We picked up 5 more shop lights this week. It’s amazing how much light that seed starting rack puts off now. I call it the artificial sun.

If that wasn’t enough, we stopped by IFA in Riverton today… $100 later, we’re planting even more seeds (and we have “all” the seeds we’ll need this year). Now I’m not only going to need more lights, but probably another whole rack when the seedlings get big enough to need a little more space.

So, today we planted:
24 Hungarian Yellow Wax Peppers
24 Big Jim Peppers
24 Tomatillos
24 Sweet Red Peppers
12 Eggplants (Ichiban Hybrid)
12 Big BerthaHybrid Peppers
12 Cherry Tomatoes
8 Spaghetti Squash
4 Banana Squash

And here’s what has sprouted:
22 Jalapeno Peppers
20 Big Boy Tomatoes
19 Brandywine Tomatoes
13 Orange Sun Peppers
12 Banana Peppers
11 Pepperoncinis
10 Cherokee Purple Tomatoes
9 Poblano Peppers
4 Anaheim Peppers
3 Habanero Peppers
1 California Wonder Pepper

Still nothing has sprouted from the crappy Jiffy soil. Isn’t that just pathetic? That’s 288 seeds that probably won’t sprout. The lack of sprouts in the Jiffy soil probably played a large role in convincing us to buy more seeds and seed starters today. I’m still very frustrated with Jiffy.

I think my original idea was to try to limit gardening to Saturdays, at least until we had something to do outside (there’s still snow out there right now). But, we decided to continue planting like mad, because… well, because we can.

Charmaine pulled up a list of varieties of various vegetables that are known to do well in Utah, and we took a quick trip to Walmart. It’s not the best place to shop for garden supplies, but we gave it a try. Unfortunately, the varieties of seeds at Walmart didn’t match up with the list of known-good varieties from USU. We found a few from the list, and picked up a few varieties that we had luck planting last year. We also picked up a few more seed beds.

Then we went a little crazy.

Peppers:
108 California Wonder Peppers (total of 132)
84 Anaheim Peppers
48 Cascabella Peppers
36 Jalapeno Peppers (total of 60)
36 Poblano Peppers (total of 60)
24 Orange Sun Peppers
12 Pepperoncini Peppers
12 Habanero Red Peppers

Tomatoes:
36 Roma Tomatoes
20 Brandywine Tomatoes
20 Big Boy Tomatoes
10 Cherokee Purple Tomatoes

I was just about to congratulate us for starting the garden early this year, but then I saw the date on last year’s “first planting” post… 3/23. We’re only 8 days ahead of last year? It feels much more like winter this time around. I’m still glad to be starting.

After our experience trying to grow peppers from seed last year, it is obvious that we need to start earlier than we think. Even the package of seeds says to start them 8 to 10 weeks before you can plant outside. Looks like we may need to start even earlier next year. But this year we have a few secret weapons that Charmaine picked up during her Master Gardener course last fall.

Instead of sacrificing all available kitchen counter space all spring long, we decided it was time to build a seed starting rack. We picked up what I call a “Baker’s Rack” (it looks like it would be great for cooling baked goods) at Home Depot. We also grabbed a cheap shop light and some fluorescent bulbs to act as grow lights. We didn’t buy “grow” lights as the research done at USU indicates they only cost more than regular light bulbs, but they perform the same. A little bit of chain and we had our adjustable height grow rack. We’ll probably need to add more shop lights, but we’ll wait and see how it goes before we get too crazy.

After putting the rack together and preparing some seed beds, we planted the first wave of peppers in a heated seed bed.
24 Poblano
24 Jalapeno
24 Sweet Banana

The other seed bed isn’t heated, but it has room for a lot more seeds… maybe 200 or more. It was a real chore getting the dirt in the seed beds on that one, but at least it’s ready for next week.