Tomato & Pepper Starts

Normally, you want to allow about two months between when you start the seeds indoors, and when you transplant them into the garden outdoors. That would mean that anything I planted now would go into the ground outdoors at the beginning of May. That's too early for putting tomatoes and peppers into the garden.

But I'm not going to put them into the garden. I had great success last year, growing tomatoes & peppers in large containers, many on the patio, some in the greenhouse, and others in other, protected locations around the south side of our house.

It's not too early to start tomatoes and peppers. And tomatillas. (These are all seeds that I had left over from last year.)

Left to right:

• A  "rainbow variety" of heritage tomatoes (two 2" pots). ==>

• A spicy chile mix (two 4-packs of starts) ==>

• A four-pack of Italian bell peppers. (not shown)

• A four-pack of California Special bell peppers. (not shown)

•  A cherry tomato mix. ==>

And at the same time, I planted three starts of tomatillas in peat pots. I'm not sure about peat pots; these are left over from years ago, but that's appropriate: I'm not sure about tomatillas either. How does one use tomatillas, anyway? And how can you tell when they're ripe?