Gardening Gardening

I found this out somewhat recently, but up here in New England worms are invasive. They didn't naturally populate these latitudes slowly moving northward after the last ice age. Rather, the areas up here that have them now were originally introduced from Europe or were discarded by anglers in some natural area.

 

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I guess I will start giving all of the worms from my garden to the chickens.

 

The 2023 seed starting season is underway for the peppers. I’ll start the tomatoes in another 2-3 weeks or so. I started 6 cells each of the following: poblano, red bell, orange lunchbox, Carolina Reaper, sugar rush peach, and some new-to-me 7 pot yellow that were sent to me by Ed Currie, creator of the Carolina Reaper.

 

Nice!
Well, except for those hot ones...

 

Believe it or not, I’m exercising restraint this year in the amount of hot peppers I’m growing. I still have a couple 1 gallon bags of hot peppers in my freezer from years past

 

Very interesting.

 

Nice!! I just pulled my last vacuum bag of sweet peppers from the freezer. I'm going to have to plant a bunch this season.

 

Do you have any pics of the whole setup for starting seeds? Mine need to go down to the basement where it's cooler and I'm trying to figure out a way to have mutiple shelves (and mutiple lights) in a easy homemade way.

Lots of grow lights around here (just across the border) on FB marketplace but they're used for a high value cash crop.

 

My setup isn’t too complicated or expensive. I do everything right on a wire rack shelving system and attach grow lights to the underside of each shelf using zip ties. Rather than continuously adjusting the height of each shelf as the seedlings develop, I leave them fixed and put the starting trays on wood block risers (I could use anything, but I have plenty of lumber scraps on hand so that’s what I use). After the sprouts are a week or two old, I’ll move them from the starter cells into red solo cups (with drain holes in the bottom) where they’ll stay until they go outside in mid-May. As the plants get progressively taller, I remove the wood block risers from underneath to maintain the appropriate height spacing to the grow lights. Too far away and the plants get leggy, and too close will burn the leaves.


Years ago I used to start my seeds in my cool basement out of necessity. I bought these heat mats which helped immensely in keeping the soil temperature up to aid in germination. I don’t use them anymore because I do all my seed starting now in the wood stove room where it’s always warm.

 

That’s great you still have some left to enjoy from last year. Do you buy your seedlings from a local store/nursery? Every year I toy with the idea of buying established plants but end up starting from seed myself. The extra work does get old and I do notice the electric bill goes up quite a bit in the couple months where I’m running the grow lights

 

That’s a great idea for preserving hot peppers. My wife bought me a dehydrator for Christmas. About how long does it take to dry them down? Do you vacuum pack them afterwards or is a jar or plastic bag sufficient?

 

Sometimes I do but mostly I keep seeds from the prettiest plants/peppers and grow from them. Usually an empty egg carton or two to start 'em.

 

Got a bunch of peppers started in cells about two weeks ago, kept them in my furnace room where it used to remain pretty warm until this year when I got a new high efficiency unit that barely runs compared to the tired old one. Well with that said, the furnace room is no longer warm. Peppers went on 2 weeks with no germination, moved the cells to the wood stove room and within a day a bunch started popping up. Guess I'll have to rethink my germination room for those warm weather plants! or maybe just actually use a heat mat for once.

 

First till is in the books.




Also started 4 egg cartons of seeds. Peppers, watermelon, corn and lopes. I’ve tried corn once. Didn’t go so well.

 

My garden is still under snow, but temps are supposed to hit 70 next week here so I am planning to get to stirring up the compost piles to get them cooking again, and planting a few things next weekend.

 

Got a greenstalk. Planted some peas, carrots and radishes from seed.
Also a few broccoli and strawberry plants. At some point I'll like to have one with all strawberries.


Also planted some peas, radishes and carrots in garden. They seem to be coming along.


Need to transplant my tomato plants into larger containers and start my cucumber seeds with in the week.

 

Same here (Vermont) on that warm weather next week. Going to start cleaning and tilling the raised beds.
Chickens are going to be surprised when the all winter opened pass through from their coop into the garden gets closed.
Headed to Massachusetts in the morning to get 30 raspberry plants. I played the “let’s cuss the post hole digger” mounting game today in prep for planting them this weekend.

 

Like you and Lennyzx11, I'm getting ready to prep my raised beds now that the snow is moving on (still a lot left however it is melting fast). Still have over a month before I can plant (we can have last frost almost into June), but I can get the raised beds tilled, composted, and planned out. I'm going to reorganize three of the beds so I can fit another 6' section in the same area. The second picture is from a couple years ago (first year with these raised beds) and the plants were too close together. I didn't have a garden last year because the Gypsy moth caterpillars were so bad, so looking forward to having home grown veggies again. Living vicariously through the pictures of everyone else's gardens last year didn't quite cut it.