I got suckered by Early Pick as they claim a 62 days to maturity vs. Best Boy which is 70. 8 days is meaningless in truth but that's the ONLY reason I picked an unknown. Early Girl was not to be found. Mail order is next year if I can build some confidence in my ability with store bought seeds.

I planted the seeds March 18th. I only got 35 Early Pick seeds (100 mg) vs the 50+ Best Boy also 100mg. So, 20 days in, my Best boys are looking promising and are working on a second set of adult leaves past the cotyledons. Purple stems, things look good for a newbie. (my wife has no faith and says we'll still have to buy plants)

But...my "Early Pick" is mostly cotyledon and only a few seedlings have tiny adult leaves. And I mean tiny. I am using store bought seed starter. Same temps. Florescent grow lights. Sure, I have three different color temps and I have not made a science of what went were as I have transferred the seedlings into "one plant per pot". But I can't imagine light temp would have that much affect

So...my question....as I run out of space and my goal is to get a large crop of tomatoes for eating and canning....the Best Boy Hybrid looks at least two weeks ahead of the Early Pick. I'm tempted to scuttle all but a few Early Picks and get some other veggies going. I need to make space and I find it hard to imagine Early Pick will ever catch up to Best Boy. Or is it premature to conclude anything after 20 days.

Note: The Roma VF look about the same as Early Pick but the Roma's have a 75 day to maturity stat. I guess my dilemma is I have too many seedlings and I need to start thinning the heard and I'm trying to decide what goes.

(47 Best Boys single potted. 18 Early Picks and now I need to make room for Roma single pots...there might be underlying other issues as to my need to cull huh?) I typically only buy 12 plants to start with.....but there are always neighbors and friends should my new more focused effort work.

Thanks for the advice. Sorry for the long post. I felt I should share all the details.

JD in Chilly NH

If you need to cull I would keep the best looking seedlings, try to keep at least a few of each variety in order to compare later.

Good luck.

So DTM really has no relevance to germination or growth rates. They are determined by 90% growing conditions provided and 10% variety genetics controlled. So the disparity in performance at this stage can mostly be laid at the feet of the growing conditions - light, temps, air circulation, size of container, mix used and you didn't mention 1 big one - watering.

So it boils down to if you need to do some culling then save the plants that seem to be best responding to the growing conditions provided and sacrifice the rest.

Dave

Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it **** well pleases.

If you look online, there are a number of variants on different subjects (computers ... even one for science fiction conventions -- and having attended a few, I can relate).

Perhaps we should write a gardener's variant about seeds and add it to the FAQs?

This spring, I seem to have more than the usual number of tomato seeds which have decided to follow their own logic and do as they **** well please.

Now, I will admit, DTM I thought was from germination to fruit ripe. Thanks for the education. I started my seeds with a May 20 last front date thus my Mar 18th seeds in date.

I hear ya, "stuff happens" but I fear she will be right. We'll end up buying plants if we ever want to see something on the table. Next year I will start March 1st indoors. And maybe have two 4' 6500k lights.

Here is a picture of the difference. Best Boy in foreground, Early Pick in background after 20 days in the same environment. The Early Pick went into the peat pots today as they finally looked like they were ready for transplant. I am not a fan of peat pots....I had them and thus I am using them up. My "potting up" is a bit of a rag tag affair.