Direct Seeded Update: Tomatoes, Onions, & Peppers

It’s nearly October and my direct seeded main season crops continue to delight.

To recap: I direct seeded tomatoes for the second year in a row. This year instead of trying all different types, I just focused on my determinate paste tomatoes. I only planted my paste tomatoes direct seeded. I didn’t start any backups indoors!

And furthermore, I decided to only grow my favorite hybrid paste, Plum Perfect. This tomato is hefty: dense and dry, full of flesh and has incredibly high yields after oven roasting. I hope this hybrid is here for the long haul!

I direct seeded my onions both under a low tunnel and fully exposed to early spring fluctuations, uncovered, in early April. This was a bonus sowing as I’d already sowed my onions indoors in the end of February.

Regular sized onions, later but still robust tomatoes, and, delightedly, ripe red bell peppers! Indeed, it does seem the lemongrass that's surrounding me is equally excited too.

Lastly, like with the onions, I played with peppers by direct seeding some of those in my cold frame around the same time I sowed the tomato seeds. I yielded one pepper seedling worthy of transplanting, and transplanted it into my pepper bed sometime in early June.

The Results

Tomatoes

I’m both delighted and a little grieved to know that I don’t need to infuse my living space with the aroma of tomato foliage each winter in order to have a robust tomato garden here in Minnesota. This really hurts my heart and head, as this has been the cornerstone of our entire indoor seed-starting setup for 25 years! Start your tomatoes in February. It’s just what you do. Or, did.

Over the last few years, I started sowing them later. Even my April 1 determinate tomatoes produced tomatoes in mid to late August. And my direct seeded beefsteak last summer produced ripe tomatoes before September too. So, the garden has been sheperding me to this conclusion for a few years now.

I’m not entirely sure I’ll direct seed ALL my tomatoes next year, but I can say, with confidence, that even in zone 4, I don’t need to buy starts (for those who don’t seed start) OR start them early to produce an excessive amount of ripe tomatoes in August and September.

Sowing tomatoes indoors on April 1 will yield great. This is a lesson I’ve resisted listening to, but I’m finally embracing it. It also means we can travel in late winter and not have to have someone babysit our indoor seedlings. That’s a win-win.

Onions

This is a much less clear result. As you’ll hear in the video below, on the one hand, it did work. But on the other, the size and timing didn’t compare with our indoor started onions.

The direct seeded onions — both those that germinated under row cover and those that germinated uncovered — both produced similar sized onions at the same time too. I didn’t notice a difference in vigor or really timing. However, when compared to the indoor sowed and transplanted starts, they fell short by a significant amount. I’d guess the indoor started/transplanted seedlings were, on average 1/3 larger than my direct seeded onions. Seed to seed, that’s a significant “crop loss” if we’re thinking in terms of biomass or pounds produced.

The other tricky thing is that the plants weren’t mature at the same time. The direct seeded onions were about 3-4 weeks behind the indoor sowed ones. Because I use my onion beds as a main succession planting tool for my fall garden, this is not as easy of a decision to direct seed them all going forward.

I think at most I’ll continue to play with this, but will for sure keep indoor starting some of my onions and leeks and shallots to ensure a productive crop. We love our homegrown onions, and haven’t proven yet that it’s a sure thing, but maybe a few more years and I’ll feel the same way I do about the tomatoes.

Peppers

This was the biggest and best surprise of the summer. My single Wisconsin Lakes pepper that was the smallest seedling in June has produced not one, not two, but six ripe bell peppers this week. Six! What a beauty.

This was an enormous leap of faith to think a pepper plant, of all the hot season, slow growing crops we believe MUST be planted from starts, can do in my zone. I admittedly had little faith this would yield ripe peppers.

Last year I direct seeded a hybrid poblano and some candlelight peppers alongside the tomatoes mentioned above. The candlelight peppers did mature to produce red hot peppers, not as exciting of a feat as a single large chunky bell pepper as smaller fruit do ripen faster (think the speedy cherry tomato). The poblanos did germinate and produced fruit but again, only green peppers. So I didn’t go into this season blind to the idea of direct seeding peppers being a far flung reach. I knew something was possible.

And yet, like with the onions, this is another case of blending seasons. I will lean into direct seeding to take some burden off our lights and other resources that indoor sowing relies on, but I won’t fully decouple my gardening routine from indoor sowing peppers. I will for sure be direct seeding more next year, including some paprika, jalapeños, and more bells.

If I’m brave, it will be a 50/50 indoor started vs direct seeded, with my indoor started plants being sowed at the end of March or beginning of April.