A Start to the Growing Season

We had another huge snow fall in Massachusetts this past week. Hopefully, this will be the last of the season as I am excited to get out into the garden and start my bidding. I doubt the snow will melt in time for any garden work to get done tomorrow. I had to start SOMETHING!!! so i sowed some onion seeds (Botanical Interests Flat of Italy) indoors. I also read that Waltham 29 Broccoli can germinate in as low as 40 degrees F and planted a row outdoors on the balcony.

Tomato Experiment

Early in the season I had noticed that the tomatoes which I had grown from seed had very wobbly / unstable stems. I figured this was due to having started the tomatoes indoors with little air movement. So, in July I started a second batch of tomatoes from seed outside. I was not expecting much from these and planted the seeds in little soil. Right now, 6 weeks later, I have four good plants that have come out of this with seven green hanging fruit. We are excited to try these late season yellow pear tomatoes.

Yellow Pear Tomatoes 9/1/12

Yellow Pear Tomatoes 9/1/12

Yellow Pear Tomato Seeds

 On another note, this week I was very surprised to see that my bonsai raspberry plant had started producing raspberries for the very first time ever!!!! This will also be a late harvest but boy are they delicious.

Bonsai Raspberry Plant 9/1/12

Starting Tomatos - Japanese Black Trifele, Black Krim, Coyote Tomatos

Last year I started tomatos on the 17th of March and when  it was time to plant outside my plants were all very small and weak. This year I am starting my tomatos earlier in hopes of having an earlier crop. Last year's crop was disappointing in general with only a handful of tomatos.

Since I am starting my tomatoes from seed, I decided that it would be interesting to plant rare varieties of tomatoes. So far, I have started Japanese Black Trifele, Black Krim, and Coyote varieties. I learned that the Japanese Black Trifele tomatoes are actually from Russia not Japan.
I took 10 - 15 seeds of each variety and placed them on a wet paper towel and in a plastic bag. This will make it easy to put the seeds somewhere warm to germinate. In 10 days or so I will move the strongest of these seeds to little pots of soil.

Do you have any suggestions for varieties I should try out?