Seedling Progress

The weather has been variable and it is chilly and breezy, more like March than late April weather. It has also been quite dry but still cloudy, and starting the garden is going to be difficult until the pump man re-installs the foot valves removed for the winter. I have not done anything in the garden yet except visit a few times, but I need to get going really, really soon.



As an example, the kales above are just about ready to be set out in the garden. I will have a single brassica row for the kale, broccoli, collards, and cabbages. Putting them in one row will allow me to cover them with row cover on hoops to keep the flea beetles and cabbage caterpillars at bay. From left: Red Ursa, Nash's Green, and Nero di Toscana.



Most of the broccolis are also ready to go. From left: Spigariello liscia, Blue Wind, and Atlantis. I am particularly impressed by the size and vigor of Atlantis and have high hopes for it.



The cabbages are ready as well. Clockwise from upper left: Golden Acre cabbage, Flash collards, Green Wave mustard, and Minuet Napa cabbage. The Green Wave mustard is getting impatient and starting to bolt. I may just re-seed it in place. The Minuet cabbage seedlings, new this year,  look a little strange for a Napa. The leaves are serrated on the edge and a bit fuzzy. I may start some Soloist as a backup.



The kohlrabis are doing well and are ready to go. These will get planted in the raised beds. Again, I have to plan the bed assignments so I can group plants that need covering together. Flea beetles are a big menace but the caterpillars seem less likely to attack these smaller plants. Top row is Azur Star and the bottom row is Winner.



Lettuces are also ready. Clockwise from upper left: Green Ice, Red Sails, and Buttercrunch, The fourth flat has escarole in the top row and endive in the bottom. I decided I was planting too may of them and didn't use them all before they bolted. So this year, three of each to start. The three lettuces above will go into my City Picker self-watering container on the deck, for easy harvesting without driving to the garden. I have also started seeds for Midnight Ruffles, Winter Density Romaine, and Webb's Wonderful crisphead which will go into my raised beds at the community garden.



I have shown the good and the bad, so now for the ugly. Above are pictured my successes with the solanums this year. The peppers clockwise from upper left: Revolution, Jimmy Nardello, Hungarian Paprika, and Lemon Drop. The sole tomato flat is Juliet. The rest of my tomatoes and peppers either failed to emerge (even after pre-sprouting) or I killed them by failing to notice a flat or two under the humidity dome had dried out. Just takes one oversight to wipe out weeks of effort.

I am happy with what I do have. Revolution and Jimmy Nardello are must have peppers for me. And how can I not be happy that I managed to sprout and grow those beautiful Lemon Drop plants after swearing off baccatam peppers. The best of those will go in containers to be brought inside for the winter to see if I can get some to ripen. And I have three (maybe four) Hungarian Paprika plants to play with again. Carmen completely failed to germinate from fresh seed, so that is puzzling and disappointing, but I may be able to buy them locally. The Super Shepherd peppers germinated but I managed to let their flat dry out and kill them. If I can find Carmen I will just substitute them for the Super Shepherd, which were just an experiment.

The tomato situation is a somewhat bigger disaster, since none of the tomatoes I was planning to grow are available locally. I did push some new seeds into the cells in the flats and some of them are starting to emerge now, so I may recover partially. After all, it is still 5 weeks or more to setting out.The Chinese gentleman in our community garden direct seeds his tomato plants and they eventually catch up with everyone's transplants. So not all is lost.



Finally, just to add additional pressure to get the garden ready, my onion plants arrived from Dixondale Farms last week and are being kept cool in the basement. These are Copra yellow storage onions and Red Wing red storage onion. They are huge and beautiful, better than anything I can grow. The one disadvantage is they are dormant, which makes it possible to store and ship them. I have found it takes up to a month before they break dormancy and resume growth. I suspect a well grown onion start might compete, being actively growing when it is set out in the garden. Anyway, the race is on to get these in the garden since day length is what it is all about, and how much foliage they can add before the summer solstice starts to shorten days up here in the northern latitudes.

