These posts follow our tomatoes and peppers over the years, from seed starts to harvest notes and variety experiments. It is a small collection, so everything is shown together and the captions provide the context.
Questions and comments always welcome to doug@oaksummitnursery.ca.
Tomatoes And Peppers
66 postsArticle build 2026-02-01 12:29
Spring
7 posts
Potting up tomatoes and peppers this morning. trying a few different variables this year. larger square pots, started about 6-7 weeks before plant out. over plant in cell packs, transplant, wait to thin for biggest ones. think I have a hundred this year between tomato + pepper, growing for seed in isolation. kinda fun.
Time to move tomatoes into the greenhouse. our last frost can be early june, so being cautious. had tomatoes wiped out too many times by a late frost in june. these are planned at around 6-8 weeks old for transplant around june 10. I have 100 between tomato and pepper varieties, going into hoop and netting style isolated rows for true to type seed.
When growing tomatoes is it ok to keep 2 seedlings in one pot? planning to train as 2 stems up a string or stake. I'm growing to save seed and just want to be able to select the fruit that's most true to type. thoughts? #seedsaving #tomatoes #tomatoplant
When you plant tomato seeds that you know are three years old, and they germinate before all the other seeds you ordered.. make you wonder how old those seeds were. 100% of the tomato seeds I have on my shop are from 2023, what's industry best practice just germ test and keep a secret seed lot number with them? that little green cluster at the back are sun sugar 2021, I've been saving seeds since 2015 for this variety as an amateur breeding effort, they're fairly stable but I like to grow a few years to compare and just keep the best tasting and most true to type. In this case, an orange super flavourful cherry tomato.
Germination testing tomato seeds, hazel mae tomato at 3 days showing 100% germ. #tomatoseeds
Greenhouse stayed warm this morning, I have a small GAT system circulating air through the ground, it was 2C at 8am and the greenhouse stayed at 8C. which is good because all tomatoes are in there.. heating a greenhouse without an actual heater is tricky, and even though I built it into a hillside and lined it with water barrels, until I started circulating ground heat with a blower the inside temp would quickly drop and could freeze during a light frost at night. These wireless thermometers are super nice to monitor. #greenhouse #greenhousegardening
Trying something new with tomatoes this year, going to keep them topped low in pots for 12 weeks. We get from about Jun 7 - Sep 7 frost free here, some years a couple more weeks - and usually I'm out in sept picking all the tomatoes green. Hoping to start with larger plants and pick more through august. Trying about 100 plants in a dozen heirloom varieties, some of these will go to friends and family. feels like a good summer for too many tomatoes
Summer
22 posts
Tomatoes in isolation are both growing excellent this year, but also sparse on tomatoes. we had a few weeks of rain and high humidity, which affects pollination. this week has been try and hot, so hopefully an improvement. tomatoes will self pollinate so this setup to keep the bees away works, we don't get as much fruit but the ones that do set are true to type for our seed shop. it's also somewhat helpful for frost, and given this week maybe i'll find out if it will deter bears.
If you don't have a bluetooth thermometer with localized historical data, you just won't know the crazy peak the temperature can reach. it was a full 5C / 10F colder in my backyard (in southern Manitoba) than the weather app last night, we hit 3C in the middle of july, I think at that temp the pepper plants experience some cold stress. this is a thermometer hanging in a tree in a low part of our yard about 4 ft off the ground, and it's 150 ft from the house where it connects to the wifi through a small device that boosts the signal.
Tomatoes growing inside these tents. when they fruit, since there are no pollinators in there despite just being a few ft apart they'll safely all be self pollinated and true to type.
Tomatoes a little behind going in the ground but I like how they're doing in these pots. let's hope we can get 12 weeks without frost!
Potting up peppers at 8 wks. I grow them in pots because our season is short and I let them fully ripen on the plant in the greenhouse. started mid april in these 6" pots under lights, outside for the last week and doesn't look root bound right? going into large 10-20 gallon pots, and I left a few seedlings in each. this whole row will get netted for isolation. We usually get frost in early september, but then the weather can be nice for another month, so all the pepper finish in the greenhouse into early oct.
Surprised by the cool flower on this lichi tomato, a spikey solanum species.
My approach to isolation, to produce true to type tomato and pepper seeds. so far so good. anyone else ever try this?
