Starting all over – Growing Tomatoes Batch 2: Day 1

With a heavy heart (and yet one still filled with hope) I have decided to start with a new batch of Tomato seeds. Today when I went to water the pot, I tipped it over to remove some dried leaves that had accumulated, and all the soil fell out! I couldn’t find the tomato seeds anywhere and I had to admit that the whole thing was a shambles. So I’m going to start over again, and this time I will minimize the problems I faced the first time.

First I’m going to soak the tomato seeds in a cup of water for a few hours following Nimmy’s suggestion . I took half a teaspoon of tomato seeds and mixed them in room temperature water in a glass cup. I’ll let them soak a while and give them a head start in life :)

Soaking the Tomato seeds first

The second thing I’m going to do differently is track each seed individually. Last time, the pot was too big and I didn’t know where in the pot I had place my seeds. So with tips from this website, I decided to grow each of my tomato seeds in an empty eggshell! I eat two half boiled eggs for breakfast every day and generate two empty shells daily. So I went out to the trash, picked up four eggshells, washed them and set them out to dry. And when I set my tomato seeds in them, I’ll be able to know exactly how each is doing.

Hollow eggshells for my seeds!

And the best part is that when my seeds finally sprout and it’s time to move them into a bigger pot, I’ll just crack the eggshells all around with a teaspoon and place it in the gamla – no need to disturb the soil and traumatize the young sapling. The eggshells will provide plenty of calcium as nutrients – perfect :)

So I filled them up with the compost that I bought several days back (not as easy as it sounds without breaking the shells) and packed the soil up nicely.

Eggshells filled with compost

In order to provide adequate drainage for the water, I used a needle to poke three holes in the bottom of each shell. Again, unless you do it yourself, you never realize how tough eggshells are!

Holes drilled for drainage

And now for the finale…I used my swiss army knife toothpick to punch compact holes in the compost and selected four lucky seeds from those that had been soaked. By now the seeds were soft, and I had a tough time picking one without feeling sad for the others. I chose those seeds with a nice tear drop shape – other than that I have no clue what a healthy seed looks like :)

Planting the soaked seeds

And now finally I reused my gamla and made depressions in the soil for the eggshells to comfortably sit. I placed them outside so that they get the required warmth (not sunlight – since I’m informed that it doesn’t matter during germination). I’ll water them everyday with a spay that I’ll obtain from somewhere. Hopefully that will be enough for the seeds.

Placing the planted tomato seeds outside

And that’s it!  All in an afternoon’s work. Let’s hope this experiment doesn’t end disastrously (I’ll try not to break the eggshells or drop the gamla). And of course, anyone here who knows more about growing tomatoes than I do is most welcome to give their suggestions. I need as much support as I can get :)