Spring Tiptoes In

I took a photograph of my Meyer lemon tree in January and noted it lacked blossoms, which it produces in abundance each spring. Well, the tree now has blossoms, so it must finally be spring. The sun is definitely stronger but it is still chilly and windy outside. On Sunday I stopped at the garden while doing a shopping excursion. It may be spring but the garden looks like tundra.



The only green is from the weeds that overwintered. The soil is still a bit boggy and not really ready to work. And there is more rain in the forecast, so no need to rush things.



There is a bit of green showing in my own garden plot. The garlic looks healthy and just needs a shot of nitrogen to get it really going.


Inside it is warm and the seedlings are doing well under the grow lights. The lettuces, broccoli and cabbages are sown and have germinated. While small now, they are weeks away from weather where it would be safe to plant them outside, so  these are on schedule. A couple of years ago I was wooed by an unseasonably mild spring and transplanted early, only to be set back severely by a single hard freeze.



The peppers this year are doing very well. The technique of pre-sprouting with a wet paper towel inside a plastic bag worked really well and all peppers have germinated adequately, and most of the sprouted seeds have emerged from the flats in which they were transplanted.



The tomatoes, however, are a mixed bag and I am not real happy. Usually I have much better luck with tomatoes. I tried the same pre-sprouting technique used for the peppers with the tomatoes. I was really surprised with how long some varieties took to sprout. Currently I am still waiting for Sunkist, Black Beauty, and Jaune Flamme to sprout after two weeks.. I sprinkled a few more seeds on the paper towels in case the original seeds are DOA. These are three varieties I can not buy locally so if they do not sprout soon I will not be growing them this year.

Seed Starting Season

Here in Massachusetts zone 5b, the gardening season has begun. Most of the brassicas have sprouted and are tucked snugly under the grow lights. The pepper seeds were placed in damp paper towels inside plastic bags on top of the grow lamp, where a warm  environment is maintained 16 hours a a day, and have started to germinate.



Outside, the picture is a bit different. We had a quick moving storm come through which gave us an inch of wet snow and some wind, but the sun is now out. This will all melt quickly.



This cardinal arrived on its way north and is not bothered in the least by a quick spring snowstorm. And fortunately, no power outages.



The pepper seeds have been on top of the grow lamps covered with a kitchen towel since March 27 and are starting to germinate. First to germinate were Revolution, Carmen, and Super Shepherd.

 

These germinated Super Shepherd seeds were placed in 6-cell flats and are now kept on the heat mat until they emerge from the starting mix.



The onions and shallots have received their second haircut and the trimmings are destined for omelets and other culinary uses. The expensive Takrima leek seeds finally emerged after a month and received their first trim along with the onions. I’m happy I will not have to buy leek seedlings after all.

Sunday I sowed nine varieties of tomato seeds, using the same technique I used with the pepper seeds. They are now on top of a grow lamp and will hopefully start to germinate within a week’s time. The plan is to get six of each started, or 54 tomato plants. That is much more than I have space for, but I will pot them up into 4 inch pots and then select the best for myself. The rest will be shared with friends.

Next up will be lettuces and chard. The lettuces will mostly go into self-watering planter on the deck where they are easily accessed without a drive to the garden. Then I have to get the garden beds cleaned up and figure out where I am going to put all of these plants. Hopefully we don’t fall into a pattern of stormy Sundays because that is the only day I have free until late April.

I’m Ready to Garden, Is the Garden Ready for Me?

Holy cow, it’s almost May. Who knew that old saying, April comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion, is actually true? The 8 feet of snow have melted and left everything kind of boggy. Luckily I garden in raised beds which are workable if still a bit wet. The 2-3 inches of rain Monday-Tuesday didn’t help, but at least it watered in the onions I got planted on Sunday. But now it is cold with high wind gusts and overnight lows near freezing, just like winter weather. We even lit the wood stove today to take the chill off the house.

