High Hopes: It Begins

 

First Plants Started for 2022

Planting needs to start sometime for summer. Even though temperatures today were only in the single digits, and the morning started with sweeping a dusting of snow off of the driveway and the solar panels, it was time.

Peppers take eternity to germinate and start, so they're getting a good head start this year. 

I planted Ancho/Poblano peppers, chili peppers,"You Only Live Once" green peppers, banana peppers from seeds saved from the 2021 crop, habanero peppers, & long, red, thin cayenne peppers. 8 each. The plan is to transplant them into the bed closest to our garage, which gets hot in summer, taking the full brunt of the southwest sun. 

Listened to some rock & roll while getting them started. As Nick Perry & the Underground Thieves put it, I'm Feelin' Good. 

A topic for another day will be all the different kinds of gardeners, from preppers to the gangsta' gardener, the Jesus gardeners, the Old Farmer's Almanac types, the fertilizer & hybrid gardeners, the organic gardeners...etc. 

That was some of what I was thinking about while putting these tiny seeds in pots. 1/4" deep into dampened seed starting soil. I pushed a ruler in, and dropped 4 seeds in each 3" pot, two ruler furrows, one seed at each end. Ideally, all four will germinate, and I'll eventually cull the 3 weakest plants. Or, it leaves 4 chances per pot to get it right. At this point, we could attempt another planting if we don't see some action in about 14 days, which is apparently the rough time to germination. 

I assembled the larger of our two greenhouses last night, and dropped the grow lights (two per shelf) to just above where the seedlings should start to appear. 

It's at times like this, when starting out on year three of the garden, that I remember that the last two years weren't actually stolen completely by COVID. It's true that the usual quota of fun trips was not adhered to. But we've definitely learned some things.

High on that list is that plants have a hard time germinating in bog roll full of potting soil and badly overwatered. That was the mistake last year. The other mistake was buying peat pots last year. At least I'm reusing them this year. So we've learned something, anyway. 

The only thing I didn't remember is how much time this takes. I mean - we are talking all afternoon to start 48 plants. Don't get me wrong. It's not bad work. But it is time consuming.

 

Last year's investments in the kind of expensive T-4 florescent grow lights were worth it. I'm feeling especially smug about purchasing two more of them last August when they were $20 each. They're up to $40 the last I checked, as this is the time folks are buying them.

So here's hoping that these peppers will be a good 6-8" high by the end of May when we can plant them out.

Hopes are high.