Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi guys. I'm sure this is probably a dumb beginners question, but how do you start your tomato seeds?

Thanks!

I have to ask...Is this the chicken and the egg question?
sorry!
Well as everyone would no I hold a great deal of importance on the moon.
So once discoverd, the best time for planting seed bearing plants, according to the big cheese!
I pre-dry the fruit stock (seed stock) in readiness for the timing.
About 2-3 days prior to the peak time new moon, I 'crack', soak the seeds in a moist bed, not wet! moist or direct drill seeds if I want heaps of plants.

Have to agree wholeheartily with C1.....

Lot of people have had success sowing seed directly into the gravel in AP systems.....

Think the flood and drain action.. wet/dry cyclic nature... imitates the preferred natural germination requirements.

I've got so used to pre-soaking all my seeds I think I'll still do so regardless.

Now how about sunlight. Direct sunlight right off the bat or should I partly shade them until they've set in?

The tomatoes in my system at the moment have all grown from self sown seed, and they are flowering and fruiting in the middle of winter..

By 'direct drill', do you mean just pushing them into the growing medium? and how far down would you recommend? The tip of a finger, to the second digit? (I'm trying to use fairly a universal measurement standard)

And also so I understand your lunar schedule, you plant based on the new moon? So, that's when the seeds should be sewn?

My dad didn't give much credence to the lunar chart. He always said, "I plant in the ground, not the moon." He always was successful. He would raise about two acres of garden per year, and normally a quarter to half of that was in tomatoes or strawberries. (I don't know how many pounds of tomatoes and quarts of strawberries he sold every summer. I do remember us taking five or six five gallon buckets full of tomatoes, each tomato big enough to cover a salad plate, to the local diner three or four times a week.) The most critical issues to successful starting from seed are moisture, and temp. Once they are started you want to watch the amount of direct light until they have thier first true leaves, then slowly increase the amount of light until they are out in it all the time.
Kevin

Some seeds require light to germinate, some (like tomatoes) do not. I am having best success with any small seeds just sprinkling them over the top of the gravel, then tapping the gravel lightly to knock them down into the crevices. Finally, I mist the surface of the gravel a couple times a day until I see seeds coming up. For larger seeds like beans or peas, I push them in to my first knuckle and ignore them.

Yes i agree with JP...I always sprinkle afew more rockes over the seads once i knok then doen into the growmedia abit

I have found that small seeds seem to grow best in a F&D system.

Also AM grew all his seeds in the same kind of system to me, but he used gravel as a grow media. His seeds took a fair bit longer then mine to pop up. I use quinkan as my grow media. It is really absorbent so the seeds stay damp for longer after the water recieds. It is great for roots to cling onto, as it has a lot of strange edges and the fish poop and bacteria "live" in it.

quinkan is $30 for it to fill up about 30 liters of grow bed. I get mine from the local raw materials place.

MW, is the sun really roasting hot where you are? If it is, then use some shadecloth over the growbeds. We have one bed that isn't inside the greenhouse/shade roof and all the seeds we originally planted in there fried before they could grow more than a couple of millimetres.
We put a shade roof up and now it's thriving.

Sorry for the off-topic, but CC do you have 30 litres of bed or 300 litres. I'm sure you said 300 previously and it was from that which I made my evaluation regarding your issues.

plant the seeds far down enough that they are wet by the flood level.

This is why i DONT have luck from seeds, i flood far to low

I scrape off the top layer of gravel down to where the gravel is wet (~1") and sprinkle the seed then cover - no use using a knuckle/2 knuckle depth if the seeds then get too wet or stay dry....IMHO

problem is that my flood is >2 inch below gravel, so some seeds have trouble becasue they have to grow too far to get to the surface

If you just put the seeds a little bit under the gravel and hand water them with a watering can from the fish tank for a couple of days, you can get very good germination