If you’re new to heirloom plants and seeds, it’s a good idea to start your summer gardening with heirloom tomatoes seeds. Tomatoes are one of the easiest plant varieties among heirloom plant seeds and beginners can easily grow these.
The first thing you need to know is where to buy heirloom seeds at a reasonable price and your new heirloom tomatoes seeds should have better immunity and a desirable flavor.
Preparing Your Seeds
You may plant your seeds before frost but the process should be started indoors, at least 6 weeks before the anticipated frost. There is no problem in planting your seeds directly outdoors except that yielding is usually limited with this method.
If you want high yielding, start indoors and move them to outdoors later. Getting seed starting mix is extremely easy today (even leading stores like Kmart and WalMart have them in stock) from an online store or your local nursery.
Specialty online stores develop their own organic starting mix, which has adequate nutrition and a better growing ambience for heirloom plants and seeds. Heirloom plant seeds need highly nutrient soil for efficient seed germination. Keep your seeds in moisture to make germination an easy task.
Preparing Your Garden
You can buy customized heirloom plant seeds growing pots from stores but if aesthetics is not a concern and saving some money is more important for you, consider using milk or orange juice containers. This method is useful for those who don’t have a medium to grow their seeds before transplanting them to larger ones. Do not put the growing mix directly into the containers but prepare the mix with enough moisture and then fill it to the trays.
Taking Care Of The Heirloom Plant Seeds
Once you plant your heirloom tomatoes seeds, it should be covered with (wet) starting mix to half an inch. The seeds don’t need attention everyday but moisture them twice or thrice in a week. It’s difficult to predict the exact germination time for heirloom plants and seeds but in general it can be somewhere in the range of two weeks. You need to install a fluorescent light to provide adequate lighting to the plants.
Seedlings need more light than a regular plant (12-16 hours) but you may find it difficult to maintain the timing. Timers are really cheap these days, forgetting one for controlling the grow light time is a good idea.
Transplanting
You need to consider transplanting the seedlings when the second set of leaves shows up. Unlike other plants, heirloom tomato plants grow well in plastic pots as plastic can retain water, providing enough moisture for heirloom plants throughout the day. Transplanting should be done carefully, without breaking roots.
Heirloom plants and seeds have a stronger flavor and your tomatoes will taste much better than the regular ones. If you know where to buy heirloom seeds, you will find numerous varieties, giving an opportunity to plant different types of tomatoes for different uses.