First Time Growing Tomatoes in Fall

The heat of summer here in Central Florida is something tomato plants don’t like. I grew one tomato plant this summer. It grew tall and big, but never had a single tomato. Now that things are cooling off a bit, I am hoping the tomatoes might grow and give me fruit.

But, I’ve had some trouble along the way.

I started the tomatoes from seeds. They grew tall and lanky and I put a few into the ground. They were promptly dug up overnight! I suspect raccoons, but maybe armadillos. We have both.

My only choice was to get them planted in a planter, off the ground, where they were not as likely to be dug up by the wildlife.

The white barrel planter at the back of my yard was being used as a compost bin. It sits alongside the Hot Frog barrels and I use it to throw larger branches and stems into. This raised bed area was full of good compost dirt. I decided to plant two of my larger tomato seedlings here.

You can see the barrel in my photo below, which I took for the Moringa trees post. Unfortunately it turned out that there is not enough sun back here for the tomatoes. I had to move them.

It was time to transplant these tomatoes again to a sunnier area of the yard.

Without all my garden areas ready to be planted (it’s a slow process), I have few choices. Also, they could be dug up again by the critters.

I had cut back the hibiscus and cleaned up the garden area around it. Of the four flowering plants planted here in Spring, only one has survived! My new little flower garden was mostly a fail! Haha… what can you do but move on.

This is where I planted one of the Eva tomato plants. I have some native milkweed seeds coming, and I plan to grow milkweed in this area.

The Eva Purple Ball tomatoes are in new spots, which now will get a bit more sun. Already the sun is lower in the sky and the whole garden area is less sunny. Most of it gets at least six hours of sun a day, so I hope we are good.

I’m hoping these little tomato plants will grow well and give at least a few tomatoes before the weather gets too cold. We have plenty of warm days ahead, but by December we could have a cold night or two.

This Fall weather is much like a northern summer, where I grew tomatoes just fine. It’s all an experiment, so we’ll see.

The tomato seeds I purchased were: Amish Paste, Druzba, and Eva Purple Ball. I also have a packet of Tropic VFN. I will plant the rest of these seeds in Spring, Only three Eva and one Druzba are currently growing. A couple of volunteer tomato plants have sprung up and I’m letting them grow to see what happens.

Buy Tomato Seeds For Southern Gardens

I buy seeds for southern gardens from either The Urban Harvest or Southern Exposure Seed Exchange – SESE. The Urban Harvest is located on the west coast of Florida (St. Pete), so the seeds they offer are meant to grow well here in Florida. At SESE, some of the seeds they sell will not work this far south, as they seem to cover a wide area of the southern US.

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