 

 

I did get all but one of my planting beds weeded and prepped, ready for planting season. Peas are in, and Thursday and Friday I planted the rest of my onions and shallots. Above are some of the Red Zeppelin and Candy onions. They look kind of shaggy and pathetic, but that is because they are still dormant. It will take a few days for them to rehydrate and send out new roots. The Red Zeps were the biggest of the onions from Dixondale, almost every one the size of a pencil. The few small ones were tucked in here and there for green onions.

 

 

I planted the tub of larger shallots, the ones originally started from seed back on February 26. Due to poor germination, I threw a bunch of seeds on a wet paper towel and pre-germinated them. This produced an additional quantity of seedlings in another pot which are still a little too small to transplant yet. Those will get planted in a week or two.

 

 

Given the weather, I tried to get a jump start on the spinach by planting seeds in 3/4 inch soil blocks. I have heard that spinach does not transplant well and is prone to bolting. I figured if I could get quick germination I could whisk them into the garden before they knew they were being transplanted. So why, with fresh seed, did only two germinate quickly? After another week I now have 8 plants out of 40 cubes, almost enough to plant one square of the 4 I planned on.

 

 

I adjusted my seed starting schedule to assume that maybe this planting season might be delayed a week or two, given the horrendous winter. Given the weather this week, that is looking like a reasonable decision, except for one vegetable. Peppers. The things are so slow to germinate and so slow to grow, delaying starting them does not pay off. I believe it is better to deal with potting up peppers than wondering if you will get any plants this season. And I believe peppers should be healthy, actively growing plants when set out in the garden. The fact that a runt might improve and actually grow in the garden does not mean you will get any fruit from it, so it is just wasting space. This is particularly true for certain long season peppers, which of course are the interesting ones I want to grow.

 

So here it is almost May and you can see my peppers above, planted on March 29.  I have enough germination that I should get a couple of plants from each of the 9 varieties planted, so I declare success! But none have a set of true leaves yet and they do not seem to grow at all. Everything seems to be in slow motion this season. The brassicas are progressing but the peppers, the toms, and even the lettuce just seem to sit there. I’m getting tired of babysitting these guys and want them out in the garden, the sooner the better.

Gardening Finally Begins for Me

I have a seasonal tax prep job that is now over, so I can finally concentrate on gardening. A week of 10-12 hour days ended with a 14-hour marathon on April 15. Why do people wait until the last minute? I don’t understand the psychology.  They certainly can not be gardeners, because we have to plan ahead if we want a successful garden. Planning for this garden started last growing season and is now being implemented, albeit a little delayed by the job. Anyway, Spring is here, my daffodils are up, the onions from Dixondale Farms arrived, and gardening is under way.

 

 

This is the shady corner of the community garden last week. I met some new gardeners last Sunday before work to show them around. There was still snow in the corner and things looked pretty beak and monochromatic. You have to be an optimist if you are going to garden. I did manage to plant some snow and snap peas while waiting for the new gardeners. This week the snow is completely gone and the ground is a bit drier.

 

 

My raised beds are looking good despite the rough winter. The winds and heavy snow have taken down most of the netting on the trellises. Fortunately I planned ahead and added a 60 foot bag of netting to my seed purchases this winter. The kale did not survive. The only sign of life is the garlic poking its way through the straw mulch. But the soil in the beds is dry enough to work, in contrast to the muddy soil you see upper left. That’s good because I need to get the onions planted in the raised beds. That’s bad because I also need to get my Brassicas planted in the soil in my other plot.

 

 

The onion beds were prepared by first fluffing up the soil. Doing that is controversial because you disrupt the soil flora and fauna, but it gives me a chance to find and remove any weed rhizomes and wire worms. Then I spread a couple of inches of compost over the top and sprinkled on the amendments and stirred it all in. This year I am with the program! The beds were amended with (purchased) crushed crab shell, (Pioneer Valley basalt) rock dust, kelp meal, Plant Success Granular fungal mycorrhizae and Chickity Doo Doo to provide additional nitrogen for the onions.

