Well, in my effort to take tomatoes from seed to table 100% indoors I have created some monster tomato plants! Very tall, about 90% healthy, but no flowers to speak of…yet. Check it out:
These babies (there are 4 large and one small one that took longer to germinate than the rest) are over 2.5 feet tall. I am not sure if they just seem larger because they are inside rather than out, but they sure are HUGE in my little dining room!
I have been gradually increasing the amount (time) of light they get in a day in an effort to get them to flower, and tonight I will be employing the use of my timer to get them on a consistent schedule. I checked the seed packet and it was not very helpful at all in telling me how tall these plants would be or if they were indeterminate (keep growing taller and have flowers throughout the plant) or determinate (form flowers at the top and stop growing). They seem to have a more condensed cluster at the top of the plant and have slowed down in growth a lot the last few days, so I am going to go with they are determinate plants.
Some valuable information that I got here (University of Ill. Extension) about the salad varieties does point to them having a longer time to flower/harvest than larger more typical types of tomatoes:
Super Sweet 100 (70 days to harvest; 1 inch; red, cherry-sized fruit in large clusters; indeterminate; resistant to VF)
Sweet Million (65 days; 1 inch; red, sweet, crack resistant; large clusters; indeterminate; resistant to FNT)
Yellow Pear (OP) (70 days; 1 inch; clusters of yellow, pear-shaped fruit; indeterminate)
Large Red Cherry (OP) (70 days; 1-1/2 inch; solid, deep red, tasty fruit; indeterminate)
Mountain Belle (65 days; 1 1/4 inch; red, crack resistant, ripens uniformly and holds on the vine; determinate; resistant to VF)
I don’t know what variety(s) I have. The packet just says “Salad Mix.” It looks like I could even have a mix of determinate and indeterminate tomatoes! I chose the salad variety to try out first because with the fruit being smaller I thought maybe the overall plant would be smaller as well. But it turns out that the plants are taller and take longer to fruit than other varieties! Go figure!
So, I am now going to increase their light to 18 hours+ and see if they flower! (Cross your fingers). For my next indoor tomato experiment I will be hunting for a small condensed determinate plant of some sort!!!!
Thanks for stopping by!
~Sara Murray