Sowing the seeds of chaos

This past Christmas, my family gave me a seed starting cart. It's the big model, 4 feet long with four shelves and adjustable fluorescent gro-lights. They also gave me heating mats and a plastic cart cover called a humidity tent.

"This is the year I will really get into seed starting," says I.

Then came the seed catalogs. Do you know how many varieties of tomatoes there are? I knew about big red tomatoes, small cherry tomatoes, and Italian sauce tomatoes. Apparently, these categories aren't in use anymore. Instead, every tomato is a boutique plant with special traits and powers like Marvel comic characters.

I read articles and asked friends. Then, for no reason whatsoever, I settled on one big tomato called Cherokee Purple, a cherry tomato called Sun Gold, and Sweet Sue developed by plant breeder Craig LeHollier for the dwarf tomato project. I picked it because it was named Sweet Sue for Craig's wife. I think that is very cool.

Most of my experience with seed starting has to do with seeds I saved from my garden. The majority didn't germinate, so I planted lots of them and ended up with a few plants. In short, I was used to a lot of failure, which did not prepare me for what happens when you plant hardy hybrids with a no-fail attitude.

I bought flats with seed starting cells, sterile medium, potting soil and 4-inch pots for transplanting, and on March 15, the date we start seeds in Carbon County, I filled my plug cells with sterile medium and set up the seed cart in my unheated garage where the ambient temperature is 40 degrees.

To compensate, I put the humidity tent over the seed cart and plugged in all the heat mats. I also found a space heater with a thermostat. Finally, I decided to keep the gro-lights on 24 hours round the clock for extra heat. Sadly, this decision had unintended consequences.

To my surprise, all the tomato seeds germinated. I got 72 plants each of three kinds of tomatoes. Because my lights were on 24 hours a day, the tomatoes were growing very fast. By mid-April, all the tomatoes were too big for my seed cart. By then I had them all in 4-inch pots, and I started to panic. I called technical support at my favorite seed catalog company, and the customer service person said, "Wow."

The reason I grew the tomatoes in the first place was for our master gardener plant sale on May 20. However, the tomatoes were ready to go into the ground by April 15. Customer service said I couldn't pinch them back, but I should remove any fruit they set in the next four weeks. Do you know how big tomato plants are when they start setting fruit? This was not good.

I don't know what a seasoned gardener would do, but all I could think of was to get them outside. I know it's only the end of April and tomatoes don't go in the ground until near the end of May. Besides, I don't want to plant them, and I don't want them to be 5- feet tall by May 20.

I ordered a thermal kind of row cover and set up low tunnels over the raised beds behind my garage. Now all the tomatoes are in the tunnels. They are somewhat upset because they want more light, but they seem OK otherwise. The catalog company believes that the somewhat pale leaves will turn darker green once the plants get direct sun.

The outcome of this adventure is still unknown. The tomatoes aren't growing so fast because it's cold outside right now and the light level isn't what it was. I'm hoping I don't have to repot them because tomatoes in 6-inch pots are not normal at a plant sale.

Maybe I should label them as tomato trees.