Growing Tomatoes from Seed
A couple of weeks ago James and I went to Evergreen Brickworks to their 'Seedy Saturday'. If you had seeds of your own, you could trade. Or if you were like us you could come empty handed and leave with bags of seeds as well as a lot more knowledge. I have been experiments and making several different styles of tomato jams, so I was pretty excited to talk to people about the different types of tomatoes and what they were good for. I spoke to several different seed suppliers but ultimately ended up buying all my seeds from 2 different suppliers. Cubit's Organic Living and Matchbox Garden and Seed.
What made me choose these 2 suppliers in particular? Well Laura from Cubit's was extremely patient with my long list of questions and I had researched her site before going so I knew a little bit of her story and I always like to support people trying to make a go of it. Hanna from Matchbox - well to be frank, she knows her shit! When I asked her what types of tomatoes would be good for my jams versus my tomato sauces, she pointed me in some interesting directions and had some great pointers for me on how to make my tomatoes strong for the growing season. They also have a fabulous little book with all the different seeds they offer and the growing conditions required, etc.
I planted my tomatoes, green onions as well as a few leeks earlier this week and it has been fun to run downstairs and check on their progress each day.
The tomato plants are at the stage where I am turning the fan on them for about 15 minutes twice a day so that they grow nice strong stalks. I can't wait for the time to come when they are ready to plant outdoors and even more so when they are ready to pick cause I will be making some seriously large batches of tomato jam when they are!