It's May 11th, 2023, and we have tomato plants coming out of our ears! We started all our tomatoes from seed beginning back in mid-February. At that point we were still only halfway through one of the snowiest winters on record here in Jackson Hole, so we set up shelving inside our house in front of our big south-facing windows.
Seeds don't need light to germinate but seedlings definitely do, so the timing of planting is crucial. By March 1st the sun is back to being visible for enough of the day to just barely provide enough light. They grew rapidly though, and by mid-March we started re-potting them into 5 inch square pots in trays.
We started moving plants out to our small greenhouse and re-potting them into big pots as soon as we could keep it heated to above 40 degrees (F) consistently at night. Larger plants can withstand brief cold, and we kept all of them covered with floating row cover, which gives an extra 6 degrees of protection. It was still a scary moment though: if temperatures had taken an unexpected plunge back into negatives we might have lost the first batch to go in there. Luckily the temperature held and our tomato jungle took off!
As soon as we get our hoop house completed we'll be able to immediately plant all these directly into raised beds underneath. We've got everything prepped and ready to go. If all goes well we expect to get bountiful tomato harvests all summer long!
If you'd like to get your hands on some of our organic tomatoes grown right here in Jackson Hole you can still sign up for a CSA Membership. We're also planning to have a plant start sale as soon as we have our hoop house complete so you can take a couple plants home and grow some tomatoes of your own! Subscribe to our newsletter to find out when that's happening.