 

 

This is the first year I purchased onion plants from Dixondale. Purchasing plants means one less thing to do during the  busy winter months. More expensive than a pack of seeds but a lot less trouble. I was very impressed with the plants I received. Above is less than half the bundle of Copra onions I received. They are very large, some bigger than pencil width. There is no way I could grow plants this big myself.  Of course the test will be to see how well they grow.

 

 

These are the Rossa Lunga di Tropea onions I have grown for several years. I was impressed that Dixondale offered such an unusual onion, so I had to buy a bunch of these. Again, they are huge for plants, much larger than I could grow myself.

 

 

On Sunday I managed to get the Copra, Tropea, Super Star and Red Candy plants into the ground. I was hoping the rain predicted for Monday would hold off until I could get the rest planted, but it was raining by 8 A.M. so planting will have to wait. The rain is not a bad thing since the pumps at the garden are not yet connected and I would have to haul water from home. Anyway, the gardening season is now officially started for me with plants in the ground.

Next Up, Tomatoes

 

 

My attempt to salvage my shallot growing season has somewhat succeeded. With poor germination rate and the suicidal tendencies of my shallot seeds and seedlings, I tried pre-germinating some additional seeds in a damp paper towel in a plastic bag. They were kept warm by placing the baggie on top of one of the lighting units. After about a week, I had seeds sprouting. It was a bit challenging to get the sprouts into soil. The roots grew in a corkscrew pattern, as you can see below. Trying to get the sprout into a planting hole with the root downward was made harder by the shape and the fact the seed head was heavier. Simply dropping the seedling caused the seed to flip around and land in the hole with the root pointing skyward. I finally tried enlarging  the hole and laying the seedling in sideways.

 

 

The shallot seedlings did figure out which way is up, with a little help from gravity. These are planted in Lambert’s All-Purpose Potting Mix amended with a little kelp meal, and I am hoping it does not crust as bad as the McEnroe potting soil.

 

Seed Starting Begins

The Ambition shallots were sown two weeks ago. I used McEnroe organic potting mix, which has some compost in it, in a plastic tub. I figured the plants would be in the tub for awhile so some extra nutrients would be beneficial. I have about 20 plants germinated from 45 seeds planted, so germination was not terrific. I would have more except for the plants’ tendency to commit suicide. The McEnroe mix formed a crust on top of the pot. Not sure that was the cause but the taproot of some plants elongated and pushed the seedlings out of the soil, where they flopped over and died. Weird, never had that happen before. I have started to pre-germinate some more seed in a wet paper towel in a baggie in hopes of catching up and getting a few more transplants. The top of the plant lights makes a good area to pre-germinate seed since it is slightly warm but not hot enough to kill the seeds.

 

 

Last week I sowed the first of the Brassicas, the kale and broccoli. For them I decided to use a standard soilless planting mix, Lambert’s All-Purpose Planting Mix. They spent a few days on the heat mat until germination started and are now off the heat and under the grow lights. Planted on March 22 were:

• Kale Beedy’s Camden
• Kale Nero di Toscana
• Kale Tronchuda Beira
• Broccoli Fiesta
• Broccoli Arcadia
• Broccoli Raab Sorrento

 

 

Today I am planting lettuce and peppers. The peppers and Ping Tung eggplant are going into plastic 6-cell flats. I can fit 12 of these flats into a 1040 tray, or 72 plants. I thought about but decided not to try pre-germinating the seeds. I have a heat mat that will accommodate a 1020 tray, and I planted 2 seeds per cell, so with 12 varieties to germinate, this is just much simpler. The one shock was the Stocky Red Roaster pepper, which had just 10 seeds in the packet. Guess I might be collecting seeds from this one if I decide it is a keeper (which is likely given its rave reviews). Planted today were these varieties:

• Eggplant Ping Tung
• Pepper Jimmy Nardello
• Pepper Lemon Drop
• Pepper Padron
• Pepper Stocky Red Roaster
• Pepper Arroz Con Pollo
• Pepper Hungarian Paprika
• Pepper Yummy Belles
• Pepper Aji Dulce
• Pepper Trinidad Spice/Perfume
• Pepper Tiburon Ancho Poblano

 

 

The pepper flat was placed on my one and only heat mat. An hour after planting, here they are, warm and steamy on the heat mat.

