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Aug. 2, 2008

Space Tomato (Tomatosphere) Project Update

It's been an awful long time since I updated you on our Space Tomatoes aka Tomatosphere Tomatoes :) They are doing fabulously! I decided to give them to my mom so that she could plant them in her greenhouse since we don't have one and that way give them the extra heat they need to grow really well. As you can see they are doing well and are growing nice and tall now.

They've even set fruit! We still don't know exactly what type of tomato they are or if packet 'A' or 'B' is the true space tomato since we haven't finished the project yet and sent in results :) It's still a mystery *grin* They look like they are Roma tomatoes though by their shape. What do you think? We can't wait until they're ripe.

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Apr. 27, 2008

Tomatosphere 'Space Tomatoes' ~ Day 53 Final Transplant

I haven't given you an update on our Tomatosphere tomato plants for quite some time! Actually they have just been growing peacefully on the dining room table since then but yesterday we decided that it was definitely time to transplant them again. Some of them were over a foot tall and starting to outgrow their pots :)

We gathered the largest pots we had which are the 1 gallon size and brought them in to be sterilized in the bleach and water bath like we did the first time and lugged in our super sized bag of potting soil! It's a good idea to give your tomato transplants a good drink of water a couple of hours before you start to transplant them so that you don't cause them extra stress by disturbing them when you pull their roots out of the pots.

Now that we had our pots washed and our potting soil scooped into a large bowl and moistened with tap water so that it was ready for the new pots we went out to get our tomato plants. Remember you can bury your tomato plant's stems with up to 75% of new dirt to encourage them to grow new roots all up the buried stem resulting in a stronger, healthier plant! In the above picture you can see that I pinched off all of the lower leaves or 'suckers' that would be going under the soil.

Here is our tomato plant ready for repotting after removing all of the lower suckers. Don't forget that you can only bury them as deep as your smallest tomato plant. So if you have 2 really tall tomato plants and a tiny one you can only place them in the dirt as deep as the little one can handle or you can forfeit the little one and remove it all together. We decided to keep all of ours, even the little guys *grin*

I was a little worried that our tomatoes might be a little root bound from being in the smaller pots for to long but when we pulled them out of their pots they had beautifully developed root systems that weren't bunched up to tightly. Phew!

Here they are all finished up. This will be the final time we repot them. In a couple of weeks we will start to put them outside during the day only, keeping them indoors overnight until the long weekend in May which will be May 20th. After that all danger of frost will be past and we can permanently put them outdoors :)

If you want to find out more about our space tomato project click HERE or to see what we have been up to with them you can check them out HERE.

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Mar. 27, 2008

Tomatosphere 'Space Tomatoes' ~ Day 22 Transplanting

I haven't updated you on how our space tomatoes are doing for quite a while so I thought that I would share with you what we did with them today :) As you can see above they are doing really well but have outgrown their little peat pots we started them in so we transplanted them into larger pots today.

To start with we washed our pots in hot soapy water with a splash of bleach to kill off any mold, bugs or fungi that might be growing in them since we were using recycled pots. You can use any sort of container as a plant pot, such as yogurt containers, margarine tubs, cottage cheese or sour cream containers and so on as long as it's big enough to provide larger space than your previous container provided. If you want to use real pots you can almost always find used ones at garage sales or thrift stores for super cheap.

After our pots were all cleaned we filled them about 1/4 full with moistened potting soil....

and then placed one of the peat pots of tomato seedlings into the pot.

Very gently we then placed the soil up and around the stems of the tomato plants burying them deeply in the soil. You can cover their stems with dirt up to 75% and this will encourage them to grow new roots all up the buried stem creating an enhanced root system and a stronger plant.

