TomatoMania!

Everyone has their fix, right? We purposely decided to go overboard with tomatoes this year... Just because we can. Kicking the habit of cultivating everything possibly tasty hasn't been easy, but we're not so worried about the addiction. Can you ever have too many brightly colored globes of goodness to eat and share with your friends I ask? Nope! So we're making sure of a summer cornucopia by handing out plants to everyone with a pad of soil and a heartbeat.
Our crop of tomato seedlings' roots were sneaking and creeping out of their seed cubes, telling us it was time to get them into the ground. They were accustomed to the comfy warmth of the grow room, so we reduced the heat night after night, and eventually transitioned them to the garden, still in their cubes. Also, because they'd only experienced relatively low light from the closet's fluorescent tubes, they needed to be gently acclimated to the intense spring sunlight. We slowly moved them out from beneath the eave of the roof a little more each day, 'til they were in full backyard sun. After a little cube time we planted six of the plants directly into garden soil, gave many away, and the rest we potted into 4" pots to grow for future endeavors.
As if we weren't deep enough into tomato mania, we heard of Cal Poly's annual event dedicate to you know what... We were greeted by a maze of rooms and hallways in the hort dept stacked with tall gangly specimens in 1 gallon pots. Their names were Yellow Jelly Bean, Henry's Mortgage Lifter, Silver Fir Tree, Bloody Butcher, Black Cherry, Sweet Chelsea, Tiny Tim. We left with a shopping basket of 10 that will do well through a foggy coastal summer, and others carted off 20 or more. All in all, Poly sold around 8,000 plants. Are you thinking what we're thinking? That's a whole lotta salsa! These new tall guys will dwarf the seedlings we started from seed, so they're going to live against an opposing fence. No need to intimidate the little guys, right?We thought of everyone we could possibly introduce to the fabulous world of homegrown produce, and got them a plant. We pulled out of campus surrounded by a jungle of tomato skunkiness, and high on hopes of a fruitful summer.

From the Seed

As we said before, different types of tomatoes enjoy different weather patterns. If there were only one variety, this would be bad news. But there are hundreds, so it's relatively easy to find one that will like your neighborhood. Your salads and pasta sauces will be all the better for it, and they're a pretty good housewarming gift. Or, in our case, with all of our budding seedage, it's going to be a "Hey, we like you and we have a lot of tomato plants, so take a couple, okay?" gift.
After we divided our treasured tomato seeds into different piles, we dropped them into Oasis seed cubes, one seed per cube. When starting anything from seed, it's important to consider and try to mimic its ideal conditions, at least for a little while. Since these tomatoes are from tropical regions like Mexico and Peru, they need to live in a warm sanctuary for a month or so. For us this means a closet, complete with grow lights, twice-daily spritzes with a kelp foliar/water solution (for those all-important micronutrients), and a gentle fan-powered breeze to help them grow up big and strong (seedlings that aren't started in enough light or air circulation can become weak and leggy). In short: It's important to coddle your tomatoes, but not too much.
In a previous post we mentioned sex in the garden and everyone got all perky, right? The proliferation of everything around us relies on this pleasurable phenomenon that we tend to think of as exclusive to man and beast. In fact, every time you see a flower, a pine cone, or grind fresh pepper (a seed) onto your food, dynamic copulation is directly responsible. You see, dolphins aren't the only non-human species that enjoy a potent libido. If it weren't for the many buzzing insects and wind currents going 24/7 to make pollen transfer possible, our plant cousins would be hard up with no seed to share. Thus, we are thankful once again that sex is king.