2010 Garden Begins!

This past Saturday, January the 23rd, I started 5 sets (set = peat pellet with 3-4 seeds in it) of each of the following 5 varieties of tomato: Rutgers, Persimmon, Wisconsin 55, Sweet Million & Better Boy. I have them in a 25 pellet Jiffy greenhouse (same one I used to start my peppers last year). I'm excited to get my tomatoes started early enough to where I should get those coveted July 4th tomatoes this year! =) I will do the usual & thin out the plants in each peat pellet down to the one strongest. Then, when they have had a second set of leaves growing for about a week, i'll trasplant them up to the semi-translucent plastic cups which worked so well for me last year & finally put them in a sunny windowsil.

Some of you may wonder why I started my tomatoes 11 weeks before one would normally put them outdoors in this zone. I don't want to have to wait until late August before I can harvest any. I have planned it out where I am going to purchase a cold frame that they will go outdoors in sometime in March. This will keep them from cluttering up the house when they get quite large, be a good way to harden them off & also obviously allow me to place them outdoors a few weeks before I normally would.

Here a link to the cold frame i'm thinking about buying: Cold Frame

I plan on starting some peppers, 2 more tomato varieties (Sun Sugar & some type of paste tomato) & a few other items also over the next few weeks. I'm not totally sure what i'll grow for peppers this year, but 2 items that will deffinitely be on the list are some type of Jalapeno (probably the Mucho Nacho ones from Jung) & the Hot Banana pepper that did so well for me last year. I get quite the nice tax return next Friday so I would not at all be suprised if I spend about $400-$500 on gardening stuff alone over the next month...lol. Wish me luck! Pictures soon to come.

UPDATE: I couldn't wait any longer, again! lol...I raided my gardening closet, grabbing some MG Potting Mix & some square coir seedling pots. I ended up starting 2 of the pots of each of the following 5 pepper varieties: Hot Banana (family strain), Mucho Nacho Jalapeno (from Jung), Melrose, Capsicum Baccatum & Chili de Comida (Baker Creek). I put one seed close to each of the 4 corners (ya know, about a half an inch away from any side), so if I have good germination rates like I did last year, I should end up with at least 4-5 (if not 7-8) of each type of pepper plant! =) I say this because the pots are large enough to where the seedlings should be easy to seperate until they get quite large. I also took some of my famous low quality camera phone pics of the peppers & tomatoes I started. The tomatoes should be popping through the peat any day now...

The pepper seeds (love the pumpkin pan, eh?):


The Jiffy peat pellet greenhouse with tomato seeds (open & closed):




- Steve