We were hiking in southern Utah last week, so I didn’t post anything or take any pictures. Before we left I filled the trays with water, so the plants wouldn’t die while we were gone. They definitely didn’t die. Some of them are starting to look like monsters. The big peppers are about 10 inches wide and 10 inches tall. We’re running out of room on the racks. Surviving the next 3 or 4 weeks indoors should be interesting.

It was finally warm enough to venture outside and take a few pictures today. We had snow and rain 2 of the last 3 days, but I’m hopeful it will warm up soon. It looks like the Strawberries survived the winter. The peas and potatoes are starting to come up. The blackberries haven’t started growing anything yet this year. They always seem to start a little late, so I’m trying not to worry too much, but they were buried under a huge lake most of the winter. That can’t be good for anything. I’m hoping we can build a serious drain through the side yard sometime this year. I don’t like seeing lakes.

With all the snow we’ve been getting day in and day out, I catch myself wondering if it’s really spring. I’m guessing we’ve had at least a foot of snow this week, and probably close to that much last week. It does warm up from time to time, so we haven’t seen more than about 6 inches at a time, but it’s starting to get ridiculous. We haven’t even had a chance to move any of the “cold weather veggies” outside yet. That’s how bad it has been. All the plants continue to grow happily indoors.

No, we haven’t gotten crazy enough to put any plants outside yet, but we are continuing to move pellets into pots as the plants get too large for the pellets. Some seeds still haven’t sprouted and I’m beginning to think it may be time to try again on most of them.

It snowed a lot this week and the tomatoes we transplanted have continued their aggressive growth in their new pots. I’m starting to worry we planted them too early. By next week we’ll need to transplant them into even larger pots. I don’t know how long the large pots will last until they need more room, but it will definitely be interesting.

We finally saw the top of a poblano pepper rising in one of the large pots. I’ve started calling them “slowblanos” because of how much longer they have taken to sprout than everything else. Of course, the black beauty (fat) eggplants haven’t come up yet either, but they were planted later.

Here’s what sprouted this week:

Big pots:
1/2 Poblano peppers

Small pots:
6/6 Cayenne peppers
0/6 Eggplant (fat)

Pellets:
9/11 Sweet Red Bell peppers
6/11 California Wonder Bell peppers
6/6 Lettuce
5/11 Banana peppers
3/5 Brandywine tomatoes
3/4 Early Girl tomatoes
2/5 Big Jim peppers
2/3 Jalapeno peppers
2/2 Limon peppers
2/3 Serrano peppers
1/3 Anaheim peppers
1/1 Green Cabbage
1/6 Mini Belle peppers
1/2 Tomatillos
0/1 Celery
0/1 Cubanelle peppers
0/6 Habanero peppers
0/1 Kohlrabi
0/3 Onion
0/12 Poblano peppers