377 Tomato Seed Planting Tips. Rose Pruning Success.

Show Transcript

377 TRANSCRIPT Tomato Seeds, Rose Pruning

Farmer Fred:

[0:00] Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by SmartPots,  the original, lightweight, long-lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount. That's SmartPots.com slash Fred.

Farmer Fred:

[0:20] Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, well, you've come to the right spot. 

Farmer Fred

It takes about eight weeks to grow a tomato plant from a seed to a size that's suitable for planting in the ground. And for the warmer zones of the country, February is the month for starting tomatoes from seed. Now, why do you want to go to the bother of planting seeds of tomatoes when nurseries will soon be getting in some tomato plants? Debbie Flower, America's favorite retired college horticultural professor, says there are lots of good reasons, including the choice of hundreds of different varieties of tomatoes to choose from with outstanding sizes, flavors, and colors. And Debbie has tips for growing tomatoes from seed to help ensure that you'll have a great 2025 garden tomato season. February, by the way, is also rose pruning time for USDA zones 7, 8, and 9. Master Rosarian Charlotte Owendyk tells us how to do it and how to protect yourself from all those prickles.

 It's all in today's episode number 377, tomato seed planting tips and pruning roses. We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutalon jungle in suburban purgatory. It's the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast brought to you today by SmartPots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let's go.

TOMATO SEED PLANTING TIPS

Farmer Fred:

[1:49] Debbie Flower is here, America's favorite retired college horticultural professor. We're planting tomato seeds in the dead of winter. Why? Because it takes weeks for that plant to get to a size that you can safely transplant into the garden. You may be doing all of this on a counter in your house or in a greenhouse if you have it. But the fact of the matter is, when you grow tomatoes from seed, seeds that you purchase from either your local nursery or a catalog, you're going to find a lot more choice, a lot more varieties, a lot more taste than the number of varieties that you're going to find at a nursery or, heaven forbid, at a grocery store that are already selling plants. And by the way, oh, by the way, maybe we should get into this one right away, because more and more nurseries are bringing in tomato plants in the dead of winter. Way too early. Way too early. These are tomato plants that have been moved straight from a greenhouse somewhere in Florida or Southern California and are now plopped down into a nursery. If they're lucky, they are indoors. If they're not lucky, out in the elements in the wintertime. But February is not an uncommon time for tomato plants to start appearing in nurseries here in California. And it's still way too early to be sticking those in the ground. So you'll need to give those some tender, loving care indoors as well. We'll talk a little bit about that as we go on here talking about tomato seeds. And I think that's the big benefit, really, Debbie, of planting tomatoes from seed is the number of varieties that you can find. 

Debbie Flower:

Yes. It's just amazing. And you know how they've been cared for. We often here in Central California often get a warm spell in February and air temperatures are quite warm. They can be 80 for a day or two. And people say, oh, it's time to plant tomatoes. But the thing that's critical when you're planting tomatoes is soil temperature, not air temperature. Soil temperature is reflected in night temperature. And so you don't want to put a tomato out in the garden until night temperatures settle at or above 50 degrees. Doesn't mean one night of 50 degrees. It means a week of 50 degrees or more. Or go out and sit on the soil where you're going to plant the tomato in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. And if you can stay there for 10 minutes... Then the soil's warm enough. 

Farmer Fred

Or wear nothing if you want. It's up to you. Depends on your yard. Depends on the laws in your neighborhood, I guess. Yeah, soil temperature, for a lot of people, is difficult to figure out. Soil temperature can be determined by using a soil thermometer. And there are now Bluetooth devices you can buy that measure the soil temperature. And you can read that temperature from indoors on a gauge while it's sending its signal. And usually those devices have prongs on them that are about six inches, eight inches long that can tell you what the temperature is at that level of soil, even though the seed itself is going to be planted in soil that's, what, a quarter inch deep? Right. But the roots go down. The roots go down. The reason for that, then, for knowing the soil temperature at six to eight inches, and if the plant does produce roots quickly.

