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The Burpee catalog says " 'Days' to maturity that begin each description indicate the length of time to harvest from the day that either seed or transplants are placed in the garden."
Why does it take just as long for transplants as for seeds? Do you agree or disagree?
Burpee like most other seed companies gives an estimate of days to maturity. It is an average, the actual time involved will vary widely with growing conditions. If the plant in question is normally grown from transplants, tomato, pepper, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower etc, It will be given as time from transplant to maturity. For plants normally direct seeded, beans, corn, radishes, turnips, etc it will be either from planting or germination. Remember, DTM is at best a guesstimate. It can be useful to compare cultivars but that is about it.
Ok, I went back and looked again, and the statement is on the bean page, under the heading "Vegetables" (because that's the first page in the vegetable section). On the tomato page they say the number of days is from the time you set the plants out to the time of maturity. I guess I was assuming they were making a blanket statement about all vegetables, which didn't really make sense to me. It stands to reason (and I'm sure proven many times over) that if you start your seeds inside before the first frost date your plants will mature earlier (not a shorter number of days) than if you start them from seed outdoors to start with.
The statement makes more sense when you consider which plants you'd likely start indoors from seed and which ones you might not.
The DTM is based on the type of plant. If it's a tomato, then the DTM is from transplant outside to first ripe fruit. If it's beans, then the DTM is from sowing seeds to first picked beans.
I plant my tomatoes around March 8-15. I see the first blossoms start to swell and produce fruit by the end of March, and I pick my first tomatoes the first week of May and continue picking through July.
I plant beans also about the middle of March and I am picking beans by the end of April.
DTM is just their experience in the # of days. It's not an exact science. Tomatoes blossom every 2-3 weeks, so if you have bad weather during the blossom cycle of certain plants, then they'll be later than usual. I have sent varieties to people that give me fruit VERY early compared to my other varieties, and when they grew them, that variety was dead last. Can't really count on DTM as anything but a suggestion.
The best use of DTM I've heard is to grow varieties with different ones. Some tomatoes with 65-70 DTM, some with 80 DTM, some with 90 DTM that way you have an extended harvest of tomatoes.
"...I pick my first tomatoes the first week of May and continue picking through July."
I'm jealous ;-) But then again, last summer, although my tomato plants didn't start producing until mid-late summer, I was still picking them at the end of October. (these were plants I bought at Home Depot)
