Planting Peppers

It's finally time for our peppers to make it into the garden. I say Finally, because it seems like it has been a really drawn out process and I'm ready to see some headway.

Most gardeners will start with a few plants picked up from your local nursery or big box store but if you are planning on a lot of peppers, starting them from seed is your best bet.

We are lucky enough to have a bathroom in the shed that doesn't get much use and it was converted to a mini greenhouse late in January so we could start our Peppers. Yes, we started these seeds in late January. Sounds crazy doesn't it, but peppers are a picky plant and take forever to get started. These are a few weeks into the process. The soil needs to be a good 70 to 80 degrees for them to sprout, so if your trying it be prepared with grow lights and a warming mat. We cheat and use rope lights that I got on clearance after Christmas one year, for under the pots to help warm the soil as well as the lights. We got them up and running and in late March we moved them to the Green house. Of which I of course have no pictures..

The seed package is very misleading for peppers, it says that most peppers will be mature and produce peppers in 60 to 90 days, some can go as long as 130 days. This is from the time it is transplanted, if you are using those seeds from that package, go ahead and add 8 to 10 weeks to that number. I say seed manufactures need to have more truth in advertising. If I have started my first garden, bought seed from a big box store and direct sowed into my garden, I would realistically expect to have peppers in three months.

If your lucky, conditions are great and your chickens don't eat them, this is what your pepper plants will look like in 90 days. No where near ready to fruit.Give them another  90 days and the weather would probably be turning really hot and you might not get a chance for peppers this summer. Not fair at all. Then the gardener feels like they have failed at pepper, which isn't fair to them at all.

 Peppers are one of the few vegetables that we recommend getting from a grower. Let someone else do all the work but remember that you'll still have to wait a while before you enjoy those Jalapeno poppers you have been dreaming about.

Two more tips for you before you plant your peppers into the garden. Peppers like a lightly sandy, well drained soil. And sometimes when peppers are grown in greenhouse or the weather goes up and down and you end up with young plants that are already starting to bloom. Before  you plant them it's best to go ahead and pinch those blooms off. Otherwise the small plant will pour all of it's energy into producing the blooms and fruit. It's better to take them off ,let the plant mature and then it will produce blooms again. This will ensure that you have a healthier plant that will produce larger and healthier peppers even if it takes a bit longer.

These are some of the blooms I had to pick off before planting this week. Hopefully we'll continue to have warm nights, peppers need to have night temperatures drop no lower than 50 degrees. Just last week we dropped into the 40's, so we are going ahead and rolling the dice with Mother Nature.

If you're south of us you could be a bit ahead but this could be very timely if you are north of us. You guys have a bit more time before the pepper planting starts!

Thanks for stopping by. I hope to have some updates on the projects started during the A to Z Challenge last month!

Year Round gardening

Wow the month and the Alphabet is almost over. We are down to Y in the A to Z Challenge for Bloggers.

Today I'm using Y to talk about year around gardening. It might not be possible every where to have a garden all year but there are tricks and tips for lots of areas to extend your season.

Want to get a jump on the season. Start your seeds indoors, before the ground is ready and you'll have a good plant stock to start the season with. We start peppers, notoriously slow growers, in January. We also start them from seeds about now but this gives us a longer season of pepper availability. It doesn't take much . We have a green house but we don't use it for the small stuff, we use the extra bathroom to start with. We bring in shelving and some under-counter lights with daylight or grow bulbs the room is warm but we'll use rope lights under the pots for the first week or so to help warm the soil.

Another way to extend your harvest goes along with this. Plant your seeds in batches days or even a week apart. And as long as the weather is holding out continue to reseed. This helps with the problem of everything coming on at once and you have a glut. This way you'll have lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers for your salad ripening each week!

Another way to start early or run late is to build a cold frame. These can be very easy or very complex. They can be a permanent fixture or something that gets put up every year. A simple one could be a old shower door that you picked up at a salvage yard, laid over straw bales. 

Image from Mother Earth News

It can be a permanent structure. I would expect these to work best in colder climates.

Image from This Old House

Row Covers are another way to go for plants that are winter crops, but that might need a bit more protection if the weather turns icy or very cold. These are nice in the fact that they can be used at night but taken off during the day so that they can get the sun and water that they need. Or if you need a bit more warmth they can be left on to increase the inside temperature by 5 to 8 degrees. Sometimes that's all that's needed to get through a storm.

image credit .veggiegardeningtips.com

Hopefully these ideas will help you get a bit more out of your garden season with out a lot of money being expended. Most of these ideas can be made with things that just might be in your shed or that can be made out of things you can recycle that are laying around.

Thanks for stopping by. Tomorrow is the last day of April and the last day of the A to Z Challenge. 

For Z I'll be writing about one last important part of planning your garden. Zones! What zone are you in? We'll find out on Thursday!

Finally Rebuilding

I normally say that January is my down month. My month to recover from the Holiday season, no sales to attend, no crazy demands on my time, a time when I get to sit back and relax so I can gear up for the crazy mess to start all over.. Some how I missed that this year.

We had a lot more warmer days than cold this January and we've used it to try and get ahead of the yard and garden work. Which seems to have been a good decision, seeing how February is now way colder than usual. We might even get snow tonight, not much but it doesn't take much to completely shut us down. Eastern NC is just not prepared for snow, hurricanes, sure we've got that, but an errant flake can send us flailing to the grocery store for bread and milk!

Last year we lost our greenhouse in a Micro burst storm. Craziest thing ever,  That afternoon started when  I went out to gather up some veggies and try to corral the girls, since they were calling for a thunderstorm and you know the saying about "being madder than a wet hen". The Chow and I were out in the garden and all of a sudden it gets super dark and then whoosh, this gust comes out of no where and almost flattens me, along with the garden. I jump up looking for my helper and he's run for the hills, (actually it was the back door but same difference, it was away from the mess..lol) Then I hear Chris saying what happened and he's pointing to the back... something was way wrong but it took my brain a minute to figure it out. The Green house was gone.. well not gone but compacted and moved...

It could have been much worse, there are bees just to the left of where it landed. The weeds in the foreground are camouflage for the girls and an area where they can wander while being barred from the garden. Thankfully it was mid summer, and it was empty. After it was all cleaned up this is what we kept.

 They'll make a great arbor for the kiwi vines that are taking over. Having a green house land on them didn't do them any harm, in fact I think it spurred on the growth.
Now getting to the January work, this is the start of the new, frame is almost completely up now, just waiting on a semi warm day to get the plastic on.

We've got sprouts ready to go in and all kinds of new ideas for the upcoming season. I'm ready to see it completed, since I already have a bunch of WIPs waiting for me, crochet, gardening and otherwise. Be on the look out for green house updates and garden news in the coming weeks, if the weather cooperates..