Debbie Flower:

[4:53] You want the soil temperature down there to be a welcome mat for those roots. For those roots, yeah. So, there is that. You've got the Bluetooth, and you've got the old thermometer that you can use. A lot of people like to use nighttime temperatures to be that gauge for when to set out tomato plants in the yard. 50 degrees is the old rule of thumb. It is. When the nighttime temperatures are steadily, not just for one night, but steadily in the 50 or above range is the time for planting tomato plants. 

Farmer Fred:

[5:20] Yes. All right. But for seeds, you want to start them now. And they prefer warmer temperatures than that 50 degrees. Yeah. When you plant a tomato seed, I would think you would want a temperature in the 70s. Yes. Right around room temperature. Yeah. Yes. And so by starting them indoors in controlled conditions, you get a jump on your season. Right. And they prefer temperatures around 70, 75 degrees, which you can achieve with a propagation mat, heating mat, and get that started. A lot of people tend to start too many seeds at once.

Debbie Flower:

[5:56] I'm guilty. Yeah. We all are. 

Farmer Fred

And I end up leaving a lot of tomato plants out on the front yard.

Debbie Flower

 And I'll bet your neighbors count on that. 

Farmer Fred

Yes, they do. Year after year on April 28th, they expect to see tomato plants out there, the orphans. Right. I mean, obviously, I have first choice, but still. There are more than you need. Yeah. And I get a lot of nice compliments from people. Great. That was a great tomato plant you gave me. Oh, which one was it? Well, I don't know. 

Debbie Flower

Well, that's a good point. Labeling your seeds when you're getting to start them. Yeah. All tomato seedlings look alike. Yes, they do. Pretty close. There's a couple of differences in the leaves. But we often, when I was teaching and the students were growing the plants and transplanting them, And we often ended up with a, I don't know what it is, tomato. And we'd sell those for real cheap price. You just have a question mark on it. Right. Yeah. It's easy to get it mixed up. Very easy. Yeah. They all look like peppers too. So when you go to plant your tomato seeds in containers or in flats.

Farmer Fred:

[6:57] So when you go to plant your tomato seeds in containers or in flats. I would recommend that you keep the same variety of tomato per flat or per container. Yes. And buy a packet of those white little seed markers. 

Debbie Flower

Yes. Plant markers. And write on them with pencil. Yeah. The date you planted it. Yes, that's helpful. Yeah. So, you can realize, why is it taking so long for it to germinate? You actually won't be asking that question about tomato seeds. You will about pepper seeds. Right. But tomato seeds, what? I think seven, eight days. Yeah. It's not uncommon. Sometimes even less. Yeah. So they will be up in a week and they grow quickly. They do. And I'm not saying when you first see it, plant it. But I think when it comes to planting tomatoes from seed, watch the size of the container and give it bigger containers throughout its growth stage. Yes. If you plant it in a four-inch container to start off with that seed, and all of a sudden you've got a foot of growth or eight inches of growth. I would get it up to a bigger pot, maybe even a one-gallon size.

Farmer Fred:

[7:58] And that's a good tip. Our friend Don Shor of Redwood Barn Nursery offers this tip every year, and it's a good tip, too. If you buy tomato plants at a nursery and you're not going to be planting them that day, especially if they're in six packs and they do sell tomatoes in six packs, what you're going to do with six Early Girl tomatoes, I have no idea. But still, get them up into bigger pots immediately if you're not going home to plant those right away. Have that set up before you even go out and buy. If you know you're going to the nursery to buy tomato plants, have some bigger containers, potting soil lined up, ready to go to get those young plants out of that little six-pack into each of its own nice-sized container. Would you go from that little teeny container in a six-pack into a one-gallon container, or would you have an intermediate step of a four-inch pot? 

