To The Surbiton Manor Born

  They  said it was too soon! They  scoffed at me! I was mocked ! I shall not be mocked.  Too early to plant peppers, eh?  The image above is what you have three weeks after planting King in the North peppers. Three long weeks. While time will tell, I expect that we will only regret having planted too few. With this in mind, today was a day to start some marigolds. Last summer it took seemingly forever for those little buggers to pop up. And because they play an important part in the pest control and companion planting scheme in a few of the beds this summer, it will e good if we can give them a good start. This is a little earlier than the planned April 1 date, but given last year's experience, it may have been nothing short of genius.  Tragedy struck, however. I'd planned to plant a dozen. But, alas, the supply of potting soil only allowed me to plant nine.  Next weekend it will be necessary to double-mask and make a crack of dawn run to purchase more soil.

We had a lovely snow last night, bringing the most excitement Steepmeadow has had in more than a week. Almost buried the cat statue.  I started 9 sweet banana pepper plants.  Given last year's experience, it doesn't seem to early to start the slow-growing pepper plants. So it's not really just that we're getting anxious for spring to come. Truly. The cilantro planted last weekend is just starting to show a couple of green thingies poking above the soil. There is no sign at all from the King in the North pepper plants started last year. This is not necessarily a problem yet, as the package says 10-14 days for germination. We might not see anything until next weekend.  That said, if we don't see something by then, I'll start another batch.  The greenhouse is, unfortunately, swarming with fruit flies. The little dirt-bags must have been lurking in the potting soil, waiting for a little heat, light, and water. Humbug. We've got a stinky apple-cider vinegar trap

It isn't too soon to start planting for next summer. Given our disappointment with our pepper crop last year which simply never matured, it seemed like as good a time as any to get started. Seeds left over from our King of the North pepper packet from Seed Savers Exchange went in in bog-rolls full of potting soil under the Sun Blaster T5 florescent light in the greenhouse.  (The other half of the box is full of cilantro for winter salads.) I can't think of King in the North without  my mind going to Rob Stark in Game of Thrones. It was totally unfair what happened to him. He should have stayed north of The Neck and  defended himself instead of attacking. After reading an article about planting for next season that mentioned difficulties with shipping delays and finding some seeds sold out already, I thought we should look at our seed supplies and see how they match up with our garden plans.  We have many of the seeds we need for next season already. But not all. And so I went t

Another snow day at Steepmeadow.

  This Sunday found Kiki and I locked in battle with replacing a third ceiling fan with a light fixture.  The HPOs had something of a fixation with ceiling fans, which I have little doubt they booby-trapped just to torture us.  The reason I suspect this foul treachery is that, of the six fans they felt it necessary to install, three of them have failed in the last year. Of course, the fans worked great when we did the home inspection a year ago and the final walk-through. Admittedly, two of them can be operated only by stupid dirty-white remote controls (because, for some reason, this couple was apparently incapable of standing up and pulling a cord.) By late summer, half of the fans were inoperable.  It turns out that replacement light fixtures are not routinely easy to install - at least not for us, with our admittedly limited home improvement skills.  The puzzling mass of little metal bits and screws and wires that arrived with our new fixture took much of the morning to piece toget

  The inexpensive Wayfair mini-greenhouse arrived, and begins the year's efforts in the garden.  We ordered a mini-greenhouse to start the seedlings this year. Last year, we purchased a standard storage shelf, and, after placing a woefully inadequate set of LED strip-lights that were supposed to be grow lights, we planted our seedlings in five planters - one for each shelf, in front of the downstairs walk-out.  Unfortunately, there were issues with what at first appeared to be a sound plan. The grow light strips were not very good once the plants sprouted. They became "leggy." Another issue was that we paid little attention to the seed instructions, and ended up planting things that it would have been better to "direct sow" in the planters for transplant. Another problem: we started the seedlings all together in the planters, with no separation, which made it difficult to pull them apart, and risked root damage when it was time to plant them outside. It was inef