Spring Updates

Tomatoes are all transplanted except the last round of 28 plants - mostly spud leaf varieties. Those will get transplanted into 4.5 in pots this weekend. They're probably staying at home as my half-shelf at Stillmeadow gardens is already more than full. They continue to help me out with the garden in any way they can. They're pretty great!

Peppers are still looking good. Most of them are still in the 2" cells which might be a little crowded by planting time but they're just going to have to deal. I don't have room to transplant them. Next year I'm thinking about putting them in 18 cell deep trays instead to give them a little more room. I put some into 4 inch pots this year just to see how much of a difference it makes.

Garlic is coming up and looking good. Some of it got frozen tips when it first came up from a couple of 15ish degree nights. I also removed some straw where it was more than 6 or 8 inches thick (matted down). I got a little overzealous adding the straw last fall. This photo is what it looked like after the last freeze. It's greener now!



Lettuce - I planted some Red Salad Bowl lettuce from Harts in a 26 cell tray on April 14 and transplanted it into a 50 cell tray today. There were more than 50 plants but I saved the biggest and fed the rest to some guinea pigs. I started a new 26 cell tray with Winter Density from HMS today. Here's the transplanted Red Salad Bowl.



To the right of it is some cabbage in 26 cell trays. These trays are pretty great. They have 2 rows of 13 cells and 3 of them fit into a standard tray perfectly. Jolly farmer sends out plugs in them and I got them from Bruce and Betty at Stillmeadow.

Cabbage-wise I have 8 26 cell trays planted. Ther are two each of Farao F1 (HMS), Red Express (HMS), Michihli Chinese cabbage (Harts) and Savoy Perfection (HMS).

Peas and Favas - There's 15 or so feet of Sugar Snap Peas (HMS) planted in the ground in Craftsbury as of Easter Sunday (April 24). There are also a dozen or so Bergeron fava beans from Leigh Hurley. This is the bed they are in but I took it before I planted.



I have a new plant rack. It's 5' wide, 2' deep and 3 levels tall. It'll hold 12 standard trays under 3 sets of lights or 15 trays if I overflow a bit. They're made from a bunch of 1x4s that I nailed and screwed together on Thursday. I'm just waiting for 2 more shop lights to come in and it'll be done.



The curtain on here is to keep us from going blind. 8 bulbs that high in the air is a bit much!