I'm wondering that too. I have room for 18 plants and usually grow four of each variety and give away the extras. This year, there are so many varieties that I want to try out that I may be growing one of each, which means I should probably germinate 4 seeds of each variety. Not being able to kill off any of my tomato "puppies" that will leave a lot of little ones to find good homes for!

Linda

If your seed is fresh (no more than 2-3 years old and from a reliable source), and you have experience growing from seed indoors, you really don't need to plant more than twice as many plants as you will need for your garden. Germination rate is usually very high for good tomato seed. I grew 1 plant each of 10 varieties last year, and started with 4 seeds of each variety. For 9 of the varieties I chose, all but one of the seeds germinated, so I had 35 seedlings. The one variety I love the most, Mortgage Lifter Estler's, took much longer to germinate than the others, probably because I was using saved seed. All the others germinated within 4-5 days, but the MLs hadn't germinated in 10 days, so I planted a bunch more. Finally 9 of them germinated.

At 5 weeks, I transplanted each of them into a one-quart pot because they were so big. There wasn't enough room under my 8-tube, 4-foot grow lights for all of them along with the peppers and eggplants I was also growing. I was able to give away or sell several of the extras at that point, but the weather was still cold, and friends who didn't have a place to maintain the plants inside, lost a few of my babies before they could plant them out. I felt like the old woman who lived in a shoe with so many children she didn't know what to do.

This post was edited by Ohiofem on Wed, Jan 1, 14 at 16:30

I believe tha the cost of seeds in comparison to the value of time and my efforts is very low. Say one seed costs 25 cents. If I plant 2 extra seeds my cost/loss is 50 cents IF I didn't need to plant those.

I am going to grow about 2 from each variety. But I will want to germinate maybe 5 seeds of each.