Debbie Flower

Well, I would do an intermediate step, partially to save media and save room. Yeah. There are people who would go right to the number one and do it successfully. The problem with moving a plant into a container, much bigger container too quickly, is water. That you water the container and typically water till water comes out the drain holes in the bottom. Which means that hole, if you're going from into a one, that's about, what, 10 inches tall?

Debbie Flower:

[9:15] Yeah. And you've got this little plant at the top. Maybe the roots are in the top two inches. That eight inches or seven or eight inches below the root system just sits there saturated. And you do that often enough and the media in the container starts to rot and it actually produces gases that are poisonous to plants. 

Farmer Fred

Ouch. Okay. Yeah. I mean, we talk about this a lot about little plants in big pots and the fact that, well, it could drown. It could. Right. 

Debbie Flower

So I would go from the little six pack to a four inch and then, a six inch, which a number one is typically about a six inch. And then I want them in the ground. I would rather put them in the ground at the four inch container size. And that timing would be about six weeks before. My experience is eight weeks. Eight weeks. Okay.

Farmer Fred:

[10:05] Okay. Mine too. I prefer to wait eight weeks. Yeah. I want a sturdy plant. I don't want a wimp. Yeah. But people are planting earlier and earlier here in California. I don't know if that's true nationally or not. But I used to joke, and I tried to make it my lasting legacy here, that official tomato planting day in Sacramento is April 28th, which is my birthday. It was perfect weather-wise for that because by April 28th, the soil temperature is definitely warming up. It's into the upper 50s to low 60s. The days are longer. It's a nice time. But then, you know, climate change happened, I guess. Or people just got antsy or they figured, well, if tomato plants are in the nursery in February, I guess it's time to plant. And they think, oh, April, that's too late. No, it's not too late. But people have pushed that date back to at least early April, if not March, for planting their tomatoes outdoors, in which case they need protection. 

Debbie Flower

In my mind, our classic last average frost date is the middle of March. It's probably moved earlier in the month than that. I wouldn't expect my soil to be 50 or 55 degrees by the middle of March. 

Farmer Fred

No, the angle of the sun, the length of the day, it all plays against that soil getting warm enough for that. So basically, if you know your frost dates, try to plant it so that when you plant your seed and give it eight weeks of growth, it'll be around that date.

Debbie Flower:

[11:32] And where's the plant going to be in the meantime? Well, you started it per the seed starting tips we talked about in the pepper episode (Ep. 374). 

Farmer Fred

Yeah, basically. And we should reemphasize in a seed starting mix. 

Debbie Flower

In a seed starting mix in a warm place, about room temperature, 75 degrees, kept it moist until it’s germinated, then you provided wind and light to that baby plant. And when it gets up to have least two true sets of leaves. The first leaves that come out are called cotyledons. They are seed leaves. Then you'll get true leaves. And if at that point you can move it up to a larger container if you want, but still in the warmth, still in the wind, still in the strong light and let it grow somewhat bigger. And then when it's getting close, when you have about a week or 10 days before soil temperatures warm up, then you can start the hardening off process. And after that, it's going to go in the ground outside. If you are growing your tomato plants indoors, and we talked about this in the pepper episode about putting a source of light, fluorescent lights, LED lights, as close as possible to the plants.

Farmer Fred:

[12:39] But a lot of people say, I'll just put it in a sunny window. If you put your tomato plants in a sunny window, you want to rotate that container every day, maybe a quarter turn, because otherwise it'll start leaning way over. As it is, they're going to start leaning way over anyway.

Debbie Flower:

[12:55] And yeah, that light through a south-facing window may not give you the results you really want. It's really not as – the light there, we used to do a lab. I did a lab with the students with light meters, and the light outdoors in a sunny spot is much, much stronger. The light meter can measure that than it is indoors on that same side of the building.

Debbie Flower:

[13:17] Below, just below the window, it's almost darkness as far as a plant is concerned. So you really do need additional light to get it strong enough that the plant will grow and be sturdy. 

