It is the first day of Spring, and the nurseries have a big stock of tomato seedlings. But the weather is still quite cold. Don’t buy those seedlings, yet. There is no advantage to putting tomato seedlings out extra early.

The nursery wants a long selling season. They know that the first sunny day will bring out the planting public. Don’t be tempted. Early planting of tomatoes does not become an advantage.

Even though it is warm, there could still be be an unexpected frost, or worse, an actual freeze. If this happens, lots of seedlings will be lost. Let the nursery have that problem. The plants have at least a chance of survival in the nursery. Better than than in your garden.

If you are wondering why the nurseries have the seedlings so early it is because they want the longest selling season possible. In America the tomato plant is the largest seller of all plants. I don’t know who counts these things, nor how, but that is what I read, and I believe it. So the nursery will hope to sell well for a long time.

Those beautiful, meaty, flavorful jewels of the garden that you remember from Grandmas house, (the ones you could almost eat like an apple, and often did, with the juice running down your arm), those are heirloom tomatoes. Consistent and always flavorful.

The second type of tomato your nursery will offer you are the hybrids. There are lots of them and they have been developed for specific purpose; usually prolific harvest and keeping qualities. That is why most of the tomatoes you find in the store are a hybrid – so they will make it to the store from the field.

No need to hesitate to buy hybrid tomatoes. They will be very different in your garden. You will be letting them ripen on the vine and will find them much different and better than “store bought”!

Once the frost is at least 2 weeks gone, and the soil has had time to warm, plant both hybrid and heirloom. You will have a bumper crop of great tomatoes. You neighbors will love you cause you will have more than you can eat!

Now that youhave decided which tomato seedlings you will buy, you probably want to learn how to plant and all that goes into that. There is a great site, www.ourhomegarden.infowhere you can learn all that you need tohave decided andmuch, much more. My immigrant Irish farmer Granddad would be impressed into all the information that is available from www.ourhomegarden.info

Tags: backyard garden, gardening, gardens, growing tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, how to grow tomatoes, hybrids, planting tomatoes, tomatoes, types of tomatoes, vegetables

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 3:41 am and is filed under gardening, growing vegetables. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.