Pre-Cultivation of Tomatoes and Bell Pepper and Chives

Here we go again with some pre-cultivation. Today I’m planting a bit of a mixed bag of seeds, but mainly a bunch of different tomatoes breeds.

I love tomatoes. They’re delicious on their own, and are very useful in cooking and canning. I’ve grown tomatoes for years in my old apartments glassed-in balcony and never had any problems getting a few large plants on the balcony’s limited space.

Now, since moving to a house I have a large backyard that I’m going to experiment with growing tomatoes outside of a greenhouse or a glassed-in balcony. Might be a bit of a challenge due to the short summers we get here. But let’s try!

A greenhouse would be ideal, but I do not have one yet. Might invest in one next year. What I do have is a large glassed-in wooden deck, and I’ll plant a few tomato plants in pots here as well, to compare the different needs and as a safeguard to ensure getting at least a few grown-up and healthy tomato plants.

The tomato plant breeds I’ve chosen this year are:

Taxi, a yellow bush tomato.
Koralik, a red bush tomato.
Irishka, a red bush tomato.
Marmande, a red bush tomato of a large size.
Sibirjak, a red garden tomato.
Black Sweet Cherry, a deep-red/black garden tomato.
Naranja, an orange climbing tomato.

All of these should be able to make it outdoors where I live, with a well-managed pre-cultivation phase beforehand.

I’m planting these in a Nelson Garden Rootmaster planting box with 32 cells. There should be ample room for the to develop large roots system in here. I’ve planted four seeds of each breed plus a few additional seeds of my favorites.

Most of these will be re-planted in time in our raised garden beds and I’ll hopefully get to compare the harvest from all these different types. This means that next year, I’ll grow a lot more plants but use just a few of this years best producing breeds. It’ll be a fun experiment.

Along today’s planted tomatoes, I’ve planted a few Bell Pepper seeds. I received these seeds from my fiancés aunt, as a little casual competition, to see if any one of us manage to get them to germinate and grow. They are seeds saved from supermarket-bought bellpeppers, so I have no idea of their breed, quality or if the seeds will grow at all. But a fun little challenge between to casual plant lovers.

I also planted some wild garlic, or ramson as it seems to also be known as. These are amazing to have chopped down in cold dips and sauces. A true garden gem.

I also planted a few small pots of welsh onion. I’m not one hundred percent sure of this English name for the plant, might be called spring onions too. They called Piplök in my native tongue, at least. They’re very similar to chives and looks like a big chive plant.

I’m not sure I’ll need to pre-cultivate these two, but I’ve more of these seeds saved up and I’ll try to sow them directly into the garden beds too, and compare the results.

Lastly today, I’m trying a little gem from the southern parts of my country. It doesn’t grow natively up here and I believe it’s going to have a hard time surviving outdoors here. But I love to try new things.

They’re called Kajplök, Kajp-onion, or wild forest onions. These defitemly needs to be pre-cultivate up where I live. I’ll mostly keep these in my glassed-in wooden deck where they’ll have a fighting chance of survival. If enough of these little onions germinate I’ll plant out a few in the gardens to, at select wind-sheltered spots where the local microclimate might be warmer than in the rest of the garden.

It’s going to be an interesting summer finding out what grows well and what doesn’t make it!