Letās check in with the tomatoes. As a container gardener, my choices are usually varieties from the inspiring and prolific
Dwarf Tomato Project (through
Victory Seeds). This year, I chose
Sweet Scarlet (medium slicer) and
Eagle Smiley (yellow cherry).
Sweet Scalet has been an absolute champion, at least relative to my previously poor tomato results:
This is 2 of 3, but the third looks just as well. You can see how the leaves bent during growth, a tell-tale deficiency, but never stalled and somehow managed to sustain reasonable growth throughout. It was also a trouble-free seedling, unlikeā¦
Eagle Smiley. Letās remember back to earlier:
The only seedlings not doing well are Eagle Smiley, the dwarf cherry tomatoes:
For some reason, they stopped taking up water, dropped their cotyledons early, and seem to be working on dropping their leaves.
Every seedling in the initial batch and nearly every in the second succumbed in the same way, at the same time: after excellent germination and uniformly vigorous initial growth (up to around the beginning of the second set of leaves), the seedlings showed severe symptoms similar to root rot following overwatering but regardless of actual watering schedule (in the second batch, I kept some at the limit of dryness).
In desperation, once only two remained and were obviously headed for the same fate (first symptoms are the medially-bending leaf stems shown below), I repotted them into dry soil and moved them outside far earlier than I otherwise would:
They hung on a bit further into their second set of leaves than usual, but then the disease began to progress again as usual. At this point, I looked online for a second time for anyone suffering similar. This time, I found something in a recent review for a different variety (my emphasis):
These Rosella Purple seeds all geminated and grew fine for the first couple weeks, but then would just shrivel up and die. I had the exact same issue with the Dwarf Eagle Smiley seeds. I grew 12 other types of dwarf tomatoes and they all grew wonderfully under the exact same conditions. Seems like there's something wrong with the seeds.
This being an issue with consistent symptoms across two varieties makes me think itās an undesirable genetic trait which is only expressed in cultivation conditions not usually used by the DTP growers. It would be interesting to collaborate with them to identify what that condition is and build testing for that trait into their process. Their response to that review was (my emphasis):
Rosella Purple can be a challenge in getting it started and we have experienced what you described above. With this variety, you have to give it fresh air and direct sunlight as early in its life as possible; keep it alive and under sun, and do not overwater it, and eventually they will catch up with the other varieties and perform just as well. Hopefully this information helps!
So, I had inadvertantly prolonged the life of my last two Eagle Smileys by stumbling into this same unusual cure. After reading this, but with seedlings (now slowly) on the way to failure, I potted them up into their final pots, again far earlier than I generally would. They took off
instantly, like wow. At least as strong as Sweet Scarlet.
After trial and error and research, itās satisfying to have a (reputedly excellent-tasting, Sungold-alike) variety āsolvedā: after germination, very shortly after first leaf, pot up and move outside. Next year, I might try germinating them in final pots
and location, once nights are warm.
Here they are, growing beautifully:
(The size difference is due to pot size; more on that in a separate post.)
Finally, a client of my partnerās gave us a couple spare San Marzano seedlings (and a Black Cherry seedling, not shown). Itās a legendary variety, of course, but not a dwarf, so I wasnāt sure how it would handle container life. Quite well, so far:
So, Iām beginning to look forward to a good year for tomatoesā¦ foolish, of course. Thereās still plenty of time for it to all go wrong.
(Past tomato failure trauma.)
