Small Tomatoes with Large Taste and Free Seed Offer

I just love small tomatoes!  They are perfect for sneaking a taste when working out in the gardens.  You can be hot and sweaty but that burst of juice in your mouth and the combination of sweet and acid on your tongue can be mighty refreshing.  Even when it comes in a very small package.

I read one time that there are about 10,000 varieties of tomatoes.  They fall into two categories:  determinate and indeterminate.  The determinate plants are a bush variety and grow until they set fruit (yes a tomato is a botanical fruit) on the terminal bud.  Then all fruit ripens over a 1 to 2 week period.

I like to grow indeterminate tomatoes.  For most of the country, this means that they will grow until killed by frost.  Since I live where we never have frost, we plant in the fall and our tomatoes grow until they are killed by the heat and moisture from our rainy season (sometime in May).

Most varieties of the smaller tomatoes are of the indeterminate variety.  This means you can enjoy their goodness all season long. 

Right now I am crazy for Yellow Pear and Everglades tomatoes.  Lets face it, who wouldnt be crazy about a tomato that has a waist? 

 

Just look at these little gems from the garden. Scarlett OHara herself would be green with envy of that small yellow waist!  And no corset was needed.  No pear has ever been as adorable as my yellow pear tomatoes.  They originated in Europe in the 1700s and fell out of fashion for a bit but have come back in a big way for such a small tomato.  While considered a "sweet" tomato, I think they are on the acidic side and taste tart.  They are yummy when tossed in salads, as a topping for frittatas, or simply enjoyed with a few leaves of basil, a pinch of salt, and a dash of oil and balsamic vinegar.

The other tomato that I am crazy for this year is the native Everglades tomato.  This is the only tomato that is native to South Florida.  Not only is it indeterminate but it can stand up to the heat and torrential downpours of our rainy season.  I have Everglades tomato plants in an aquaponics flood and drain bed that are almost a year old!  They grow on sprawling vines and produce in clusters of 8 or 9 like a cherry tomato.  I dont think you can kill an Everglades tomato.

If you look at this photo, I set one Everglades tomato on a quarter so you would have perspective on the size of this mighty tasting tomato.  It might be a small tomato but it has more sweet taste than any large beefsteak

These are addictive when eaten in the garden. It really is hard for me to get them to the house.  But if they make it, they are perfect in a salad.  Or eaten out of hand.  Good thing I have them everywhere...which leads me to the free offer.

I want to see the Everglades tomato get the attention it deserves.  If you will email me at allergycheryl@gmail.com and in the email subject put "Free Seeds" I will email you back with my address.  You can send a self addressed stamped envelope and I will send you some free Florida Everglades tomato seeds.  Then you can enjoy this awesome small tomato with a very very large taste

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Floaters versus Sinkers Seed Wars

When it comes to planting okra, I always like to soak my seeds for a day before planting.  I am sure there is a highly scientific reason that okra seeds should be soaked, but I do it because my father always told me "Cheryl, soak your okra seeds before you plant them."  He has been dead over 15 years, but I still do what he says.

Soaking this last batch of Cajun Jewel okra seeds, I noticed something strange.  Some of the seeds floated on the top and some sunk to the bottom.  As many times as I have planted okra, I couldnt remember if I had ever seen this before.

Floaters and Sinkers

It is possible this happens every time and I have never paid attention before.  Honestly soaking the seeds is usually one of those "Oh Crap" things you remember just before you go to bed.  You are in your jammies, turning out the lights and locking up the house when you remember that you were planning on starting those okra plants the next day.  So the standard practice is usually to find the seeds, dump them in a glass of water and go to bed without giving it another thought until I am ready to plant them the next day.

This time I remembered so far in advance that I paid attention to what I was doing when I popped the seeds in the glass.  Immediately I noticed floaters and sinkers.

I had a theory about floaters and sinkers.  I decided that the floaters didnt have much to get them started and that they would probably not germinate at all.  I hypothesized the sinkers were better seed and would have a higher germination rate and would grow faster.

So, the next day I carefully separated the sinkers from the floaters.   The floaters went in one starter flat and the sinkers went in another starter flat.  They were placed in the same area so that they would receive the same amount of water and sun.

I planted them on Thursday afternoon and as you can see that by Sunday morning there was a definite difference in the germination between the floaters and sinkers.  The floaters were sprouting away and the sinkers not so much.

Sinkers on Sunday May 11

I waited until Tuesday to check on them again.  At that point, the floaters and sinkers were the same size!!!!

So, the sinkers germinated quickly, but once germinated didnt grow up any faster than the slower germinating floaters. 

