growing tomatoes from seed outside

Mikesgardn 8/3/2024, 1:30 pm

I live in Maryland (zone 7), and I always buy tomato transplants from a local green house. I had always assumed that the growing season was too short to plant seeds outside.

This year, I noticed that a tomato plant was growing in the mulch path beside one of my boxes. I assume that it was from a tomato seed from some fallen tomato that I never removed in the fall. I decided to leave it growing there to see if it would produce tomatoes, and today I picked 3 of them. Has anyone else grown tomatoes from outdoor seed in zone 7?

OhioGardener 8/4/2024, 9:50 am

I'm in zone 6, not zone 7, but most of us have experienced volunteer tomatoes coming up from the previous year's seeds. In fact, I have one growing now on my compost pile. These are hardy tomatoes which usually came from hybrid seeds and are not the same variety as the tomato they came from. But to grow the varieties that we want in our gardens we normally start seeds indoors 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost date in order to get the earliest ripened tomatoes possible. Tomato seeds can be direct planted in the garden after the last frost, but they will not be able to produce fruit until very late in the season due to their late start.

markqz 8/4/2024, 1:36 pm

OhioGardener wrote:Tomato seeds can be direct planted in the garden after the last frost, but they will not be able to produce fruit until very late in the season due to their late start.

What do you think of that suggested 85 days they put on seed packets? Does that ever actually happen?

OhioGardener 8/4/2024, 1:53 pm

markqz wrote:
OhioGardener wrote:Tomato seeds can be direct planted in the garden after the last frost, but they will not be able to produce fruit until very late in the season due to their late start.
What do you think of that suggested 85 days they put on seed packets? Does that ever actually happen?

Not in this household. Ha! I started tomato seeds indoors on April 22nd (day 113), transplanted them into the raised bed on May 16 (day 137). Today is Aug 4 (day 217). That is 80 days since the transplant, and the first tomato hasn't started turning color. Very Happy

**sanderson** 8/6/2024, 1:08 am

Only my patio Snow Fairies can do it. From seed started indoors around Feb 1-15, planted out April first, the earliest I've had ripe tomatoes was June 22 one year. That's 83 days at sunny/ warm latitude 37*.

The days on a seed packet are measured from a planted start to the first fruit.

plantoid 8/8/2024, 11:26 am

Every year early on in March, I cut a slice off a big tomato or any other I fancy say 1/4 inch thick across the equator of it , put the slice on a three inch bed of potting compost in a 4x4 container ( minimum size ) then sprinkle 1/4 of an inch more potting compost over it .
Keep it slightly warm and moist and it's about two week till the micro shoots appear . Leave it in a cool not cold room out of the sun . Still keeping it damp , then when the seedlings are two inches and have four leaves on them prick them pout and handle by the top true leaf to pot on into three or four inch pots . Later when the plants are 8 to 10 inches high pot up in 10 inch pots , and later still big tubs or outside after all danger of below 50 or oF 10 oC has passed .

OhioGardener 8/8/2024, 7:26 pm

Mikesgardn wrote:Has anyone else grown tomatoes from outdoor seed in zone 7?

Back to the original question of this thread, has anyone been able to direct sow tomato seeds outdoors and grow them to harvest of the tomatoes? I know that I couldn't do that here with our unsettled weather, and it is necessary to start them indoors about 8 weeks before the last frost so that they get a head start when transplanted. When I lived in north Georgia I wasn't able to start them by direct sowing outdoors either.

Is anyone here able to direct sow tomato seeds outdoors and grow them through to the harvest of tomatoes? If what, where are you located, what grow zone?

**Scorpio Rising** 8/11/2024, 8:12 pm

No, I start mine indoor from seeds, harden then transplant out.

**sanderson** 8/13/2024, 3:05 am

The only successful "direct sowing" of tomatoes has been from a fallen tomato that wasn't picked up in the fall. Razz

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