Farmer Fred

Going back to choosing which tomato varieties to grow, a lot of people hear about heirlooms and they want to grow heirlooms. If you're a beginning gardener and this will be the first time you're planting tomato seeds, I would definitely recommend choosing hybrid varieties because They're usually more successful. They're more adapted to climates. They're more adapted to disease resistance, especially, and also tomato production. I won't say heirlooms are for experts. You can try one or two heirlooms, but for the majority of the tomato varieties you choose, start off with hybrids and you can find some very successful hybrids. To find out which ones are most successful in your area, ask your local nursery owner which ones do the best.

Debbie Flower:

[14:19] Or talk to your cooperative extension, your cooperative extension or local master gardener program. 

Farmer Fred

Or ask your neighbor. Right. Yeah, especially if they gave you one last year. You're right. One that you really liked. 

Debbie Flower

There are some that on the seed packet will say all America selections. Those are good bets to start to try. They should grow vigorously for you. They are seeds that are developed by breeders. And then they're given to test farms. I know a community college in Oregon that does it for that area all over the country. They're grown all over the country. Iowa State University does it for Iowa. They grow many, many, many things and they report on what they're growing. And the only the ones that do well everywhere get the designation of All-America Selection. And it's not just that they grow a big plant and they don't get a lot of diseases. It's also the flavor of the fruit and the quantity of the fruit and all of those things. So All-America selections are a good bet. They do vegetables and they do flowers. So if you're looking at seeds and it says AAS winner, that's an All-America selection. And those are good ones to try.

Farmer Fred:

[15:28] Online, if you just do a search for All-America selections, it'll probably pop up. Among the AAS winners over the years, some of my favorites have included, if you like a large tomato, Big Beef is an AAS winner. Celebrity is a great choice. Chef's choice is a very popular choice these days. In fact, there have been several chef choice winners that have earned the AAS seal of approval, if you will.

Debbie Flower:

[15:57] And an interesting thing about a lot of these is they say F1 right after them. That means they're hybrids, that the seeds in that packet were produced by crossing two tomatoes that are very different from each other. So the pollen came from one tomato and it was planted on the flower of another tomato. And you grow them and you get the wonderful offspring. If you were to save seeds from them, then the next generation will not necessarily come true to seed. About three quarters of them will look like the plant you grew, the All-America Selection F1. A quarter will be nothing like it. If you save seeds again, the likelihood of getting the same plant as the F1 is very, very different. It's interesting to do. I've done it just to see what you get, but you're not going to get the one that you started out with, the All-America Selection F1.

Farmer Fred:

[16:52] Yeah, the varieties I mentioned were basically larger tomatoes. If you have children, I would suggest you plant some cherry tomatoes because or if you've never grown tomatoes before, cherry, I won't say a cherry tomato is bulletproof as far as growing it goes, but it's certainly going to be more prolific than a lot of other choices. They sure are productive and easy to pick and eat without even going in the house. Yeah. One of the popular ones that's an AAS winner is the Juliet tomato, which is a little bit bigger than a cherry tomato. Not by much. It's referred to as a grape tomato. So it's just a bit bigger than a cherry tomato. But there are larger plant and smaller plant varieties you can choose from. There are even some that are meant for containers for a patio. And one is called Patio Choice, which is a yellow cherry tomato, which is very interesting. There are ones with stripes like Striped Zebra. That, too, was an AAS winner. another popular little one.

Debbie Flower:

[17:50] You can almost bet if it has the word sugar on it, it's probably a cherry tomato because the cherry tomatoes are the sweetest. Yes, they are. I grew Juliet this year, and the first crop I got was too sweet for me, believe it or not. As the plant aged and probably as it stressed a little more, I like the flavor better. I like an acidic tomato. Yeah, that's the other thing that you'll find out, that not all tomatoes taste alike. And when people refer to the acid taste, well, the only way you can compare it to is to have a sweet one. 

Farmer Fred

Right. And the sweet ones can be a little – sometimes in this business, they're called sugar bombs.

