[hiccup]

Evening All

            I was wondering if I should sow my tomatoes,peppers and cucumber
               yet. I have a heated greenhouse now to put them in when the time comes.
               Any advice will be gratefully received. cheers.

[oldgrunge]

I would certainly sow my peppers and tomatoes now, cucumbers I usually sow later, but then I have only got a cold greenhouse.

[hiccup]

thanks for that olders, I'll get cracking

[Robster]

I sowed a couple of marketer cucumbers at the weekend.  Ambition is to put them in the cold greenhouse border soil under a cloche to start with.  To get a few lovely cucumbers before the proper outside plants come through.

[Kenilworth]

If you have an unheated green house I suspect its still a little early for tomatoes

oops just re-read that yeah should be fine if you have a heated greenhouse, though no real big rush.

[Headgardener22]

Sowed my tomatoes a week ago (they're just beginning to show). Peppers were sowed three weeks ago and are looking fine.

Cucumbers are a few weeks away yet.

[hiccup]

    Many thanks to all. I've sowed tomatoes and peppers earlier this evening.

[luke34]

has anyone tried Tomato 'Berry' F1 Hybrid. picked up a packet at Wyevale for  50 pence in sale. they were £3.69 for 7 seeds just wondering if they taste anything like sun gold.would not normally have bout them as they are  too expensive for me.

[Aidy]

I have sown most of mine last night however I do have two each of the three varieties I grow under a grow lamp with my peppers which were sown in Feb, its a experiment I have done this year and they are looking really good and very advanced now, would be interesting to see how much earlier they produce compared to my normal sown toms.
The plan is to start the peppers and poss toms off earlier and place them under the grow lamps into a new grow tent I have just purchased as I am well chuffed with the growth under the lamps in a foil lined box.
I would say that so far the grow lamps are working a treat and much cheaper than my old parrafin heater in the greenhouse.

[Headgardener22]

I sowed two batches of tomatoes last year, one lot on the 21st February and a second lot on the 8th April. The first ones had to look after themselves through mid February to the beginning of April as we were away on holiday. They were in an unheated polytunnel, bubble wrapped and within a plastic greenhouse within that. They had no additional heating and the temperature in the plastic greenhouse ranged between 40C and -2C whilst we were away.

Despite the obvious stress that they would have been under, they seemed to crop about 1 week earlier in a cold greenhouse than the tomatoes sown in April and produced much the same crop as the later sown ones.

I'd be interested in knowing if you can tell a difference with the ones grown under a grow lamp. I'm thinking of investing in one for next year.

[luke34]

i  would recommend one i had my sun gold  tomatoes under one  last year for about four to five weeks.they were  big strong plants perfectly ripe about 3 weeks early.mite sow mine this next week.

[upthetump]

i sowed my sungold 4 weeks ago into 3" pots and my gardeners delight and minibel (i think) this week. they are on a windowsill with foil behind them, sungols have produced 1" proper leaves so far.

[Kristen]

I'd be interested in knowing if you can tell a difference with the ones grown under a grow lamp. I'm thinking of investing in one for next year.

One advantage to factor in, as I am sure you are aware, is not having to heat the greenhouse - assuming the lights are in the house (no extra heat required) or, say, and insulated box in the garage where the lights may provide enough heat on their own.

[Headgardener22]

I'd be interested in knowing if you can tell a difference with the ones grown under a grow lamp. I'm thinking of investing in one for next year.

One advantage to factor in, as I am sure you are aware, is not having to heat the greenhouse - assuming the lights are in the house (no extra heat required) or, say, and insulated box in the garage where the lights may provide enough heat on their own.

If they provide enough heat in the house/garage, why won't they provide enough heat in the greenhouse? As I said in my post, last year the ones I sowed in February in an unheated greenhouse without additional light seemed to do fine.

[Kristen]

If they provide enough heat in the house/garage, why won't they provide enough heat in the greenhouse?

The heat loss from a glasshouse / polytunnel is very high ... a light in the corner of a garage won't be any better as the heat will escape into the rest of the garage itself, but if you build an insulated box in the garage then the heat will be retained (well ... very little top up heat will be needed, and the heat from the lamp may be enough).  It is probably cheaper to light that box rather than heat the greenhouse and, in the early months, light in the greenhouse will be rubbish so heating it will encourage the plants into growth but they won't have the light to support that growth, lighting wins on that count too.  I don't know if lighting is cheaper than heating on average ... clearly it would be in a very cold Spring.

A garage will not fall to as low a temperature, on a cold night, as a greenhouse as the heat loss through block walls is much slower than through glass. It won't heat up as much the following day either, but the extreme cold will be avoided. But it needs to be an insulated box if it is in a garage, in the house the minimum temperature will be whatever the central heating system maintains and how quickly the house loses temperature (overnight for example).

last year the ones I sowed in February in an unheated greenhouse without additional light seemed to do fine.

Sure, but last year (here at least) was incredibly mild. We had three frosts in the whole winter.

The likelihood is that Tomato seedlings subjected to cold will turn Purple, which is a sign of a defensive mechanism kicking in, the plant then fails to metabolise some key nutrients and gets stressed (or dies).  It takes a considerable amount of time for the plant to get going again (presumably the defensive mechanism is evolved to assume that further cold nights may follow, until there is a prolonged period of warmth).

Yes indeed, you may well get away with it - maybe more often than not - but it is also likely that the stressed seedlings will be more susceptible to any diseases going around.  You also have to look after them from February onwards, and experiments have shown that sowing that early only results in fruiting a few days earlier that plants from seeds sown in April - unless heat, and preferably light, is also provided.