 

 

Next I planted a tray of lettuce and greens/herbs. Lettuce seed needs light to germinate so I made a small depression in each cell and sprinkled a pinch of seeds into it. Then  I covered the seed with a little fine vermiculite and watered it in. The lettuce flat has a clear plastic dome to cover it but the heat mat is currently occupied by the peppers. They should be alright at room temperature.

 

 

Planted in this tray were the following:

• Lettuce Green Ice
• Lettuce Red Sails
• Lettuce Buttercrumch
• Lettuce Midnight Ruffles
• Lettuce Winter Density
• Lettuce Marshall
• Ice Lettuce
• Mustard Green Wave
• Chinese Cabbage Soloist
• Cilantro Caribe
• Endive Dubuisson
• Escarole Natacha

This was a pretty good start to the season. Next are some Asian greens and then the tomatoes. Hopefully the peppers are prompt because the toms are going to want some space on that heat mat.

Planning the 2015 Garden

 

Planning for the 2015 garden actually started last year as I observed what worked in the current garden and what did not do well in my garden, given soil and climate conditions. I usually write up a post mortem on the garden but slacked off this year. Still, I know what worked for me and what did poorly. I also keep a list of interesting new varieties to try, influenced by visits to the kitchen garden at Tower Hill Botanical Garden and fellow bloggers and gardeners.

 

The next step is to finally decide what I am growing next season. I make up a planting list, inventory my seeds, and then decide what I need to purchase. I like to try new things so there are usually several new varieties in the list. For those, I need to find a seed vendor who carries them. A snippet from the 2015 list is shown below and the complete list can be found here. Vendor codes are at the end of the complete list at the link.

 

The next task is to develop a planting schedule for each plant being grown. This is a multi-pronged, iterative task. Given a fixed amount of gardening space, I have to determine what fits where, how much of each variety to grow, and when to start seeds and when to plant/transplant. For this task I have two tools:

a plot plan of my SFG garden with ruling into one-foot squares, and a planting schedule spreadsheet.

 

The plot plan looks like this and I can write in year and Spring or Fall  for planting season. I sit down with my planting list and a 0.5mm mechanical pencil and a good eraser and work out a planting arrangement for the year. You can see I am dealing with a fixed amount of space: the plot is 15x22 feet and I have 180 squares to squeeze in everything I want to grow.

 

 

 

The work with the plot plan diagram produces the number of plants or seeds of each variety that must be started/planted. and is transferred to the planting schedule. The schedule is shown below and the online version may be viewed here.  The schedule has the usual columns for planned and actual seed start dates but it also includes number of plants and format (soil block size, etc.). Plants are listed alphabetically, which has the advantage of keeping them together. Sorting by seed starting date might make sense, but might also make a mess since that column has non-date entries. So I just scan the column to see what I need to do next.

 

 

I print out copies of the plot plan and planting schedule and put them in sheet protectors to keep them clean. They go with me to the garden and I try to keep them updated with the actual dates. Sometimes I even manage to update the online file with the actual dates and notes. This creates a record of dates, what was planted, and what worked that is then useful in planning the next season. And now as I scan the schedule while writing this, I see I better get to work with my brassica and pepper starts

Seed Starting Season

 

Ol’ 67 there is my “mail slot” where the postman delivers my seed orders. It is not mounted in my door, rather it is perched on and frozen into the snow bank, hopefully out of reach of the plows which tore it off the post you see to the left. Fortunately all my seeds are safely inside and seed planning and planting is underway. Last week I planted my Ambition shallot seeds. It’s going to be Ambition this year because Saffron was out of stock/discontinued and then Conservor. Apparently 2014 was a bad year for shallot seed growers while I had a great year. And that is all the allium seeds I have to deal with now because the rest of my onions are transplants coming from Dixondale Farms in April.

