginning of April (my previous, lazy technique). For the
sake of comparison, here's a quick rundown on when we've enjoyed our
first ripe tomato in previous years:
Since blight seems to be
hitting us early most of the time now, jumping the gun with
inside-started tomatoes might be my new method for the foreseeable
future. We're already racing septoria leaf spot and the first
signs of early blight, but I'm hopeful heavy pruning will keep the fungi
at bay long enough to fill up our soup stores and to sate me on
tomatoes.
In case you want to boast about the earliest tomato on your block next year, here's a guest post on growing the earliest possible tomato and here's some information on how cold temperatures can keep early-planted tomatoes from setting fruit. Good luck making your neighbors jealous!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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