Tag Archives: planted

Couldn’t Wait

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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

Starting Early?

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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.

Planting

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Our garden is starting to look like a garden.   Right before we left on vacation at the beginning of the month, I borrowed my parents tiller and spent all the free time I had for two days tilling and digging.  We planted potatoes, summer squash and pumpkins around 7:30 p.m. right before we had to leave to get to the airport for our flight out to Puerto Rico.

This year we are trying something new.  We have created raised beds with with walking rows between them that are lined with straw.  Back in April I brought home a stack of gardening books from the library and James read about raised beds.  We also started a compost bin after watching a DVD that came with my gardening magazine.

There is a lot to learn about gardening and each year we feel a little more successful.   We continue to learn from our mistakes.  We just learned that you should always plant pumpkins, and winter squash directly into the ground as seeds.  They just don’t transplant well at all.  Now it says as much on the package but you can buy all of these as plants at the store and we wanted to get an early start on the giant pumpkin so we planted them inside.  It’s funny because looking back on last summer our pumpkins that we planted from seed did ok but the plants that I bought from the store only produced one pumpkin between 12 plants.

Today we worked on the corn patch it didn’t get very far since the top soil that I order and was suppose to be here at nine didn’t show up.  When I called the guy that was going to do it around one and he still didn’t have it I canceled the order.  We were just too tired by that point.  I still need more top soil but I guess that will have to wait for another day.

We did get a chance to plant our tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, beets, and raspberries.  As I write it out it seems like a lot less than what it felt like while we were doing it.

Snow Peas

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We finally managed to get some work done outside yesterday, but it’s snowing again today. It’s almost the end of April, but winter just won’t go away. Luckily we got a row of Pole Peas planted along the side of the house yesterday before it started snowing.

I tested all the sprinklers yesterday… we didn’t have any broken heads this year! So we have pressure in the system now, but there’s no reason to turn the system on with all the rain and snow we’re still getting.

A garden blog isn’t as much fun without pictures, but our camera isn’t in working order after a recent trip to San Diego. But I’ve decided to blog anyway, because a blog isn’t much of a blog without posts… boring or not.

All of the starts in the kitchen are doing really well, just waiting for it to warm up enough outside to be transplanted. All 20 of the Ed Hume Heirloom Tomatoes came up and are doing well. All 10 of the Ed Hum Tomatillos came up and are doing well. Of the 20 Lily Miller Peppers, only 4 have come up so far. Of course, peppers take much longer to get started, so that’s probably the reason they’re behind.

We also started 14 Roma Tomatoes that are doing well. We planted 2 Cantaloupes and 4 Watermelons that have sprouted. And we have 2 Giant Pumpkin starts looking good. I just hope all these things can get moved outside before they overrun their containers. (A few pictures would go nicely here.)