I can't believe it's been more than a week since I last posted. Things have been busy here getting ready for planting. I thinned the strawberry plants and put wire hoops and bird netting over the bed to keep the deer, turkey, and hopefully any "stripmunks" as my dad calls them out of the berries.
We got the deer fence up around the house garden (where I plant anything that needs a lot of water). I've been hardening off the kale, broccoli and spinach I started inside, those are going in and the other greens are being direct-seeded this week.
I spent the better part of 2 days potting up tomatoes AGAIN (DD helped me one day) and while the biggest ones (the potato-leafed Sudduth Brandywines) got to stay out in a shady spot for a while after being transferred to what are hopefully their last containers, the regular-leaf plants are still a bit too delicate to be out. It was a little windy today, and their stems aren't quite as thick as the Brandywines'.
All the tomatoes will start to go outside to enjoy the sunshine and the spring breezes in a couple of weeks. Every year I am tempted to get the tomatoes and peppers out by Mother's Day instead of the traditional Memorial Day planting date (about 2 weeks after last frost here in zone 5b - remember we're a bit cooler than in town). I don't remember that we've actually made it that early though, since moving back here from (warmer) inland Rhode Island. In fact, the past 2 years May has been so wet and cold that it ended up being June before I could get the tender "tropical" plants out.
I might have a break from potting up for a few days, but the cherry tomatoes are growing so quickly now that they're probably going to have to go into larger containers this weekend and I'm running out of room on the dozen shelves I have set up with grow lights! Remember when I said that it looked like they were in suspended animation? Well, a week in some good potting mix and everything just took off (though they have yet to catch up to those monster Brandywines and paste tomatoes I had put in Espoma last month).
The peppers really should wait to go out a week or so after the tomatoes, I will have to pot them up soon too but I'm hoping it can wait until I can start hardening off the tomatoes. I did repot those (still in the small starter cells, but 1 to a cell rather than 2) last week, they started getting some new leaves, but I swear they grew an inch overnight after I gave them some diluted fish emulsion yesterday. I probably did leave them in the small cells for too long, but I hope once I have a little more room for pots in here and give them more room to spread their roots, they'll take off like the tomatoes I potted up last week did.
Once the nights are consistently in the mid-40's, it'll be safe to leave the tomatoes in the garage overnight instead of doing the "Tomato Shuffle" every day to bring them back inside after their (increasing) daily dose of sunshine. But for now, with lows still in the 30's, the only thing safe to leave out (in the garage or in the garden) are the cool-weather crops. So for the next couple of weeks, the family room is going to look this...
