Tomato Growing Experiment

Starting from seeds and then moving to small cups after a couple weeks.

After about 3 weeks, almost ready for final transplant.

I don't know why, but I love to tinker around in the garden and grow veggies! It must be because both my grandfathers always had amazing gardens and my dad has also been known to have his own plants. I like trying to grow tomatoes because they are unpredictable and can grow indeterminately if you take care of them and stake them up. Living in an apartment makes it challenging because I am forced to grow them in containers. This past summer (2008) I started late in the season (late July), but still managed to get a bunch of tomatoes by October.

This year I started planting way early (April) and even went so far as to start everything from seeds. Also I was blessed to be able to use an old flower bed next to our apartment building; it had been neglected and was overgrown with Ivy and some old bush-like plant. I spent a few days digging up everything and completely clearing it, preparing for a mini garden. The flower bed is about a 50 foot strip and 4 feet wide. I let my front neighbors plant two rose bushes in the front section, but I got the rest for a bunch of different vegetable plants.

This is before I cleared the flower bed.

This is the bed currently.


I originally planted 5 tomato plants near the back part of the flower bed. Only two survived because of an idiot Mexican yard guy that went crazy with his blower and knocked 3 plants down, breaking them at the base and killing them.

Here you see one of the two flower bed plants that I staked around 5 weeks old. I'm going with small bamboo sticks because I think it looks more rustic and natural.

I planted the same seedlings into 5 different sized potted containers, ranging from 12inch pots to 14 inch pots. Also staked at about 5 weeks. Notice the immediate difference in the size of the main stalk compared to the one planted in the flower bed.

Currently, the two flower bed tomato plants have drastically tripled in size compared to the potted plants on our balcony. They all get the same amount of watering and sunlight, however it is a little harder to keep the potted plants perfectly watered (sometimes the leaves droop if you don't water a bit on a daily basis).

Below is me and my two big plants. Notice in the background there are lots of tiny seedling plants starting to come up. These are all other veggies such as peppers, onions and more tomato plants.

Its been exciting to see the progress of the same plants in two different growing areas. All of these first wave tomato plants are just starting to flower and form tiny tomatoes. I have had to continually prune each plant along with add more stakes to the two in the flower bed. I also planted some heirloom tomatoes in place of three plants that were murdered by the blower. I will update when the tomatoes are in bloom.