Chelle, I'm glad your garlic is popping up -- since I told you it was easy to grow...

I'm sorry Arlene, I feel like hail is literally the worst. I hope you plants recover quickly.

So far 3 peppers have germinated so I guess that's an improvement. Although I sowed so many so I'm still holding hope that a few more will come up. Last year I had a few pepper plants self sow. Didn't get as many peppers off them as the ones I started inside, but it was pretty cool to have them. Their peppers were bigger than their previous years that sowed them. I thought that was pretty cool as well.

Today we potted up our tomato plants for selling next Saturday. Some of them are quite large already. We didn't get them all done but over half of them. Sprayed them all with Neptune's Harvest too. I still have 58 more to pot up, then I have about 80 peppers.

Tomorrow is the plant sale for our garden club so we will take over some tomatoes in the morning and help work the table for a couple of hours. I would like to finish potting up the rest of the tomatoes so they have time to settle in before next Saturday.

I picked my first blueberries today, and the blackberries are just starting to turn color.
In February, each week, I started different kinds of hot pepper seeds to supplement what I'm already growing. On some, like 7 pod Douglahs, I had more people asking for them than I could provide, since I only had 3 plants, but now I have started about 25 new plants. That may be more than I need, so I will sell the extra plants. The same goes for the other types: 7 pod Primo, Jay's Peach Ghost Scorpion, yellow Fatalii, and two types of Carolina Reapers. When I first got my Carolina Reaper seeds, the genetics were terrible. I paid $65 for the seeds, but only got 3 good plants out of them. So, I separated those 3 plants and harvested seeds to grow on for my first generation of improved reapers. So, half the new plants are IR 1s, and now I am starting IR 2s that came from my best IR 1 plants. I also started something brand new. Last year, the original breeder sent me some pods from a new unstabilized hybrid that seeds won't even be publicly available for another couple of years. I started about 60 new plants, but I will probably have to throw away 3/4 of them that end up not conforming to what they should be like. There again, I will have to keep the best few plants for breeding for next season. These are a cross between the Bhut Jolokia ( ghost pepper) and the Douglah, which is a chocolate pepper. The best resultant pepper will be a huge chocolate pepper that is hotter than the current world record holder, the Carolina Reaper. These are called Bhutlahs.

Holy crap, what a big country this is! you are picking blueberries, I'm excited to see rhubarb peeking up out of the ground...

Here's my newest experiment results after one week. I planted three new Earth Boxes with garlic, just to see what happens when planting it so late. Every single clove, all 45 of them, have sprouted. Those green tops you see on the left is garlic as well, planted last November 1.

Cycadjungle that's really awesome I love hot peppers as well. Along with seed saving for breeding the next year what do you make with the hot peppers?

Ken, I'd love to know how your garlic turns out. I ended up planting some in February as well because some of mine didn't come up from November planting. Looks like every garlic came up that I planted in February though. Just hoping they'll develop just like the other ones

Nothing is going on in my garden and that means I have not even sowed peas this year. Pretty soon I will start on my veggie beds and putting on the usual spring compost. That all needs doing way before anything is planted.

Got down to 18 degrees again this morning here. Nothing is going to be happening in my veggie garden for a while! I'm tired of this roller coaster ride. One day I'm cleaning out my iris beds in a T shirt, and the next day I need a winter jacket.

It does seem to want to be spring! But my crocus are blooming and they look fabulous!

I am adding dirt to the potato feeds sacks today, as needed.


I find it strange that the same potatoes, planted in the same soil, in the same sacks, at the same time, some are 6" tall, some haven't started growing.

Newyorkrita said:It does seem to want to be spring! But my crocus are blooming and they look fabulous!

I don't know if my crocus are blooming or not -- that flower bed is still buried in snow!!

SCurtis said:Cycadjungle that's really awesome I love hot peppers as well. Along with seed saving for breeding the next year what do you make with the hot peppers?

For the most part, I send fresh peppers all over the US. What I don't send out, I dry in the dehydrator and then grind up into powder.
For personal use, I mainly use the powder almost every time we go to a restaurant. For BBQ I use the powdered ghost peppers that were smoked before they were finished drying. For everything else, my favorite is 7 pod Primo powder. Obviously, I use it in chili and anything else you want heat for. Also, we have a group of people who meet at Chili's every Monday night, and we call it " hot pepper night" so I bring an assortment of fresh peppers every Monday. We do taste tests and compare different peppers, and even compare the same type of pepper that come from different individual plants. Sometimes we will have 20 people trying out peppers. Then there is the new people who happen to show up by accident who say, oh I am used to eating hot peppers, and then they get lit up because they thought Habaneros were hot. They have never seen anything 7 times as hot as habs. After we all test what we want to, we slice up all the peppers and the cook out back will fry them up with some onions and jalapeños, and serve with dipping sauces.
If you like hot peppers, you should follow our thread in this same forum category on really hot peppers.

Weedwhacker said:

I don't know if my crocus are blooming or not -- that flower bed is still buried in snow!!

Lily my dog looks for crocus blooming. There are yellow and purple ones to be seen.

Were those green fence posts are I will be planting cucumbers.

I got my fourth row of strawberries weeded today. They are the oldest row and after this harvest will be tilled under. I started to weed the aisle between the garlic where there is foot high wheat growing. My bad, mulched with wheat straw and it had lots of seeds. Should have pulled it sooner but luckily it is growing on top of straw so it's easy to pull. I will finish that tomorrow.

Poor little lettuce got seriously pelted with hail.


And then I noticed some asparagus
I have so much fun browsing through this thread to see how different things are around the continent.



Here is my garlic from DrDawg. This photo was taken a while back ~ before it really went thru a growth spurt. It is about 2 times this big now. I am just hoping the gophers don’t find it

I have never had an animal dig up my garlic, or onions for that matter. I don't think they like the smell. We don't have gophers though.

Your garlic is looking good, Toni. You will have a nice harvest. I think I much have lost my asparagus. I see nothing.

My asparagus just started growing the last few days ken, and you are north of me. I think it's died every year.

So there is still hope for mine. Thanks, TK.

Im getting a little mixed greens, beans, onions, and asparagus each day. I saute them al together and add to my pasta. Vitamons for the day!