Tomatoes and Peppers. Now or in January?

[Barb]

We were waiting to plant tomatoes and peppers in school garden until January, but now the nurseries are full of bedding plants and one says they won't have any in January.... Bedding plants? Seeds? Now? Later? (Obviously we're new to this!)

[Chris Byers]

From what I have read and the people I have talked to the cheapest lights are probably going to work just fine. You don't need that much additional heat for really two or three hours of maybe 30 degrees. Last winter I was living in Gilbert which gets colder and I never once put on a jacket because by the time I would go outside it was too nice to need one. Everyone around me was complaining about how cold it was as I was deciding which shorts to wear. Work in 20 below for awhile and everything seems nice after that. :)

The whole idea of frost cloth and some heat is to keep things warm enough to not suffer permenant damage from the freeze of a few hours. You only have the frost cloth on for a few hours, mostly before sundown till shortly after sun up.

I would think them being closer to the pool would be good, check what kind of breezes you might get but the large thermal mass of the pool should really help. The pool if not heated will tend to be cooler during the day but at night will always stay warmer than the surrounding ground. So it should act like a big hot water bottle for anything near it. Takes millions of calories to change a pools temperature a little bit even so over night it stay about the same as it was during the day.
The tomatoes want the sunlight more than anything else right now. Only about one more month and the days start getting longer again. So we should know soon enough how well are plans going to work.

Your garden idea sounds great and would love to see it some time or at least some photos if you are so inclined.

Which garden forum are you talking about?

[Tracy]

Just found little fruits on my Sweet 100 and early girl planted October 23 today. And, new flowers as well! Will put Christmas lights on them tomorrow to prepare for incoming cold front and start using lights nightly after that.
We harvested lots of peppers today, habaneros are just turning orange and blossoming now too.
Will have fresh eggplant parmesan tomorrow. Meanwhile, winter garden is well on it's way too. What crazy fall weather!

[Kristi]

Am I jumping in to this discussion to late? Growing tomatoes as a winter crop has never been on my radar. I put out transplants in mid to late February and have them pulled out of the ground by end of July.

I am doing an experiment this fall season and planted a "Celebrity" last month. Lots of flowers. No fruit yet.

Good varieties that have worked well in my spring garden include: Celebrity, Early Girl, Pearson, Sweet 100, Roma.

Like the another poster here I also have a microclimate. Garden beds are surrounded by block wall.

Does anyone know the indeterminate varieties that grow well here in the desert? I would love to keep a plant in the ground and keep it around for a while. :)

[Chris Byers]

Here is a good site I just found with loads of great concise information about tomatoes.
http://urbanext.illinois.edu/veggies/tomato1.html

My Sweet 100, included photo is doing well and the Early Girl behind is also doing well. Few problems and lots of set fruit and I am hoping to have some by Thanksgiving that are ripe. If not then I will start forcing them to ripen and see what I can have by Christmas.

So I would say these are two that do well here and next year I will be planting three different types of tomatoes. I will select some that tolerate higher temps, some that do well in lower temps and some that do well in between. I think for the most part I would suggest planting shorter season varieties because while we do not have real seasons here, we do have different temperature times here, I think a person should be able to get tomatoes for about 9 months of the year with a little planning.

Included one of my yellow neck squash too.

[Tracy]

From what I've heard, the indeterminate varieties do quite well here, especially some of the cherries.I just planted Sweet 100 and Early girl inderterminates to see how they would do overwintering. They are setting fruit and blossoming, planted October 23rd and have grown about a foot each.

[Kristi]

Thanks much!

[Rachel]

You may be able to successfully overwinter your tomatoes with the tips already mentioned, but the majority of tomatoes are not going to set/ripen fruit in the winter. So your goal with this is to get a good size tomato plant going so that when warmer weather comes, it is big enough to begin putting on a lot of fruit. I plan on seeding mine around Christmas, I'd love to compare results with those of you seeding in November. I usually seed about 100 plants (tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, eggplants) so dealing with taking care of all of those for an extra month probably outweighs any benefits Thanksgiving seeding would bring. Who knows though!

[Barb]

Thanks, Rachel. This last reply is exactly what I was hoping to hear from the original question. We're experimenting with both: some plants in the ground now that we will try to protect from cold (if we ever get any) and seeds planted indoors in December that hopefully will be ready to transplant in late Jan. or early Feb. Thanks everybody for ALL your good discussion!

[Kristi]

100 Plants???? Wow!!! I would love to see your yard. Sounds fabulous!