Floaters on Sunday May 11

Unless you are in a really short growing season and you need those extra two days, there is no difference between your floaters and sinkers, except that some float and some sink.

I transplanted both floaters and sinkers into flood and drain grow beds.  I have one bed filled with lava rock and the other filled with hydroton.  I also set a couple of floaters and sinkers in a DWC raft.  I also put one each floater and sinker in soil.

Since transplanted on Saturday, floaters and sinkers in the lava rock have produced their first true leaves.  The floaters and sinkers in the hydroton and the DWC raft have not produced true leaves yet.

As you can see in the photos I took today (Monday), in the lava rock grow bed, there is no difference between a floater and sinker.

Floater and Sinker on May 19

So, dont throw out your floaters. 

Stay tuned for updates during the growing season.

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Testing Old Seed Viability

Now that its the time of year where we think about starting seeds for the garden, its time to test the viability of the seeds we already have.  Normally that wouldnt be too much of a concern to us, but we got distracted last fall (were very easily distracted), and left our seed collection out in the garage all winter (and exposed to all the freeze-thaw cycles that a Colorado winter entails).  Also, when we went through our beekeeping stuff (which had been in storage since 2010), we found a bag with another dozen seed packets or so, which in addition to this winters cycle, were exposed to other varying amounts of winter-summer cycling in the upper midwest.

Through all of this, the seeds had no humidity control, no real protection from bugs, or mice, or even nanites, and some dated back as far as 2008!  Since temperature fluctuations and moisture content are critical parameters in how long seeds remain viable, we need a test to decide which seeds to keep and which to toss in the compost.  Yay, an excuse to do an experiment!

Quite a collection weve got here!  OK, seeds, which of you is going to grow when we plant you in the ground?

We took ten seeds from each packet (unless there were fewer than ten left).  We were going to put them in a paper towel, but we (Jake) couldnt find any around the house.  How about this miniature roll of paper towels from the bathroom?

We folded the ten seeds in the middle of the conveniently sectioned-off squares and wetted the paper with a squirt bottle.  (In hindsight, using this type of paper towel was a bad idea.  It was a nightmare to try to tease apart the wet layers to find the seeds and inspect them for germination.)  Its a good idea to get the paper as saturated as possible because some of the water will evaporate.  Having a uniform moisture level is an important control, and we were a little bit out of control on this parameter.

We grouped a bunch of like-feathered seeds into a flock and stacked them in a plastic bag.  We stacked the seed packets in the same order so we could keep track of which was which.  (In hindsight, stacking them together was also a bad idea because roots and shoots had no respect for boundaries between layers.  Sometimes, roots from the top layer would come out the other side, which was part of the reason it was so hard to pull apart the layers.  Individual plastic bags or something like wax paper between each variety would have helped.)

Some of the seeds thought they were partying on spring break.

We stacked all the bags in a white tub, and since the spring chickens dont need the heat lamp yet (they wont be born for another five weeks or so), we borrowed it to make one corner of the dining room a little hot pocket.  The lamp like this kept the temperature at about 85 °F.

A week later, we took out the paper and counted how many seeds of each had germinated.  We should have done this step sooner, since some of the fast-sprouting seeds, like cucumbers and swiss chard, had taken over the paper, and had preliminary designs for how to break through the plastic bag already drawn up.

The good ones we planted in dirt to see how theyd do.  (After one day in dirt, most look healthy!)

...and heres the data!  An Excel file with numbers for each variety can be downloaded here, but the graphs show the different classes of veggies grouped together.   If there was more than one variety, the bar represents the average (generally different varieties of the same group performed similarly, the exceptions being beans and radishes).  A couple of notes: the pumpkins were from 2008, and there were only nine seeds in the packet.  One of the carrot seed packets was from 1997!  The swiss chard was so unruly that it was impossible to tell which plants came from which seeds.  We tested 30 seeds and ended up with 45 sprouts that readily detached from the seed, so we just assumed all of them worked (it seemed fair). 

Some of the variation here could be due to differing moisture levels--some of the paper was fairly dry when we opened it up, and those seeds appeared less viable (the driest ones were the carrots, lettuce, peppers, and tomatoes).  Its also possible that some of the seeds needed more time to germinate, but since we could see cucumber roots after only 24 hours, we didnt want to let it go too long.  Having an easier way to check on the seeds after a certain amount of time would have been helpful.

The seeds that had less than 70% germination rate went in the compost, so theyll have one last chance to prove us wrong.  In any case, itll be some fresh tomato and pepper seeds for us this spring!

How do you test your seeds for viability?  If you save your seeds, how do you make sure they remain viable through the winter?  Let us know in the comments section below!

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