It’s time to start thinking about tomatoes

This week’s e-mail contained a friendly reminder from a mail-order seed house that it is time to start tomatoes. I checked – the sender does not reside in Maine, where it is time to give tomatoes a wistful thought before returning to more urgent matters, such as cursing whomever thought of starting daylight-saving time in the middle of winter.

Besides, I really don’t want to grow my own. When the need arises, I want to stroll through the local garden center surrounded by sturdy, 6-week-old transplants of the varieties we want – New Girl (an early, disease-resistant variety), Super Bush (a compact variety for pots), Pompeii (an Italian plum type) and, above all, Sungold (the sweetest cherry tomato). I want to buy them on a Saturday morning in mid-May and have them in the ground by sunset.

But I know better. Marjorie and I have exhausted more than one spring weekend in fruitless search of the varieties we want to grow. Enjoying the sweetness of just-picked Sungold tomatoes can be assured only by growing the plants from seed. It is time to start tomatoes – or at least to start thinking about tomatoes, about getting a jump start on spring.

And it is time to share some keys to success in growing your own transplants:

. Don’t start too early! Determine the last frost date for your garden and sow the seed six weeks from that date. Older transplants, pot-bound and leggy, will remain stunted after planting in the garden and produce poorly.

. Seeds planted in cold, wet soils germinate slowly if at all. Reduce the germination time with bottom heat, maintaining a soil temperature between 65 and 70 degrees. Heating mats and soil thermometers are available from mail-order garden supply houses.

. Use a sterile growing mix with a starter nutrient charge and a wetting agent, such as Fafard No. 2 or Pro Mix. Wet the mix ahead of use to the moisture content of a wrung-out sponge.

. Use new or sterilized 2- to 3-inch peat pots or cell packs with similar size cells. Seeds and seedlings stay too wet for too long in larger pots.

. Sow two to three seeds per pot or cell, thinning to the sturdiest seedling after the first set of true leaves develop.

. Sow the seeds on the surface of the growing mix and cover with a thin layer (about twice the diameter of the seed) of a fine-textured germinating mix such as Ready-Earth.

. Cover the pots or cell packs with a loose layer of shrink wrap to maintain uniform moisture.

. Once the seeds have germinated, remove the cover and the bottom heat. Optimum growing temperatures, both in the air and soil, are 65 degrees during the day, 60 degrees at night.

. Provide supplemental lighting as soon as the seedlings emerge; window light alone is too low in both duration and intensity. Standard fluorescent tubes (shop lights) are adequate. Keep the lights on for 14 hours each day, maintaining the tubes 2 to 4 inches above the growing seedlings.

. Water the pots gently and thoroughly on planting day, then as often as necessary to avoid excessive drying. Use a half-strength solution of water-soluble fertilizer to provide essential nutrients, watering from above to leach excess nutrients from the pot.

. Before transplanting your seedlings to the garden, they must be hardened off with a slow transition to outdoor conditions. Begin by setting them outside (temperature above 45 degrees) in partial shade for one or two hours per day, gradually increasing both the light and the length of exposure over a two-week period.

Send queries to Gardening Questions, P.O. Box 418, Ellsworth 04605 or to reesermanley@shead.org. Include name, address and telephone number.