when you get an itch, you have to scratch it

last spring, while walking thru the seed section of a local garden centre, one package of seeds intrigued me more than any other on the shelves... a variety pack of heirloom tomatoes. in this pack were some cherokee purple, green zebra, nebraska wedding, brandywine and a few other varieties. i had never grown tomatoes before, so i was thrilled by the challenge of growing my very own.

i bought all the things i needed to grow them; seed starting trays, soil, containers & fertilizer. i planted the entire package of seeds, maybe about 60 in all. i was really excited to watch the seedlings grow and mature into fruit bearing vines, but i was also worried about one major issue....timing. because i had not planned on growing tomatoes, i wasn't able to start the seeds 6-8 weeks before the last frost. living in a zone 3a, time was of the essence.

a few weeks into germination, only about a dozen seeds had sprouted. not to be discouraged, i made do with what i had and kept at it. about 6 weeks in, i transplanted the seedlings into 4" pots, where they continued to grow in the west facing window of a spare bedroom. it was soon time to take them outside to begin to harden them off. i lost half the plants to mis-managing the hardening.

now i'm down to 6 plants, out of the 60 or so seeds i started with. it was a little depressing, but i really only had 6 large containers to grow them in, so it kind of worked out ok. as summer went by, i noticed 2 of my plants never really took off. turns out there must have been some weed seeds in the package, because they were not tomato plants. now i'm down the 4 real plants.

the spring and early summer brought horrible weather, combined with a short growing season, i really didn't think i would get any fruit. turns out i was wrong, i did get some fruit on all 4 plants, but nothing ever ripened or grew to full size. this frustrated and motivated me all at the same time. i wanted to grow heirloom tomatoes so badly, i began to research all i could about them. it came to the point where i'm sure my girlfriend got tired of listening to me talk about tomatoes.

all in all, the summer growing season was short and unsuccessful, as far as tomatoes go. i learned that i really enjoyed getting my hands dirty and 'working the land' so to speak. so much so, i have decided to try growing heirloom tomatoes indoors this winter.

stay tuned for my experiment of growing tomatoes indoors.......