Do your own seedlings of tomatoes makes it possible to obtain old tomato plants, even rare varieties, and whose taste quality is absolutely incomparable. It is therefore much better than buying your plants in a garden center because you do not always find a sufficiently rich choice there. Let’s see at what time of year to sow tomatoes and what is the procedure.
When to sow tomato seeds?
It is from the end of February and until mid-April Let’s start by sowing the tomatoes. The principle is as follows:
- Count one seed per pot,
- Sow in compressed peat,
- The substrate must always remain moist, watering must be frequent,
- It is essential to place the seedlings inside, in the sun, because they must be warm, preferably in a greenhouse. At this time of year, sometimes severe frosts are still to be feared.
As tomato seedlings are carried out in covered environment, they can be made from the end of January. This allows you to anticipate even if, two months later, when the time comes to transplant your feet, it will still be too early to install them outside… there is a risk of frost. This is why it is necessary to provide a frame in order to see his seedlings start sheltered from the cold.
Care should be taken to plant in the ground from the beginning of May or, better still, after the Ice Saintsa crucial climatological period that runs from May 11 to 13, three days during which it can still freeze.
How to sow tomatoes?
Seedlings do not present any particular difficulty and this avoids buying seedlings. In this way, you can grow different varieties of tomatoes while preserving your budget. Anyway it is always better to produce fruits and vegetables from your own seeds as soon as possible and you take a certain pride in it.
The conditions to be respected are the following :
- Keep your seedlings in a room where the temperature is between 18 and 20°C,
- Place your seedlings in full light, for example not far from a window,
- Use egg trays or even a small tray if you don’t have a greenhouse.
The process to follow to sow tomatoes is as follows:
- Soften the seed coat by soaking it in water 24 hours before sowing, knowing that this step is optional but widely used because it facilitates germination,
- Place a drainage layer of a good two centimeters on the bottom of a box, either clay balls or coarse gravel,
- Cover the drainage layer with a mixture consisting of 20% sand, 40% soil and 40% homemade compostwhich is preferable to commercial compost which is generally not rich enough.
- Use a seed drill to sow the tomato seeds which should be spaced 4-5cm apart from each other,
- Cover the seeds with three millimeters of the sand/earth/compost mixture,
- Ensure good contact between the seeds and the substrate by tamping down with your hand,
- Moisten to allow germination to start. Be careful not to use a watering can or bottle, but only fogger or vaporizer,
- Place a transparent glass, plastic or plexiglass lid on the box, and place it inside, in the light and in the heat,
- Remove the lid as soon as the plants emerge from the ground.
If you choose to sow various varieties of tomatoes, you must provide a box for each variety and use labels to identify them without risk of error.
Thoroughly clean all kinds of recovery buckets in order to transplant each young plant as soon as two or three true leaves have formed. All you have to do then is leave them to fortify themselves a little longer in the shelter before planting them in their final place. If the weather permits, the buckets will be able to spend one or two hours in full sun outdoors, but no more.