Seedling Schedule

I planted lettuce first this year because I want to have plants ready to go as soon as the snow has melted and the soil has warmed up a bit. Lettuce is very hardy and can tolerate a light frost so I'm aiming to put these out mid-April and see how they do. I might have to cover them on especially cold days.

I planted these three weeks ago (around March 9th) and they are doing really well so far. I did start them in egg cartons and then transplanted them into these larger plug pots last week.

Last weekend (March 16) I planted a bunch of Jalapeno Peppers (36 plants) I'm really hoping to grow a lot of these so I can make lots and lots of the pickled peppers that everyone seems to love. About half of them have sprouted and I'm trying to keep them warm and moist enough for the other half to come up too. The organic seeds from Richter's Herbs came up faster than the seeds I got from T&T. I planted 18 tomato plants on March 21 - 12 beefsteak tomatos and 6 orange cherry tomatos.

My gardening philosophy this year is to go a little slower, to plant a little less, and to record more and plan more. By the end of last year I basically abandoned the garden because I was so overwhelmed by everything I'd planted. I didn't even harvest my feild tomatos and they ended up getting hit by frost and rotting. Of course things were a little chaotic in the family and I didn't have as much time as I wanted to garden, but I learned a valuable lesson not to over extend myself. I tend to be good at starting and not so good at follow through (as you might be able to tell from the schedule of these blog posts). So I'm going to try and be slow and steady this year and hopefully manage to harvest everything and even clean the beds in the fall.