All finished and ready to be placed in front of the window again. We made sure to label them A or B so that we didn't confuse the different groups. So far both groups are still progressing the same, although we have 2 more plants in group B than we do in group A. Whether or not that means anything we will see :)

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Mar. 14, 2008

First Sign of True Leaves ~ Day 9

Today the true leaves of our space tomatoes have become clearly visible at the top of the hypocotyl. They are the two emerging leaves between the cotyledons which are where the beginnings of photosynthesis for food is happening right now :)

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Mar. 11, 2008

Tomatoshere Sprouts ~ Day 6

We checked our tomatoshpere tomato sprouts today and to our surprise they had shot up quite vigorously! Tray 'A' seems to have a better germination than tray 'B' so far but that could change in the next couple of days. Sometimes some of the seeds are a little slow to germinate. All in all it's a success so far :) I'll update you again in a couple of days.

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Mar. 9, 2008

They're Sprouting!

We peaked into our little seed greenhouses today and our space tomatoes are sprouting! Both packets 'A' & 'B' are showing signs of growth :)

Want to learn more about our space tomatoes or Tomatosphere Tomatoes check out my earlier posts here & here.

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Mar. 5, 2008

Planting our Space Tomatoes

Yesterday we received our 2 packets of tomato seeds from Tomatosphere so we wasted no time getting them planted :) We started by filling the sink with the hottest water out of the tap and dropping our Jiffy 7 peat pellets into the water to watch them puff up.

These little compact discs of peat are enclosed in a netting and when they are added to warm water they absorb it and puff up into the perfect little planting pots.

Throughout the year I usually save a couple of clear domed plastic take out containers or cake containers from store bought cakes which work wonderfully as little seed greenhouses.

On the first tray we put 5 of our warm jiffy's to be planted with Packet 'A'

And then opened up the seed packet and grouped our tomato seeds into groups of 4.

In each peat pot we placed 4 seeds and then covered them with just a really light amount of the peat. You don't want to plant them to deeply in the dirt or it will take them longer to sprout out. The shallower they are the quicker you will see the results :)

Once we had the first tray planted with Packet 'A' we moved on and repeated the whole thing again with Packet 'B' and then closed them up in their little greenhouses. Don't forget to label your containers so that you remember which seeds are in which container *grin* To finish up we placed them on top of the refrigerator where I know they will keep nice and warm to germinate. Other good places to place your seed greenhouses are in the cupboard above the oven, or in your stereo cabinet where the tv equipment is giving off heat and creating a nice toasty atmosphere for germination. We'll update you in a couple of days when our tomatoes start to sprout :)

UPDATE: Check out how they're doing HERE & HERE.

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Mar. 4, 2008

Our TOMATOSPHERE Seeds Are Here!!

What is Tomatosphere?

Tomatosphere is a research project involving more than 9,000 classrooms of Grades 2 to grade 10 students ("Tomatonauts") across Canada, the United States and several other nations. In 2008, students will have the opportunity to grow tomatoes from seeds that have been placed in an environment to simulate the effects of aerocapture, as might occur when entering the atmosphere of Mars, and a control group. In the research project, students will be asked to germinate the seeds, but will not know the origin of the seeds until the results are reported to the web site. At that point, the teacher receives an automatic response indicating which seeds were from each group. This methodology, known as a "blind study" will allow the mystery of the project to be real for the students.

(the above is directly quoted from the FAQ's on the Tomatosphere site)

The experiment is open to public schools and homeschoolers and there is a wealth of information on their website. There are teacher manuals to lead you through it and they are broken down into 3 different grade levels, each one covering different topics:

Gr.2-4 ~ Plants, Soils & Habitats

Gr.5-7 ~ Human Needs, Weather & Space

Gr. 8-10 ~ Space Exploration & Sustainability of Ecosystems

Complimenting each level are also corresponding PDF's of posters & charts covering scientific investigation, plant information, seeds in space and again each one is broken down into the specific grade levels so that you don't have to do a lot of searching.

(Click the above image to go directly to their registration page)

There's still time to sign up for the 2008 Tomatosphere Project! So hustle over there and get your seed packets sent immediately. Don't miss out on the fun!!