The ideal time to start tomato seeds indoors is between January 15 and January 31. If you start any sooner than that, your seedlings will outgrow your indoor space before it's warm enough to plant them outside. Start later, and your seedlings won't be robust enough to handle the unpredictable spring weather.

Try and place your tomato seed orders now before the holidays reach full tilt and you're too busy to think straight.

Each year for the past four years, I've grown a minimum of 20 different tomato varieties in order to test which varieties perform best in our climate. The majority of these varieties tested are heirlooms. Heirlooms are less resistant to disease, but they make up for it with outstanding flavor. My goal is to find tomatoes that have excellent flavor profiles, good disease resistance, and can tolerate our heat. It's also important for varieties to begin producing early so we have enough time for a large harvest before summer.

Of the varieties that I grew for the first time this year, here are the standouts:

Mortgage Lifter Radiator Charlie's - Very early red beefsteak with heavy production, great flavor and good disease resistance Arkansas Marvel - HUGE yellow beefsteak
Anahu - Red cocktail tomato, very heavy production on compact determinate plants
San Marzano II - Heavy production of small-sized paste tomatoes for canning
Delicious - VERY heavy production of huge, red beefsteak tomatoes
Atkinson - Medium-sized red slicer with good flavor and good production

Favorites based on past trials:
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​Green Zebra
Sungold
Black Cherry
Black Krim
Chocolate Cherry
Carbon
Kakao
Chocolate Stripes
Cherokee Chocolate
Brandywine Suddath's Strain (not disease-resistant but reliable production)
Yellow Pear
Jaffa
Juliet
Better Boy

I order the majority of my tomato seeds from Tomatofest or Johnny's. Johnny's seeds are the most reliable, but Tomatofest carries the largest selection of rare tomato varieties (and they have their annual seed sale going on now). (Side note: I have had occasional issues with Tomatofest seeds being mislabeled and ending up with a different variety than what I ordered. Just be aware of this possibility.)
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