Debbie Flower

[18:28] And that's why kids like them. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. And it gets the vegetable in them, so why not? 

Farmer Fred

Yeah, it's not M&Ms. You know, this is the real thing. So, the smaller cherry tomatoes are the sweetest. The bigger ones, slicing for sandwiches, great. As far as production goes, this is another reason why these hybrids are better than a lot of heirlooms. Heirlooms might produce just a few tomatoes and only produce them once, whereas a lot of these hybrid varieties can produce all season. And I guess that goes to a discussion of when choosing tomatoes, determinant versus indeterminate.

Debbie Flower:

[19:03] Right, right. Determinant means that the height and size of the plant is predetermined. It'll just grow up to that size and height and then produce a crop. I have a lot of tomatoes all at once, so it's great if you're making ketchup or tomato soup or sauce and freezing or canning. And then after that, in our climate anyway, we continue to get a tomato now and then, but that major crop comes all at once. They tend to be smaller plants. I like to cage all of my tomatoes because the fruit itself is heavy, and sometimes the plants, if they're not caged, will just lay on the ground, and that results in insect and disease problems. So, I like to keep them sort of contained in a cage and sometimes I'll hang the, I push the branches, the new branches back into the cage so they're all contained. And when the fruit starts getting heavy, use the bars in the cage to hold the fruit up. And then indeterminate means that it'll grow forever.  The size is indeterminate. Nobody knows how big it'll get. It'll grow and produce fruit and grow and produce fruit and grow and produce fruit until it's killed, typically by frost. Not the owner who's ticked off. Right. I actually had tomatoes when I lived in Tucson, Arizona, and they lived over from one year to the next. Whoa. Peppers as well. Yes. And so the plant wasn't killed. That stopped it from growing and producing fruit. It just got too cold. Tucson does get cold in winter. So the nights especially. So it just sat there. The plant just sat there in its green state, and then it started growing again the next season. We should point out that in Arizona, 

Farmer Fred

Tucson's a little different than Phoenix. Phoenix gets a lot hotter. 

Debbie Flower

Yes. And their tomato planting season, I think, is in January. Well, yes. In Tucson as well, the middle of the summer, the plants just sit there and suffer. Yeah. And they often shade them to get them through that period of time. 

Farmer Fred

All gardening is local, and especially when it comes to tomatoes. So, if you know gardeners in your neighborhood who are growing tomatoes successfully, find out what tricks they're using and replicate their skills. 

Debbie Flower

I wanted to say, though, that the cherry tomatoes, even though the fruit is small, the plants often are huge. Yes. So you need a big cage, not the little one. Fred calls it the pepper cage, the three foot tall one that you get at the garden center. That's too small for an indeterminate tomato. 

Farmer Fred

You can make your own tomato cages out of what's called concrete reinforcement wire. Lowe's or the Home Depot go to the aisle, usually the last aisle in the store where they have the rough and tough building supplies of concrete and bricks and that stuff. And you will find sheets of concrete reinforcement wire that's meant to be put down on an area that you are making a walkway or a driveway to basically hold it in place. But you can buy these four by five sheets and then you can bend them in a circle. You can secure them with zip ties. That's the easy way to do it. And all of a sudden, you've got this very nice cylinder that is usually four feet tall, maybe five feet tall if you do it the other way, that can last for most. 

Debbie Flower

It will still fill that cage up and cascade all over it. But at least it's a good starting point. Well, and it's strong enough that when the plant leans on it, the cage doesn't fall over.

Farmer Fred

Well, it depends. 

Debbie Flower

You've had some go over?

Farmer Fred

 Oh, yeah, sure. Do you anchor them? Yeah, I do. Okay, I anchor mine too. Yeah, you know, I'll stick some grape stakes or some one-by-ones in there or some field posts, one on either side, and T-posts, and plop them down in there just to hold the cage upright if it gets windy. 

Debbie Flower

Okay. I use irrigation pins. Metal irrigation anchors.

