Tomato Plants from Seedshow to grow tomato plants from seeds

I have been gardening since I was a child. It is a heritage thing for me, my grandfather raised strawberries, tomatoes, potatoes and corn for a small general store near our home on a farm of over 150 acres. He began gardening with his children and this was something my father passed to me and my four brothers and sister. My father was a truck farmer, we raised one to two thousand tomato plants every year to sell tomatoes. With this money, my Mom and Dad would take the six of us to the beach to go surf fishing, boating, crabbing and swimming for a week. So gardening to me is normal.

In 1996, when my husband and I moved from Louisiana to Missouri, I gave up gardening because of the huge change in climate. In Louisiana, you garden year round literally. The only time the garden isn’t growing is when the crops are pulled up and changed. January is when cauliflower, broccoli and Brussels sprouts are harvested. Strawberries are harvested in February and March. April and May are the months for lettuces, turnips, and the beginning of tomato season. June and July produces tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers and eggplant. After the early summer, field peas and beans are planted and harvested in August and September. Fall tomatoes are also planted and then harvested in September and October. Cabbage crops are harvested in December and begin the process all over again.

In Missouri, it was April before I could even plant and by early October the snow could fall and kill everything. After four years of living without the joy of seeing a tiny seed grow into a eight to ten inch head of cauliflower or having a “real” tomato or cucumber a cucumber that wasn’t waxed, I decided it was time to try again. I purchased a self watering system and my husband just shook his head. I placed the system on an East facing porch and filled it with dirt and fertilizer like the directions said and planted four small cucumbers in the system. Much to my surprise, they grew. They grew so well that the leaves covered a ten foot area over the side of the porch. I grew more cucumbers in that system than I had ever grew in a garden and I was hooked. For the first time in a very long time, the joy of gardening was back in my life. That one summer I learned that nothing is impossible, even if it is difficult and now I know that I can accomplish what I put my mind to, if only I try.

We are all keenly aware of the health benefits of vegetables. In the peak of the season, there is nothing that tastes as delicious as a freshly picked tomato, or a perfect pepper, or a magnificent head of broccoli, or something as simple as a salad made from freshly picked lettuce. It’s hard to envision any of this until you have tasted something so fresh that the extent of the distance it has to travel is from the garden to your table.

Long before the economic situation in this country went from bad to worse, and things became ever more precarious by the day, I had already experienced the wonders of growing my own vegetables. There were times when I questioned whether I was really being rewarded for all of my efforts.

Once again, I have to admit that even though there is a tremendous amount of work involved in “growing my own vegetabless , the rewards of my labor are consistently evident in every bite I take of something I have grown myself.

There are huge advantages to growing your own vegetables from seed. First of all, when you grow any or all of your vegetables from seed, you have an enormous selection of different varieties of vegetables from which to choose. You are freer to tailor your planting or choose your seeds to fit the length of your gardening season.

“Heirloom seedsn offer gardeners the opportunity to grow vegetables that have been grown by other gardeners for 50 or more years. These seeds are as pure as they can be. They don’t undergo any of the genetic engineering that is characteristic of disease resistant hybrids.

Additionally, when you grow vegetables from seed, you have the ability to find unusual varieties that may not ever be available in smaller local garden centers or bigger retailers. You may be able to find seeds for vegetables that can be grown in containers. These choices are never available anywhere.

For anyone wishing to grow tomatoes, deciding to grow your tomatoes from seed can mean the difference between being able to grow tomatoes that are suitable for growing in containers, or finding a variety that is adaptable to “extreme heat, but it can also mean deciding whether to grow determinate varieties (those that yield a lot of tomatoes all at once,) or growing