Early Tomato Seedlings for Tomato Tuesday

It's Tuesday, which means I have tomato growing on my mind. Last Tuesday, March 1st,
I started 8 different tomato varieties in hopes of ripe tomatoes by June 1st. Most have sprouted nicely.

These babies are ready for a busy childhood under lights on my new light stand. The healthiest looking seedlings will be transplanted several times to bigger containers. Those lucky enough to make it past the first rounds will spend their adolescent days out in the greenhouse to harden off. After that they hopefully will go into the outside garden to face dangerously cold nights that will propel them into adulthood. I will give them some protection with plastic sheeting but it will still be hard for them. Those that survive, set fruit and ripen before June will be heralded as heroes! I explained the process in more detail in a previous year's post that you can read here.

The normal time to harvest ripe tomatoes here is August, so getting them in early June is quite a treat that is worth the extra work.

The method that I use to force early ripening tomatoes is from my favorite old book that I mention all the time here. It is The New Victory Garden, by Bob Thompson, pictured on the left. If you are a regular reader here, you are probably tired of hearing about this book - sorry, I just can't help mentioning it again.

The only additional thing that I do to try to help get early tomatoes is that I plant only early maturing varieties for this task. I am always on the look out for new varieties to try.

In the race to be the first ripe tomato in our garden, the reigning champion for 2 years in a row is Burpee's Fourth Of July Hybrid, which lists as 49 days. The challengers returning from last year is the 2nd place finisher, the classic Early Girl Hybrid (57 days) as well as Mountain Princess (50 days), and Sub Arctic Plenty (62 days), which has a chance to win if it stays cold in early spring.

The new challengers this year that I am excited about are:
Ultimate Opener (57 days)

Park's Season Starter Hybrid (60 days)
Polbig Hybrid (56 days)
Buckbee's New 50 Day (55 days) from TomatoFest.

I will tell you more about each of these as the season progresses. Surely out of eight different early tomato varieties, at least one of them will ripen in May, right? We can hope can't we?

Do you try for early tomatoes? If so, what varieties have you had success with?

Happy Tomato Tuesday!