We'll be participating in the Dwarf Tomato Project again this season, hopefully with a bit more success than last year. Only 2 of 13 of our 2011 batch of seeds germinated. One lost out to the giant flea beetle attack and I babied the other all through the hideous summer heat only to see it freeze less than a week after it finally began to flower.
This year, we'll be growing them at work. There will be more room, more attention, more protection, and better irrigation, so I'm excited to see what will result. We started all 73 seeds (7 different vials from 4 different lines) yesterday and put them on the heated sand last night. I'm going to keep them at home until it's time to pot up, then I'll move them back to the greenhouse and, eventually, to a little roped off area outside. I think that it's a great way for our visitors to learn more about seed saving and breeding, as well as collaborative citizen science.
You can read more about the project here.
By the way, I bought seven of the DTP releases to grow at home this year. You can get them from a few different sources now--I bought mine from Tatiana's Seed Catalog because she has a great selection and runs the incredibly useful TOMATObase, a wiki of heirloom and OP tomato information.
No comments:
Post a Comment