Garden huckleberries are new to me this year, so far they're productive and the ripe fruit is good raw like a grassy tomato, both are in the Solanum genus.
Isolating our tomato and pepper plants for seed. so far so good.
Potting up peppers. going with 2-4 plants per large pot, it's large enough for the plants to grow to full size and easy enough to bring into the greenhouse in September to let them finish ripening. We can get frost here in early june, and then again in early september so mobile peppers are the way to go. these are a couple dozen varieties that will be grown in isolation to save seed. and eat. #peppers
Almost done planting. next up straw mulch, drip tape, hoops and isolation netting. this system of tunnel isolation with alternating tomato and pepper plants has been on my mind since last fall, a system for growing heirloom varieties for seed. and for tomato sandwiches.
Garden peach tomatoes are actually fuzzy like a peach, tomatoes have so much variation it's fun to be growing dozens of new heirlooms this year. if all goes well i'll have seeds available in september
Bagging heirloom tomato flowers to try and ensure their seeds are true to type. Tomato flowers self pollinate if you can keep the bees away. This seems to work well on a small scale, and the technique carries over to controlled crosses. Wondering if I should try some . #tomatoes #seedsaving
Organza bags to keep peppers from cross pollinating. Does anyone have experience with this, should it be as good as distance separation? pollen is smaller than the holes, but for a self pollinating flower wind pollination should be almost zero, at least I've read it is for tomato. I have all pepper plants bagged and 5-10 ft separation, hoping it's 99.9% for making true to type seed. #seedsaving
Project tomato seeds - heirloom tomato bagged to ensure true to type seed. Tomatoes are self pollinating, but bees can sometimes cross them. This summer I'm growing 45 of the coolest heirloom tomatoes for #seedsaving
Project peppers, just potted them up and I'm trying these large organza bags to keep the seeds true type. these little plants can't hold back making peppers, I carefully removed every open flower before bagging. wondering how far apart to space them in case of wind cross pollination, or how unlikely that is with the bags.
Godzilla tomato .. can't wait to see how weird and lumpy they get #tomato
Pink accordion #heirloom #tomato these are a nice surprise, they're kind of meaty inside which is great for a toasted tomato sandwich
Testing vinyl tree tag printer. First thing to get test labels will be all our heirloom tomatoes, i want to save seeds so labelling all the plants will help.
Frost on June 1 is almost guaranteed in Manitoba, we had a few hours of -1C (30F). Planting my tomatoes after the weekend. Maybe just half to be safe. #frost
New notill beds for tomatoes and cucumbers. thinking about adding some post with a cable to hang stings from. I always underestimate the weight of a loaded vine. #notill #notillgardening
(35C = 95F) It's been so hot this week, can't believe frost got our tomatoes last weekend. Spring in Manitoba is like 35 with a risk of frost
Fall
35 posts
Opalka tomato
Wooly kate tomatoes are fuzzy. the leaves of the plants are very fuzzy, covered in small hairs, tomentose even. exploring the extreme ranges of characteristics in tomato species and cultivars is fun.
Sun sugar xl tomatoes, I've been saving seed and growing them for about ten years now. the flavour is distinct in these orange cherry tomatoes, sweeter and fruitier than the average tomato. the xl size come up through some variation, it's almost stable. I've started to keep 2 lines, one round and one egg shaped. this is a larger sun sugar with the same sweetness / flavour / color and the smaller typical ones. thinking it would be fun to cross the flavour with some more colorful ones or with other shapes.
Yellow pear tomatoes.
Phil's one tomato, like godzilla it has some Reisetomate in it's parentage, the travelers tomato, just break off chunks to snack on. it's like a fusion of cherry tomatoes.
Manitoba tomato.. cool to find one named after our province, it's a medium sized and bright red, good size to throw in a salad
Rebel starfighter tomato
Godzilla tomatoes easily break apart into lobes. they have the most unusual tomato shape
Couple of large bicolour tomatoes, northern lights, and last ones are pineapple
Queen of the night tomato, such cool colors. they were the blackest of all our high anthocyanin tomatoes at harvest.
