Planting tomatoes in June??

[laurenlulu]

I ordered 5 or 6 tomato varieties from Heirloom Seeds in February, but they still haven't shipped, I just heard that they were shipping the end of April. I'm in zone 6b. If I start the seedlings as soon as I get them, the earliest I'll be able to plant out will be the first-second week of June. Is that way too late?

 

[patandchickens]

Goodness no, as long as they are not excessively long-season varieties (in which case you may not get much harvest before frost).

Our last frost date here is in the first week of June -- I usually put out a few tomatoes in Wall O Waters a few weeks or month earlier, but most of my tomatoes go into the ground the last week of May or first week of June (or later, one year ) and I still get a decent harvest. Just delayed.

Even for a very long-season variety, if you've got the seeds you may as well plant a few, you can push them a little if you want with various means of keeping the soil and the air around the plant warm... and you will get *some* fruits before frost, to at least judge the variety from.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat, just going to start my main bunch of tomatoes, peppers, etc etc this weekend (indoors obviously)

 

[wifezilla]

Ouch. I hurt myself laughing. Your growing season is insanely long. In Colorado, you don't even dare plant peppers or tomatoes until June unless you want a hail storm or random blizzard to take them out.

(I am beginning to think anyone above zone 5 is a tad spoiled! )

 

[vfem]

Well I'm hoping to get my tomatoes out this weekend. We'll see... we had a late frost so I don't know if I can trust our weather this month in Zone 7B.

Now last year, I bought some ready to go tomato plants at Home Depot in July. I had fruit in August.... so I think you will be just fine!

 

[jlmann]

I always plant a lot of tomatoes. I stagger mine about two weeks apart so they don't all produce at the same time. That way I can get 3 or 4 big harvests instead of 1 monster harvest. So you could pick up a couple of plants right around the last frost date and plant them then in june when the ones you start from seed are ready plant them as a "late" tomatoe.

A lot of years frost will threaten my latest tomatoes so I just pick all of the green tomatoes and put them in paper bags in the basement. They get ripe eventually.

 

[laurenlulu]

Sorry I made you hurt yourself wifezilla

You're right- they just gave me the option to cancel my order, so I was considering it. One of the varieties I got was burpee's long keeper- that one should actually be perfect, it should be full of fruits to ripen through the fall/winter in storage.

 

[momofdrew]

I plan on starting my tomatoes this weekend because I cannot plant them in the garden until after the full moon in June and our first frost is around labor day... short growing season...