by Lucien Beauley

Created on: March 25, 2010

Achieve Success Growing Early Hybrid Tomatoes Indoors

Growing early hybrid tomatoes are a great pastime for the serious outdoor gardener simply because they produce an early harvest and they are very prolific. Growing these same tomatoes indoors is a big boost because of the year round growing season and with its convenience.

What Does A Back Yard Gardener Need To Extend The Growing Season Year Round?

The only change that is needed in order to grow just about any vegetable in your home or apartment[except corn, pumpkins, blue hubbard squash and a few others] is the proper lighting which simply means reproducing the outdoor sunlight inside your home. At one time this was a very costly undertaking. Today, it just means procuring a few CFL lamps of the proper brightness and color temperature. Of course, there is a little more to it than this. One has to mount the lamps to a simple board that can be raised or lowered as needed. The light source has to cycle on and off to conform with the day and night cycle as the plants are accustomed to outdoors. Watering is fairly simple and so is adding the proper fertilizer at the right time as needed. Now, I guess we are ready to get started. I have provided a link to my own simple design of a "grow lamp" for those who might be interested:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2718349/con struct_your_own_inexpensive_indoor.html?cat=32

Of course, anyone planning to grow anything indoors needs a simple table. I constructed my own that measured approximately two feet by three feet. This may seem a little small but I manage to grow peppers, several herbs and of course 4-oz. hybrid tomatoes. I use 4 CFL lamps that each consume 15 Watts, i.e., equivalent to 60 Watt incandescent lamps. The CFL lamps are rated at a color temperature of close to 6,000 degrees Kelvin. This information is posted on the back of the carton. It is the approximate color temperature of our sun. True, the ambitious indoor grower can use LED[light emitting diode] growing lamps but these are much more expensive, so we'll stick with the CFL's. For me, running the CFL's @ 12 hours on and 12 hours off costs me about a dollar a week for the electric consumption, or less than a cup of coffee.

The gardener has the choice of purchasing organic seed or seed procured from tomatoes grown with chemical fertilizers. The cost for the organic seed is not much greater than your standard seed. I usually place several seed in a 4-inch pot using commercially prepared organic soil

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