I realized a lot of people visit my website (counter at bottom shows 77,000).
The problem is they are not visiting the other pages on my site
(Links at top of page). This leads me to believe the visitors are interested in finding an early variety of tomatoes to plant. What matters less than variety is planting indoors around the Winter Solstice. Plant December 15th for earliest tomatoes in your garden.
Around 1950 Rutgers University developed a variety named Rutgers Tomatoes. Verticillion Wilt and Fusarium Wilt are in most soils. Rutgers tomato is the first tomato resistant to the 2 wilts.
It was the most widely grown commercial tomato planted on big farms from about 1950-1990. I grow mostly Rutgers'
My wife makes $10,000 annually growing tomato plants. She could make more or less but she only needs about $10,000 pocket change. We just plant the right amount of plants to make $10,000.
We usually scatter seeds on 5-5-5 compost and manure around December 15th in plastic shoeboxes and leave them stacked indoors until they sprout about 10 days later. After they sprout we place them in window sills. Around March 1st we transplant them into cups and feed them miracle grow. We place them outside after transplanting and cover them if it rains or frosts with 5 gallon buckets. We also plant some growing trays around March 1st (they have there own plastic lids for protection). We put them outside. We have gardeners and farmers that have been buying from us for years that call us at planting time to see what we have available. We see what other people are charging and act accordingly. Usually we start selling May 1st. We get $2 a plant on the big ones in cups. The tray price on the little ones varies around $10 a tray.
I realized I should post this. We save money on compost & manure because we made 2 boxed in leaf compost piles. One of Oak leaves for acid loving plants ( evergreens, tomatoes, etc.. ). One of Maple leaves for most plants. After a winter in the pile we mix the leaf particles about 50/50 with soil to pot our plants.
We save a lot of money on containers (pots) to grow our plants in. We use 2-liter bottles we have cut the top off of and punched drain holes in the bottom of. We also use old drink cups and cans from can goods.
I went all out and bought a container for a worm farm to feed our food scraps and paper plates to. My worm farm doubles as my pets and is grown in my room. I don't cry when my family members steal some to go fishing. They have given their existence to make my family members happy!