This year for the first time in 10 years I’ve bought all my tomatoes. Usually, I’d sow hundreds of seedlings and dozen varieties. But, due to the very cold couple of springs this year, I bought all the seedlings. I did sow some tomatoes, but they were really late and I wasn’t sure there would be any luck with them. In May my seedlings were so small that they looked like they were sown 15 days ago and not in March. 

Since I bought my seedlings from a family farm I couldn’t choose my variety, only the type of fruits. So I choose dozen of cherry tomatoes, 50 apples-shaped tomatoes, and 50 oxhearts. I got a bunch of extra seedlings so I ended up with over 150 seedlings. 

Now almost 2 months after planting I can say that clearly buying tomato seedlings is not for me. I’m troubled by the fact that most of my seedlings still don’t have any fruits. Of course the heat we were having didn’t help much, but most of the tomatoes are actually just starting to flower for the first time, meaning that they are late varieties. Late varieties are great, but not in the forest garden where we have a limited amount of sunny days and warmth. I will not have time for a second harvest. The rain we’ll get during the September and October will most likely kill off the plants.

Also, not knowing the varieties of tomatoes is actually very bothering for me. I’m used to knowing which variety I have, how big it will grow and how it will act. This time I don’t know anything and I clearly used too short poles for ox heart tomatoes. I was thinking that I’d get an indeterminate variety that won’t grow over 2m tall, but clearly, this variety will be huge. The plants are flowering for the first time and they are already over 1.5m. I will have to cut the tops off and again, no second harvest.

Cherry tomatoes on the other hand are short and won’t reach 2m, also it seems that the seeds have been crossing and the tomatoes aren’t quite cherry-looking. Two of the plants are classic cherry tomatoes but the rest are too big, and with only 2-4 tomatoes on one plant. It seems that grappolo type tomatoes have crossed with cherry tomatoes. 

The plants are perfectly healthy, but not knowing what varieties I have is making me nervous now that we have a heavy rain forecast. That’s why today I went to cut down all the leaves that are close to the soil and to secure the plants once more. I can’t be sure that they won’t get early blight after this rain period. 

Bought seedlings are great, and these are really high-quality seedlings, but for a spoiled tomato grower like me, this is just not quite good enough. So next year I’m back to growing the tomatoes at home. I will buy the pepper and brassicas seedlings(them I don’t mind not knowing the variety), but tomatoes will have to be home sown even if this means that I’ll have to install a furnace on the balcony 😁.