Montana Gardening in Zone 4

Although I have read a lot of gardening books, I'm a fairly inexperienced gardener. I live in Montana, zone 4. We have a short growing season. The last frost is around May 15, first frost about Sep 10. I tend to experiment a lot with unorthodox methods and unique varieties of plants.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Seed Starting-Tomatoes


My seed-starting set-up: a Park's Bio_Dome with 40 holes-filled with a nice spongy growth medium, a cheap heating pad meant for people, 4-foot flourescent lights placed on top of a stack of videotapes. It's a lot brighter than it looks in there, my camera just compensated for what it thought was backlighting.

I have started the following seeds:
Tendercrisp Celery (3)
Millionare Eggplant (2)
Stupice Tomato (5)
Marvel Stripe Tomato (5)
San Marzano Tomato (5)
Striped Roman Tomato (5)
Yellow Currant Tomato (3)
Red Currant Tomato (3)
Pink Brandywine Tomato (4)
Well that's an approximation anyway, hopefully the seedlings will differentiate themselves where I forgot.

I just bought the Bio-Dome this year. So far, I really like it. It's lightweight but durable, small enough to fit a few under my lights, the spongy material is very nice-holds a lot of water without being soggy, and has a nice resilient feel to it.

The complete Bio-Dome cost about $22.
$12 for 80 refills which I may avoid buying by using regular seed-starting medium.
Foam trays with plugs are $12 each without the Dome.
Hmmmm. I remember seeing these marked down in the fall.

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