Green tiger
Trying this out, drying peppers for seed extraction in halves. less work, usually I'll take out the seeds and dry the peppers / just eat them, seeing how well we can combine steps
Yellow pear tomato
Growing tomatoes in isolation, this method has some frost protection benefits, a few nights now I've cover then in burlap and run a sprinkler.. -2C / 28F no problem under some cover. our weather is literally 29C with chance of frost this week. you can see some ripe tomatoes on the vine, a good result for our short 100 day frost free season. why are they isolated? for seed, all of these plants supply our seed shop, so to keep cross pollination to zero we isolate from pollinators. the plants are starting to grow into each other, but it's fine the only fruit we're going to collect set weeks ago, I could even take the cover off for this last week in the home stretch before harvest if it wasn't such a handy frost cover
Frost blankets, happened to have about 100 burlap coffee sacks ready. will know later today how much frost damage we got, maybe the tomatoes were fine. we can get 3 more weeks of nice weather, but forecast is another hard frost tonight.
Feels like first day of fall when we get a hard frost. from 2am-8:30, graph is the end photo. as a precaution, burlap and sprinklers over the tomatoes will see if they made it
Godzilla the only tomato you can just pull apart to eat. #godzillatomato
Carbon, chocolate cherry, garden peach. Grew a few tomatoes with high anthocyanin, still looking for the darkest ones. garden peach is fuzzy, surprised that trait isn't in more of them, should protect the fruit right?
Czech black, pasilla bajio, jimmy nardello, bananarama, super chilli #peppers
Green giant, northern lights, dixie golden giant, bulls heart. we grew fifty kinds of heirloom tomatoes in our seed garden this year.
First hard frost, wonder if my tomatoes under the sprinkler survived. colder than the forecast. these bluetooth thermometers are so cool to see the graph, below freezing for a few hours.
Tomato isolation experiment. who posts a five minute video to instagram, obviously longer than anyone's attention span on here right?
Thirty degrees (80F) with a chance of frost describes our spring and fall some years. early september frost is real here, often followed by weeks of nice weather. last night was 1 degree above freezing, so I ran a sprinkler all night over our tomato and pepper garden. survived, and now in the clear for a bit. Here in southern Manitoba we often have frost early june in the same way, making for 90-100 days frost free.. but really except for a few nights the season is a couple weeks longer on each end.
Trying some tomato crosses. maybe a bit late in the year, we usually get some frost in the first half of September. trying some black tomato like carbon x godzilla. here are some green godzilla, just a crazy lumpy ball, so cool.
These little guys, sun sugar tomato.. they're my favorite. I've been saving seeds from these for almost ten years, occasionally a plant will have red fruit but they're at least 90% true to type. I planted several groups of them this year from a few generations, always looking for those 3/4" bright orange super tasty ones. I've also separated a line of larger ones that I call sun sugar xl, same taste just 1.25" or so
3 Days into germ testing our fushimi pepper seeds, looking good I thought they would take a couple weeks. do fresh pepper seeds germinate faster? #seedsaving
Fish peppers ripening in the greenhouse. 5000- 30,000 scoville make them up to 4x hotter than jalapeno #fishpepper #hotpeppers
Blueberries tomato. still figuring out the high anthocyanin varieties, when these were unripe they were deep purple more like the name suggests. picked a few weeks ago these ones are super ripe now and about half red.
Green zebra tomatoes, these are fully ripe
Pepperoncini, italian chilli peppers. sweet with mild heat 100-500 scoville #peppers
Sweet cherry peppers. grown with isolation bags for seed, also we get to eat them. flavour? starts like a good red bell pepper with a slight cherry after taste that's distinct, no heat in these ones. I bet they're good in a salad. #seedsaving #peppers
Jimmy nardello italian heirloom pepper
Purple beauty peppers, container grown
Sun sugar xl, a larger sunsugar tomato at about 1.25". I'm about five-six years into saving the seeds and these larger ones showed up in the second year. tastes the same as the smaller sunsugar, which have a reputation for being tasty.
How are heirloom tomatoes in season the most expensive thing in the whole produce section at safeway? our food supply chain is messed.
Winter
2 posts
New tomatoes added to our seed shop today.
Starting tomatoes early, this year a dozen heirloom varieties. Last frost here is first week of June so these will move from indoors to the greenhouse in may. About 100 plants going, including some to give away. #tomatoes