Monday, May 14, 2007

baby tomato plants

tomatoes
This looks like a family portrait of tomatoes! (Everyone line up and smile!) I have collected quite a few plants (35) and will give half to my parents. I have the following varieties: Moskvich (1), New Girl (1), Early Girl (6), Big Beef (6), Rutgers (1), Big Boy (1), Chadwich Cherry (1), Marglobe (6), Big Girl (6) and Brandywine (6). The Big Boy plant is an extra large one with flower buds already. I assume this means it will produce ripe tomatoes sooner. I'm still trying to get my first tomato a couple of weeks earlier than last year. Hopefully by July 17, 63 days from now! I hoping to get time to plant them tomorrow.

Solanum lycopersicum

4 comments:

Leslie said...

So I want to know ... what did you say to get them to all smile when your clicked the shutter ... Manure? ... green sand?

kathy said...

How about "sunshine". They smiled good, didn't they :)

googler said...

Hello
I was just wondering if you could assist me with this issue I have. I was growing some tomatos from seed and one of my daycare children decided it okay to rip off the top two leaves of the baby sprouts. all of them. So now, I need to know if I should restart the whole plant from seed, or let them continue to grow. Will they yield any fruit? Please help me!! I don't know what to do

kathy said...

It is SO great that you are growing vegetables with the kids!!! Maybe they want their own seedlngs to take care of too!

But it sounds like these were your seedlings.

I'm afraid pulling the top leaves off a small seedling will stop it from growing. Especially if the tip of the stem was pulled off too. It depends on how much of the plant was removed and how big the plants were. If they do start to grow again, they'll be fine and will get tomatoes. So you'll know within a couple weeks if they are going to recover. They may start to grow again with several branches, which is fine too.

Its still pretty early here in the Boston area and plenty of time is left to restart seedlings. If it were me, I would restart some more seeds now and watch and see what happens to the damaged ones. (If you end up with too many plants you can give some away.)