starter soil appraisal and planting tomatoes

Last weekend I decided it was high time we get our tomatoes started :)

Tomato basic stats – Earliest Paste and Rocky Mountain Hybrid
– Start indoors 5-7 weeks before transplanting
– Plant seeds at a depth of 1/4 inch
– Germination in 14-18 days (optimum soil temp – mid-70′s)
* Click HERE to read about generic starting info i.e. soil, process, watering, etc.

So if you remember from my first post about starts, we decided to experiment with different containers and soil types.  Two weeks later, it is very obvious which soil we wanted to keep using with our other starts…

Glacier Gold Professional Grower’s Blend

Black Gold Organic Seedling Mix

As you can see Glacier Gold Professional Grower’s Blend for the win!  Truly, the difference at this point is staggering.  Of course it’s still early and we have yet to see how the plants will do as they mature, but as I said earlier, at this point, we are going to nix the Black Gold Organic Seedling Mix and plant everything else in the Glacier Gold soil.  Other factors that may have contributed to the difference may be…
– Over-watering for the soil type
– Different containers

We planted our tomato starts using the Glacier Gold soil but still in different containers.  We’ll see if our soil theory is correct :)