I've been spending the last week potting up the little tomato sprouts into some small grow bags that I'm trying out this year. So far I'm not that impressed -- they're hard to hold and fill. I've turned back the tops to make a little cuff which helps some, but I think these will be a one time only purchase.
I'm planting lots of tomatoes this year - all dwarfs except for two that I'm growing for seeds for my garden group.
The hot peppers are vexing me, as usual. Only ONE of 60 seeds has sprouted. Arghhhh!!!! But, the sweet peppers are doing just great. I'll be potting them up next week.
Today I finished planting the dwarf tomatoes! I'm really excited about getting these all started. Now I'll be excessively checking on these little trays looking for that first little sprout!
Today about 1/2 of the tomatoes were started. These are all supposed to be dwarf tomato plants, although with trade seeds, you never really know. I'll be happy with any tomatoes I get, so no worries, but I hope they all grow true.
I planted 3 seeds of each unless noted otherwise.
This year I'm planning on two tomato seasons, since these are mostly determinate plants, they should be finished producing in about 80 days, and then hopefully I'll have another crop of seedlings to put in. It will be an experiment, for sure, so we'll see what happens.
Today I planted the sweet peppers for the 2020 garden. Here's the list:
The blocker went better today, much faster and I think I have the hang of it! Both the hot and sweet peppers are under the grow light and on a heat mat in the greenhouse. I'll be checking them daily and watching for those first little green leaves!
Next week I'll be starting the tomatoes. If only I could just decide which ones.... so hard!
Sunday, January 5, 2020
Used the new soil blocker that I got for Christmas today to make blocks for starting the hot peppers! It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, but by the fourth try, I finally had one I could use.
It's a balance between getting the soil just wet enough, filling the blocks and then using the right amount of pressure to place them on the foam tray. Whew! I finally made three I could use, which gave me 60 mini-blocks.
The third block holds:
The second block holds:
and the first block holds:
A few of these I only had a couple of seeds for, but hopefully they're still good. We shall see. The tray with all three blocks went out to the greenhouse on a heat mat and with a grow light above it.
It was fun to finally start putting some seeds in soil! I'll be planting the sweet peppers next.