 

In past years I have used a Hydrofarm plant light to start seeds. It is a single, 4 foot/120 cm T5 bulb in a reflector mounted on a support with cords to adjust the lamp height. I used it the past two years but the single bulb is really inadequate to cover the width of the two 1020 trays that fit under it. It would be OK for a single row of pots but not for a tray filled with flats or soil blocks. It was a nuisance to have to rotate and shift trays so plants at the edges of the tray would not get too leggy, and I was limited in the amount of plants I could have under the light. So this season I decided to invest in something more effective and with more capacity.

 

 

Most of the commercially available plant racks in the size I was considering were in the $600-1000 USD range and I am far too cheap to indulge in those. So I decided to assemble my own. Rachel of Growing a Good Life had a post on her setup and I set out to do something similar. My goal was not to go as inexpensive as I could but to build something with some quality to it that works well. The basic idea is to acquire a shelving unit and hang lighting units under each shelf. A 36 inch wide shelf unit would best fit my space but the lights come in 2 foot/60 cm and 4 foot/120 com sizes. So I purchased a 4 foot/120 cm bakers rack. I looked locally but could not find the size and features I wanted, so I bought it from Amazon. The unit above is an Alera wire shelving unit with casters and black anthracite finish, about $85. It is high quality construction and the finish is a metallic charcoal color and really attractive. The shelves are 18 inches/46 cm deep so if I had to I can easily arrange four of the 1020 trays you see perpendicular to the shelves without risk of them tipping.

 

 

 

 

I wanted good lighting and looked at shop lights available locally. Most were T8 units. A little online research revealed I probably wanted a T5 setup, so I again went to Amazon. I purchased two Apollo Horticulture four-bulb light fixtures. They are compact (only 2 inches deep) with a dimpled reflector and come with four 54 watt high output F54T5HO bulbs. The T5 bulbs are smaller and higher efficiency than the typical T8 shop light. The T5 bulb has a lifetime of about 20,000 hours and only loses about 5-6% light output towards the end of its life. My fixtures were shipped with bulbs having the 6400 °K phosphor which is best for vegetative growth. Each fixture has dual electronic ballasts and dual switches, so lights can be turned on in banks of two. Each has an outlet on the end so they can be daisy-chained. I got these for about $95 each plus shipping, more expensive than cheap shop lights but far superior in performance. So far I am pleased with these lights.

 

 

 

 

 

Next I had to figure a way to suspend the lights below the shelves and adjust the height to accommodate plant growth. It turns out there are lots of options available for exactly this purpose so I did not have to rig something. I chose to buy the Apollo Horticulture 1/8 inch rope hangers, which feature a metal gear and ratchet for durability. These were $12 per pair and work very well. So I now have a seed starting rack with 2 shelves plus a third for storing supplies. It can handle 1-8 1020 trays, rolls around easily, and cost about $320 to buy. I also rationalized that I could use it to grow salad greens and herbs during the winter to justify the cost. So far, I am pleased and the wife has not freaked out over the size of the unit, so on to 2015 and a great gardening season.

Seed Starting Update

I documented the kickoff of my seed starting efforts back in March. The results turned out to be  less than satisfactory. I managed to kill about half the starts, usually because I forgot to water them after coming home from a late night at work.. By replanting I was able to salvage the tomatoes except for Opalka, a paste, which I replaced with purchased plants of Blue Beech. The peppers, given their long germination time, didn’t fare as well, so I planted out without Padron, Jimmy Nardello, sweet Red Cherry, and Tiburon Ancho.

