You Win Some You Lose Some

Let me tell you the sad story of my tomato seedlings.

They began life in late February in West Dorset when I sowed them in a small seed tray full of compost. There were two varieties, Gardener's Delight, and Red Pear - 10 of each. As I was still at Pilsdon Community I had the luxury of popping them in an electrically-warmed germination cabinet so they sprouted within just a few days. Just in time in fact as on March 1st I was off up to Wales with the seed tray carefully wedged beneath the driver's seat where hopefully nothing could fall on top of it and flatten the seedlings.

Unaccustomed as they were to road travel and despite being kept in near-darkness for six hours they seemed to survive the journey relatively well. At our destination they were brought into the polytunnel which was to be their home for the rest of their lives. Every evening I put a large plastic cover over the tray in an attempt to keep some warmth in.

My bog

However something was able to get in, as over time I noticed the leaves of several of the tiny seedlings had been nibbled back to almost nothing. Without leaves, no photosynthesis, no energy to grow.

The rest of them pluckily carried on growing, albeit very slowly. The warmth they needed simply wasn't there. The polytunnel doesn't warm up much in cool cloudy days, of which there were many.

When they were a month old I decided to re-pot a few of them, thinking that some fresh compost might give them a boost. Only seven of them were worth potting on, the rest having died or were stunted. These seven had at least grown a couple more tiny leaves. So I “pricked out” the seedlings and popped them in a pot each, keeping them watered and generally showering them with love and affection.

The frogspawn are hatching

None of this paid off. Last Wednesday night the temperature dropped to 0.1C outside, and it can't have been much warmer inside the polytunnel. All seven of them were drooping over when I went in to check on them on Thursday morning. It became a very nice warm day and I had hopes that they would recover, and some did seem to straighten up a bit. Others I propped up with little sticks.

But over the course of this week they have been slowly dying. They're all drooping despite the warmer nights, and the stems which are thin anyway are getting thinner and whiter. I don't expect they'll last another week. R.I.P tomato plants.

Fern-like fractal frost patterns on my greenhouse glass

Thankfully I did another sowing earlier in March so I do have healthier but smaller tomato seedlings in another tray. My intention to grow my own tomatoes from seed is still achievable. Yet if I had access to an airing cupboard, or just a centrally-heated room, I would have been able to keep the little blighters warm and tucked up at nights; my caravan sadly has neither. Maybe I should buy a house.

Tomato: The Next Generation