Quote:
Originally Posted by Alfredo
Hello fellow tomatovillians, nice to start seeing all the other gardeners getting everything ready for the new season.
nnjohn, like Kath and Efisakov, I also change my seed starting date from year to year. In 2012 I started my seeds on March 12th, and the tomato plants ended up being quite large by the time I hardened and transplanted them.
Last year, I started them a bit later, started them on March 29th, and another batch on April 8th. They were definitely much easier to tend to during the hardening off and transplanting time.
This year I'll probably start them again somewhere between the last week of March and the first week of April as I like the size they were at last year when I finally transplanted them out. The only seeds that I could see some benefit to starting earlier than this might be some of the later maturing types of tomatoes (a variety like Aunt Gertie's Gold which is in the 75-80 DTM range).
Another type of seed I would recommend starting early (Mid-March to end of March) for Northern NJ would have to be the hotter pepper varieties (like Habaneros, which are in the 100 DTM range), they just tend to take their time to germinate and to grow to a decent size before the weather finally warms up.
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Hi, Alfredo~
Thanks for sharing your experiences with different starting dates. I did start 2 tomato plants the other day, so I'll hopefully have at least some tomatoes asap and I started all the peppers, too, because they're aren't that many and they tend to grow more slowly. But for the bulk of the tomatoes I think I'll wait until nearly the end of March. I'd like them to be big enough to be in larger containers by the time we leave for vacation on April 21st because a neighbor will be in charge of watering them.
I'm thinking the less often that needs to happen, the better.
It is hard to wait, though-
kath