Thursday, June 11, 2009

The Indoor Tomato Experiment

Well I told you all I would post on this soon - so here it is, my crazy adventures into winter tomato growing land. Over the Summer I developed an obsession with growing tomatoes. A mysterious wilt curtailed that slightly early but I soldiered on and this time am growing a few plants inside over winter. I chose Siberian tomatoes which can fruit at a lower temperature. They are not frost resistant so I cannot put them outside but they should be ok for this purpose inside. Anyway at first I was just glad to sprout seedlings.


Then to plant two of them into a single pot by the window.


Then I added another single pot to this window sill and another into my newly reclaimed study! Then I got more adventurous. I planted Big Rainbow tomato seeds and White Tomesol tomato seeds to see if they would work. So far they germinated and have been moved to their own pots (three of each) but given the short amount of full sun (only a couple of hours) they are growing very slowly.



On the main plants some of the leaves are curled and a bit yellow but mostly they look quite good for the fact it is winter! They are almost a metre high! At present this is how the Winter Tomato experiment looks.



I planted some basil seedlings in one of the pots, and some basil seed in the other. Fingers crossed it grows.



Each have little flower buds, though some turned yellow and will drop off.


I am beginning to wish that I started this a little earlier. However with the wilt lurking I was worried it would stop the experiment in its early stages.Wonder if they will produce tomatoes at all, and in time for the spring sowing?

5 comments:

Lisa said...

I had to put all my indoor plants outside - they were somehow breeding tiny flies. We were wondering why we were getting the odd little fly, and then I went to give them their weekly water and when I pulled up the lacey curtain to get to them, a whole cloud of them flew at me.

So out they went...

PJ said...

ewwwww flies. Don't seem to have that problem, at least I haven't noticed it so far.

Dan said...

You should get tomatoes from them. You will have to shake the plants or tickle the blooms though to get them to pollinate. They are self pollinating but need some form of vibration to have it happen.

PJ said...

Hi Dan - I have my trusty electric toothbrush for that, I had to hand pollinate on the balcony too because we get little bees and the wind didn't do it! But thanks for the advice.

donna said...

Your tomato plants growing inside look better than the lone tomato plant I have outside and we're well into our summer growing season. You must be doing something right.