 

I used 3/4” soil blocks for the tomatoes, intending to put them in 2” soil blocks when they got their first true leaves. The trouble with that size soil block is it has very small mass and quickly dries out if not watched and watered frequently, particularly in the bone dry inside air during a New England winter. They are also annoying with their tendency to fall over and roll around in the tray, scrambling any attempt I make to keep them sorted and identified. The 3/4” blocks are attractive because they are efficient and conserve space on the heat mat. I may try to devise some type of physical barrier to keep them upright and stationary in the trays I use.

 

 

The peppers were an experiment. I tried starting seeds in a medium, planning to transplant the germinated seedlings into 1 1/2” soil blocks after they germinated. I used a diatomaceous earth medium called UltraSorb, an automotive product used as an oil absorbent for garage floors. This was placed in a Styrofoam egg carton with holes in the bottom for drainage. The contents of each cell is easily marked on the size with a ball point pen.

 

 

This scheme did not work very well, but I am impressed with the UltraSorb. The major problem again is keeping the seeds/seedlings moist. The quantity of UltraSorb in the cells is small and coupled with its great aeration properties, the cells dry out quickly. It would be nice to use the carton lid for a tray to bottom water the cells, but the style of carton I have has the projection you see above to protect the eggs from crushing that interferes with that.

 

The other problem with the egg carton method and starting 10 types of peppers and eggplant is the wide range of germination times. With one grow light, a lot of space was taken by all the brassicas so there was no room for the heat mat. Once some peppers in the carton started germinating, they had to go under the grow light (without heat), so that extended the germination time for the rest. The big plus from trying this was the amazing, bushy root structures that the seedlings developed in the UltraSorb (which I did not photograph). That’s why I am going to try this again, hopefully with some better techniques to keep the medium from drying out.

The Garden Is In!

I have not been posting lately but at least I have been gardening. It was a tough winter and a tough tax year (I worked 800 hours in 3 months), so I was kind of burned out. A cold, fairly wet spring with a lot of gray, overcast days did not help. Helping me along is the fact I’m now the coordinator for the Bolton Community Garden. Even if I wanted to ignore my own garden, I have to make sure everyone else gets off to a good start this year.

 

 

My seed starting efforts this year produced mixed results. I killed half my pepper starts, so that means no Jimmy Nardello, Padron, Tiburon Ancho, or sweet Red Cherry peppers this year. Those are plants I can’t find locally, which is why I start my own. At least the Shisito survived, which I was hoping to compare to the Padron, so that’s good. I found some Ancho Poblano starts which should be a good substitute for the Tiburon Ancho, But the Jimmy Nardello is a real loss. This is a great pepper and I can’t understand why it is not more widely grown around here.

 

For the tomatoes, I salvaged most but killed the Opalka starts. I reseeded them and they didn’t germinate! For Opalka I was able to substitute Blue Beech, an heirloom paste tomato from Vermont which I hope will be a more than adequate substitute. Here are my modified planting lists for peppers and tomatoes (and they are all now in the ground except for Trinidad), and the Blue Beech already has flower buds.

 

Peppers

• Aconcagua (Cubanelle type Argentine heirloom)
• Carmen
• Shisito
• Lipstick
• Jalapeno
• Ancho Poblano
• Revolution (bell)
• Trinidad (spice pepper, Habanero-type without the heat)

   

Tomatoes

• Esterina (yellow cherry)
• Jaune Flamme
• Juliet
• Chocolate Pear
• Big Beef
• Sunkist (yellow slicer from NH)
• Blue Beech (paste from VT)

 

 

The garden is now almost completely planted, save for the cucumbers, which go in those unplanted squares. Since I had such germination problems with direct sown cukes last year, I have started them indoors in peat strips. Those will be planted this weekend, when the rain stops and warm weather returns. It is 61°F/16°C now, so I hope the bean seeds don’t rot until warmer weather returns tomorrow. It doesn’t look like much but I am equal to or ahead of other plots in the community garden. The raised beds are a big advantage, particularly in these weather conditions.