Tomatoist
By Kevin Grzyb in Food on May 13, 2005 5:11PM
Tomatoist is dead, long live Tomatoist. So, the best laid plans of Chicagoist and our homegrown tomato-laden summer garden of urban delights have finally taken their last spin around the sink and spun down the drain. The past week’s weather was a bit too much for the tender young seedling that we started weeks ago. Okay, we left them on the porch one day to get sun and then forgot to bring them in and they took a beating from the cold and some curious squirrels.
In our own defense, they weren’t doing as well as we had anticipated. This year Chicagoist tried a new product from Jiffy. Instead of the regular plastic starter trays for seedlings we went with the high tech disk technology of the Jiffy Heated Greenhouse with peat pellets. Now this sounded impressive, but it was not. Now we’ll admit that the initial part of the setup process was cool as all hell. Pour thee quarts of warm water into the tray and watch as the quarter inch thick disks slowly grow into three-inch tall cylinders over the course of a half hour. It was cool. We then followed the instructions and planted our variety of heirloom seeds, plugged in the tray warmer and dropped the tray on a table by our big bay window. Slowly sprouts started to come, really slowly, too slowly and we just knew something was wrong. So, now Chicagoist will use the always handy plan ‘B’ (which we always have) and go get some seedling from the nursery.
Previously: The Greatest Rite of Spring (Tomatoes Part I), Tomatoes Part II – Chicagoist Gets Seedy