And so it begins!

The Tomato Shuffle, that is.  While the Cherokee Purples, Gardener's Delight cherries and all the tomatoes I started April 6 are still in the house (and need to be potted up, along with the peppers that are still in 6-packs), the larger ones have been potted up and enjoyed their first 24 hours in the garage.  Yesterday was too sunny and hot (they said 90 at the airport!  I think it was about 10 degrees cooler here) to put them outside.  But since the next week or so is going to be cloudy, they'll start going out for short periods starting this morning, keeping an ever-watchful eye out for intense sun, heavy rain, or wind.  The goal is to have them hardened off by Memorial Day.  The holiday weekend might be a little too sunny to set them out (it's best to transplant on an overcast day) but the holiday looks perfect.  I hate to rain on anyone's parade, but maybe the couple of days after Memorial Day will be overcast.  Then when everyone else is back to work, I'll be getting to work transplanting roughly 100 tomatoes.

The peppers and the smaller tomatoes that are still in the house will go out in the garage next week (or whenever I have room), I would love to get some of the other varieties out soon, but first I'd like to get them into larger pots (even if only for a couple of weeks) to get some more growth in the root systems.  Since most of them were started a week later than the ones that are in the garage now, they should really go out a week later too.  Though the peppers were started first, peppers usually go out about 2 weeks after tomatoes, since they can be stunted if temperatures go below 50.

I do have extras of most of these indeterminate heirloom varieties, so if anyone would like to purchase any you can email me at BriarwoodsFarm@gmail.com to see what's available and arrange a pickup time.