Farmer Fred

 Oh, the bobby pins. Okay. Are they strong enough to hold a cage up?

Debbie Flower:

[22:48] Yeah. Well, I often use the ones that are…

Farmer Fred

Hold your fingers up to the microphone. So people can see that. 

Debbie Flower

I'm trying to think how to say it. A U, a deep U. But they're- Yeah, six inches long. Six inches long. Yeah. I haven't had any trouble. All right. 

Farmer Fred

And you're doing this in a raised bed? 

Debbie Flower

I have it in a raised bed and I've had it on the ground as well. 

Farmer Fred

Okay. I would think in a raised bed, the soil would be too loose and friable. 

Debbie Flower

Well, that's a problem I'm having. The soil in there, it's a mix with field soil, and so it's heavy. Oh, okay. All right. And it causes different growth. I need to lighten it.

Farmer Fred:

[23:22] Not all tomatoes are red, too. We talked about that patio tomato, the Patio Choice yellow, which is a yellow tomato. There are bigger ones that are yellow, too, that are All-America Selections winners, like Jubilee. I've grown Jubilee for years, and it's one of my favorites to grow. And it's probably a 10-ounce or so tomato. When we talk about tomatoes in ounces, generally the cherry tomatoes are one ounce, maybe two ounces for a grape tomato like Juliet. But if you're looking for a slicing tomato that is reasonable, you're in the eight to 10-ounce range. But there are plenty of tomatoes that get bigger than that. There are one-pound tomatoes, but they are so big, you're planning on eating a lot of hamburgers.

Debbie Flower:

[24:06] Or maybe making sauce. Yeah. When we were talking about the tomato cages made from the concrete reinforcing wire, if you have several tomatoes and are going to use one of those cages on each one, make the tomato cages slightly different sizes in diameter. So make one that's where the ends just meet. And then the next one, the ends cross over a little more and you tie it. And then a whole square, they cross over, if that makes sense. That way in the off season, you can nest them. You can put one inside of the other and it takes up less space.

Farmer Fred:

[24:41] I wasn't expecting you to go there, but that's exactly right. Yes, because I have, they're all basically the same size as far as diameter goes. And I just store them under the house. 

Debbie Flower

I don't have an under the house. 

Farmer Fred

I know. And otherwise, they look darn ugly or you repurpose them in the cold season for things like I do snow peas to grow on them or to hold up anything that might be flopping over for that matter or to keep animals out of a bed that you just planted.

Debbie Flower:

[25:11] Yes. Or, well, I don't know what would be blooming in the winter season, a low growing plant that the birds would go after. But I have used the cages in my garden around plants that attract hummingbirds so that the cats don't sit and attack, just sit and wait and attack the hummingbirds when they come in. 

Farmer Fred

Okay. And I think I talked about, or maybe I didn't talk about in the Pepper episode, about the dollar store wastebaskets I found that were $1.25 each. They are a wire mesh wastebasket, about 10 inches tall, eight inches wide at the top and narrows down to maybe six inches at the bottom. But invert them, turn them over and put them on your newly planted tomato plants that haven't reached that full height yet to protect them from birds and other animals that are eyeing them. 

Debbie Flower

I haven't done that, but I take prunings, thin, pencil-thin branch prunings and stand them up all around the plants. And that's to prevent the cats from going in and using it as a potty and digging my plants out. 

Farmer Fred

Yeah, that too. So, I mentioned that the Jubilee tomato was an orange color. If I didn't, it is an orange tomato. And there are some very interesting choices. 

Debbie Flower

There are deep red, almost black tomatoes, like the chef's choice black. When you buy or when you purchase tomato plants from seed, you have a lot more color choices too. And it's so pretty when you cook with them.

Farmer Fred:

[26:40] Yeah. Or served raw on a salad for that matter. Yeah. So you'll find a wide variety of colors. There is even one out now called the Norfolk purple tomato. Let me tell you my adventure with the purp