Blossoms!

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Of the many many wonderful things about Spring I'd have to say among the top five (up there with sunshine and bar-b-ques) are blossoms! It's such a brief period and will be gone before we know it so it's really worth the time to stop and soak it in a bit.

When else to otherwise ordinary trees look so fancy? But I must say the most exciting single blossom belongs to one of our adolescent pepper plants!

Yay! This is the first blossom to open (April 15th) we have a few other plants that are almost there all of which are from a variety called Healthy. Some of the Burans have some fairly developed buds. Lets hope this translates to early peppers. We'll see. You know you'll hear about it; what else do I have to blog about? There's the tomatoes of course which we have re-potted to yogurt cup sized containers. Now everything we started in two black plastic seed flats is currently held in 9 flats.

They spend their days outside and on chilly nights (which is still most nights) they come inside. Last night was their first night out... camping for seedlings.

getting so grown up!

Another garden update

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Gee these kids are growing fast. I had photos saved from the 23rd that I was going to post documenting the progress. Well, I didn't get to blogging last week (or two?) and I was astonished by just how out of date those pictures were. So, I took new pictures this morning so I could give a side by side comparison so you can see the growth over two weeks and two days.

first, the table set up:

on the 23rd

today

So not only was another shoplight added but since then the lights have had to get adjusted upward. *Pinky* Bouncey Balls were placed at the ends of the bar clamps to try to avoid potential unhappy happenings that would involve any part of one's head and the thin metal end of a bar clamp.

second, the plants:

pepper seedlings late last month

and tomatoes at the same time-- see how little?

The peppers continue to grow and see that pile of greenery towering behind them? Those are the tomatoes-- not so much like babies.

You can see that the peppers have been re-potted to give them more room-- they were starting to crowd each other out of light-- and that's bad.

I took pictures of the pepper potting process.

This is Dennis re-potting a pepper. First he carefully removed the plant form the seed starting compartment. With the use of a plastic knife he separated the soil from the container being careful to minimize damage to the roots.

He then transferred the seedling to a prepared pot (in this case a yogurt cup with holes drilled in the bottom and with some soil already inside) and added more potting soil where there was room.

Afterward we give them a good drink of water. We left them under the lights inside the next day or two help them recover.

I also wanted to show you my seedling nanny. I use them when leaving very small plants outside for the day. I made them last year after the starlings living in the eave of the house decided it would be great to snip the tips of some of our pepper seedlings. That was something I would like to not repeat. I figure if something really wants in it will succeed but it helps with the lazy opportunists. Our seedlings are too big to use the nannies now.

The latest picture of my favorite gardener. He likes vegetables. I like him.