Every weekday morning, before heading down the hill to work, I spend 15 or 20 minutes in the greenhouse, staring at the cuttings and seedlings.

After this morning’s greenhouse session, I’m happy to report that the tomato seedlings are growing nicely.  When I teach gardening classes, the vast majority of attendees report that they got into vegetable gardening because of tomatoes, making toms something of a gardening gateway drug.  I confess that tomatoes are among my favorite things to grow, and every year I put in 50 or more plants.

This year, I planted seeds of Burbank, Red House Freestanding, Ropreco, Red Currant, Peacevine Cherry, Red and Yellow Pear, Yellow Perfection, Oaxacan Pink, Kootenai, Sugar Cherry, Bull’s Heart, and one that I’ve been saving for a couple of years and simply calling “Special Seeds of the Tomato.”  This last one was a surprise orange cherry that I didn’t plant – it just showed up – so I’ve been saving seeds of it every year.

The squash seeds I mentioned in a previous post have mostly germinated, and the cuttings are mostly looking good as well.  There’s a certain amount of loss to be expected when rooting cuttings, but so far, I’ve only lost a few quince, and maybe one or two others.  The rest seem to be surviving, if not yet rooting.

The jujube seems to be a particularly tough one to root.  I have a bunch of them upright, and they’re putting out leaves, but no roots so far.  I took a pair of the upright cuttings, trimmed them down, and buried them on their sides in a little 2 liter soda bottle terrarium.  It’s my hope that roots will form at the base of the new shoots.  Cross your fingers.