First taste of sun

Like many gardeners, I've been starting plants from seed indoors over the past 4-6 weeks. Today they got their first taste of sunlight.

I've always got way more tomato seedlings than I can use, but the allure of the seed packets always wins out -- especially since I had access to seed from a lot of different varieties this year from a generous neighbor. The plants start out tiny and well-spaced, but then all of a sudden it's a jungle in there, and it's time to repot or at least get them off the plant table and give them some room.

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With our weather is two months ahead of schedule, it's strange to be able to bring out tomato seedlings to harden off on April 1. I feel like I could plant these in the garden right now with almost no worries about late freezes -- but that would be foolish I think.

As soon as the morning sunlight hit these my first thought was: hairy!

Are tomato seedlings always this fuzzy, or is it just these varieties?

I suspect they're all like this, and I'm just noticing it because of the angle of the sunlight.

I've got a couple of non-edibles growing from seed too:

California poppy seedlings

This is the first time I started the California poppies indoors, as the ones I plant in the ground never germinate for me. I got the suggestion for germinating these indoors from Jenny at Rock Rose, whose wonderful walled Texas garden also got me to plant another flower I haven't tried for a few years:

Bluebonnets! I grew these early in my gardening career and loved them, but stopped for some reason -- probably because I got busy with other plants. I find them difficult to germinate too, as I usually only get about 1/3 of the seeds to sprout. I have three seedlings now, so that's a good start!

So the first morning of sunshine for these young plants, and a lot more space on the plant table inside for me!

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