Small Garden

With this warm weather the tomatoes finally are starting to turn red, mother nature is watering the plants tonight.

 

We picked three tomatoes out of the garden with one hot pepper and some green beans.

We had some Delmonico steaks with corn from a local family farm.

 

I'm starting some plants from seed this year, 12 tomato plants,12 hot pepper and 12 banana pepper plants. This year we plan on having 16 feet of pole beans, last year we only had about five feet at the most.

Last year I started the hot pepper plants late, I started all of the seeds yesterday with a warming mat.

 

Hopefully we can get an early start on the garden, the pole beans will be planted first.

 

We went to a small 8' x 10' raised bed last year and now grow tomatoes only - our favorites and easy to look after.

 

We'll do the five gallon buckets for the tomatoes this year (again) and maybe work on clearing out an area for a bigger garden for the following year.

 

What variety of pole beans do you plant? We tried them for the first time last year. They were planted late but took forever to get beans. And they had strings, which we'd never dealt with before with bush beans. Once they started producing we were quickly overwhelmed with production. I probably planted two ten foot rows that shared an A-frame structure to grow on. If I can get a stringless variety we'll do more this year.

 

My wife really liked the Kentucky Wonder Brown Pole Beans that we planted last year, I bought the seeds at our local Agway.

Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans - Gurneys Seed & Nursery

 

All the tomato plants should be up in by Sunday if not before.

 

All the tomato plants are up this morning, we'll just have to wait on the pepper plants to come up.

 

The peppers will lag the tomatoes by a few days. Is your warming mat able to get soil temps ~80F ?

 

With the top cover on yes, the temp was tested with an IR gun so I'm not sure how accurate it is.

 

All the new tomato seeds I planted came up, 11 of the 12 sweet banana pepper plants came up but none of the old hot pepper seeds came up so we bought some new seeds which I planted today.

I did soak the new seeds in warm water with hydrogen peroxide for 24 hours before planting.

With the warming mat underneath the tray the dirt temps measured with an IR gun read 81 so I think the new hot pepper seeds will come up.

 

I started bell, jalapeno and habanero peppers last weekend and a few of the jalapeno are almost up this weekend.
Started some San Marzano tomatoes but the Celebrity seedsI ordered are still back-ordered.

I use a plastic storage box upside down to keep the humidity up.

In a southern window and the sun shining on it, the soil gets up to 90ºF in the sun and has been about 72ºF first thing in the morning.
Short stem soil thermometer:



Hoping not to have to set up lights in the house and night temps rise so I can move stuff out into the little greenhouse safely at night.

 

billb3 , I'm thinking by this Sunday afternoon all the hot pepper plants will be up, we have a few just starting to break through the dirt.

For next year we'll have some new hot pepper seeds so I can start them at the beginning of February.

So far this year any seeds that never came up were seeds I had from almost ten years ago, they'll go in the trash tonight.

1:48 pm, I just went down to check the seeds/plants, some of the older seeds I soaked in a water/hydrogen peroxide solution look like they might be popping through the dirt, I might have to find more room for them.

The seed package on the left and the middle were the old seeds I planted near the end of February (I think) I'm thinking some off them will come up.

The number under the packages are the number of seeds I planted of each type of hot pepper.

 

Got some snap peas planted , trellis up and some onion starts in the ground.
I've got 8 jalapeno and 7 habanero so far but the bell peppers (24 cells) aren't showing signs.
Probably add a heat mat tomorrow to try to move things along.

 

We planted 16 feet of pole beans today, last year we decided late that we wanted some and we planted the pole beans on 6-7.

Last year they were well above the 8 foot lattice we had up so we plan on canning some this year.