Growing Tomatoes Indoors During Winter
I am growing a tomato plant indoors during the winter. It’s an experiment, just for fun. If it yields some actual tomatoes before Spring, that will be great! We’ll see.
As you can see in the picture above, it’s doing quite well.
Last October I wrote an article titled “How To Save Tomato Seeds For Next Years Garden”. I literally took three seeds from that particular tomato (a delicious Brandywine heirloom) and planted them for this experiment.
Last years tomatoes were ridiculously good. So I figured, wouldn’t it be pretty neat if I could be eating more of these tomatoes fresh off the vine during the winter?
[ Read: Brandywine Tomatoes, Jalapeno’s, and New Ace Bell Pepper Bumper Crop ]
Of those three seeds, two sprouted. Must’ve been end of October. I started them in a small container (3-inch square). After awhile it became quite evident that one of the two seedlings was vigorous compared to the other. So the other was sacrificed to make room for “survival of the fittest”.
The baby Brandywine would sit in a South facing window during the day. I would move it on top of the (warm) hot water heater at night – where I had rigged up a plant light.
During very cloudy overcast days, it would stay under the grow light.
Eventually it got big enough to transplant into its present and final container. I moved it to a bar stool in front of a South facing window. Here it is today, about 12 weeks after sprout:
Pretty soon I’ll have to figure out how I’m going to support it – assuming it continues to grow as tomato plants do…
At this rate, I might have some tomatoes in February! Time will tell.
Anyway, it’s fun to do experiments like this :)