February 2001

Wednesday the 28th

Not much has happened in the last few days. I thinned the tomatoes out a little over the weekend, but I'll need to do it for real and get each cell down to one plant sometime this weekend. Those plants are just growing like crazy. Several of them already have their first pair of true leaves. Some of the peppers do as well, but the tomatoes are definitely growing faster.

The sweet bell peppers are up today, finally. That leaves just the rosemary as the straggler, but according to the seed packet, I shouldn't expect it to come up until Friday at the earliest.

Friday the 23rd

Lots of tomatoes (click for larger image)

Tomatoes First off, I've decided to tweak the page layout again. I think it makes more sense to put the newest entries at the top.

Broccoli This has been a busy week for the seed trays! As I mentioned on Tuesday, the broccoli did come up, only four days after planting. There are now lots of little sprouts coming up in those cells (click the picture for a larger version). The next morning there were a few tomato sprouts, too, and by the end of the week now, the tomatoes are booming. There are so many little plants that I think I will have to thin them out to just two or three per cell this weekend.

What's come up thus far (number of cells with at least one sprout are in parantheses): Fluorescent Purple (6), habanero (1), yellow wax (3), jalapeno (5), cayenne (4), aji (1), Big Jim (1), serrano (6), Argentina (2), Peter Pepper (5), broccoli (18), oregano (1), basil (6), each tomato (9). The only things that haven't come up to date are the sweet bell peppers and the rosemary.

I'm very impressed with the germination rate on the tomatoes. They have done extremely well so far, as have the broccoli. Really, all of the seeds from Burpee have shown to be very high quality. Maybe I'll have to give Burpee another chance next year. The seeds from Pepper Joe's are a mixed bag so far; the Purples and the Peter Peppers have done well, the cayenne okay, but the rest are somewhat of a disappointment.

Tuesday the 20th

My cat-proof cage. A couple of years ago, when I first tried to start pepper seeds indoors, I found that our cats liked to eat the seedlings right down the the dirt. Not wanting a repeat, this past weekend I spent some time building a cage. It's about four feet long by a foot and a half deep by a foot high, and covered in chicken wire. It fits nicely over two of the 74 cell seed trays I'm using. The one on the left contains all of the peppers, while the one on the right has the rest of the vegetables and herbs.

serrano peppers
No lack of serranos...

Fluorescent Purple peppers
Not exactly fluorescent,
but not green either! Since the last update, only a little has changed. The serranos are up in force, with all six of the cells I planted now housing at least two seedlings each! Those will be thinned out to one each in the next week or so, after the first pair of true leaves have formed. The Peter Peppers have done well thus far, as have the Purples. There are a couple of Charleston cayennes up and two Argentinas. Nothing else yet. I have low expectations for the habaneros, since those seeds did come on a bottle of hot sauce, but there should be nothing wrong with the rest of them. The fact that they haven't germinated yet is disappointing, but there's plenty of time yet.

Peter Peppers Surprisingly enough, it looks like there are already four broccoli sprouts coming up. It's too soon to take a picture, but maybe tomorrow it won't be. The seed packet said to expect germination in 10-21 days, but it's only been four. I must be doing something right.

The rosemary from Burpee arrived today, so I'll plant that tonight. That will finish off everything that needs to be started indoors for this season. Then it's time to get the back yard in shape for transplanting and decide what will go where.

This weekend and the last couple of days have been very rainy and cloudy. Good for the yard, not so good for young seedlings desiring lots of sunlight.

Friday the 16th

Today was a fun day. By the end of the day, five more serranos, two Peter Peppers and two Fluorescent Purples were up. The Peter Peppers look just like the serranos; almost all peppers look exactly the same as this stage. The Purples, on the other hand, are a little different, as the leaves are supposed to be (go figure) purple. I'll take a picture of them when they get a little bigger.

It gets better: the Burpee seeds arrived! So I spent some time tonight planting the sweet bell peppers (a hybrid green and their Carnival Mix), tomatoes (Viva Italia, a paste tomato, SuperTasty, a standard slicer, Early Girl, another slicer, and Sugar Snack, a cherry tomato), Greek oregano, Siam Queen basil and Mariner Hybrid broccoli. The rosemary is the only thing left to plant, but those seeds are backordered. Hopefully they will arrive soon.

Burpee also sent along some free sunflower seeds (their "experimental cutting mix"). I'm not sure where to put these yet, since the packet says the plant can reach eight feet high. I'm sure we'll find a good place for them.

If you've been checking the site, you'll notice I'm still playing around with the look. Cascading style sheets are nice, but getting the pictures to do what I want (a border, a caption, and the text flowing properly around everything) is tricky. Drop me a note if you have any advice in this area.

First sprout of 2001
First sprout!

Thursday the 15th

Still no Burpee seeds! Their customer service people told me that they shipped the bulk of my order last Thursday, so it has now been a week. I don't know what reason there could be for it not showing up yet, but I think I'll be ordering from someone else next year.

However, the good news for today is that the first sprout poked up this morning. It is one of the serranos.

Saturday the 10th

Still no Burpee seeds. This is getting ridiculous.

So far, this winter hasn't been nearly as wet as previous ones. I'm a bit concerned about this. When we moved into the house in July, the area that I'm using as the garden was filled with wood chips. Most of these I discarded to make room for some top soil, but the bottom layer had started to rot nicely, and I figured that mixing this into the clay-like dirt that is already there would be a good way to loosen it up. I've also dumped a fair amount of chopped leaves from the trees in front and some grass clippings in there. The trouble is, none of this is going to begin to decompose by the time I'm ready to till the area unless it rains more frequently.

Finally got around to planting the last two hot pepper varieties I wanted to grow this season: jalapeno and Hungarian yellow wax.

Monday the 5th

I finally got around to planting seeds in seed trays today, but I could only do about half of what I have planned. Burpee has been rather bad about sending me my order. I placed it over two weeks ago and it still hasn't arrived. When I called Saturday to inquire about the order, it still wasn't sent, and they had somehow messed up the quantity on one of the items.

Planted today: Charleston cayenne, Amarillo aji, Numex Big Jim, Argentina, Peter Pepper, Fluorescent Purple (all from Pepper Joe's; the Argentina are my "free seeds," so I'm not sure what to expect), serrano (from Botanical Interests, bought at a local nursery), and habanero (seeds came with a bottle of Cap'n Sleepy's Habanero Hot Sauce that Julie gave me for Christmas).

I'm still waiting on a bunch of stuff from Burpee: basil, garlic chives, cilantro, parsley, rosemary, oregano, beans, broccoli, carrot, cucumber, garlic, scallions, lettuce, endive, pea, sweet bell pepper, radish, tomato and zucchini.

My planting mix is equal amounts of Supersoil, perlite and vermiculite. The seed tray is sitting under a south-facing window in the spare bedroom, so it gets lot of light and stays pretty warm during the day. I'll probably build some sort of wooden frame and cover it with chicken wire to keep the cats away once the seedlings are too big for the cover.

Planting a garden this year? Send me mail, I'd love to hear about it!