- You will get 150+ Seeds of Tomato Rutger's Heirloom Vegetable Seeds. - Sunlight: Full Sun. - Life Cycle: Annual. - Watering: Medium. - Rutgers Tomato Seeds. - The justly famous Rutgers tomato was introduced in 1934 by Rutgers breeder Lyman Schermerhorn as an ideal locally well-adapted and improved "General Use" tomato for processing (canning and juicing) as well as fresh market. - Rutgers tomato was developed and released in the period between WW I and WW II, during expansion of canning and truck farming, when 36,000+ acres of tomatoes were grown in the Garden State. - Rutgers was a genuine horticultural improvement over non-certified saved seeds, as well as over commercial varieties like Pritchard, Marglobe, and J.T.D. (the latter two used as breeding sources to create Rutgers). - 6-8 weeks before last frost: - Fill 4" pots with potting mix to within a 1/2-inch of the top and place a pair of seeds on top of the soil in each one near the center of the pot (having two is good insurance in case one doesn’t sprout. Pinch off the smaller, weaker of the two if they both sprout). - Cover them with a ¼-inch layer of soil mix and the compress the soil with your fingers. Good seed-to-soil contact is important for germination. - Sprinkle water on the seeds whenever the top of the soil mix appears dry. Don’t keep the soil soggy, however — the seeds may rot.