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Will tomato's grow in cool temperatures?
drakeeston
Posts: 26
I planted tomato's a few days ago and they are starting to geminate, so I've move it from my warm boiler room to a slightly cooler windowsill for light, problem is will they survive? (The windowsill is lightly cooler)
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Posts
They will survive in cooler temps. The problem at this time of year is that the sun's rays are not yet strong enough to allow the plants to grow strongly. With a weak sun for another 3-4 weeks your seedlings may get too long and flop over.
Keeping them cool will help keep them short, but if they do get long and straggly then I'd sow some more at then end of march or early april - which is when I'll sow mine.
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
I was thinking of sowing tomato seeds in a couple of days time but I will now wait a month thanks to the replies on here
I sowed tomatoes in Jan once and it was a hopeless failure (it does say on the packet - sow from Jan - April). The following year I sowed in Feb with much the same result.
That was a lesson learned best part of 50 years ago.
I now wait till late March or early April depending on the weather.
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Yes - at least twice now, and in only another 6 years and I'll be 22 for the 3rd time
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Wheelies: definitely hang on a bit! I've tried growing tomatoes early but even with artificial heat they don't get the light to need and I found that the early efforts were awful needing constant attention and producing a limited fruit in comparison the ones I threw in last minute and generally ignored until the leafs wilted. They grow so quickly they soon catch up.
They need minimum night time temps of ten or eleven degrees. Italophile (our resident tomato expert on the forum ) offered that info a long time ago, and I always remember it. It's why we can't grow them outside up here - we don't get that consistently in summer.
If you sow too early, you have to have somewhere to keep growing them on, and they also need light early on, which is more tricky to achieve than warmth. Late March or into April for me, and that's early enough.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...