2013 First Planting

Well it was a nice sunny Easter Sunday and all the shops were closed, so I poked into my storage closet to see what gardening supplied I had on-hand.  Lo and behold I had enough potting soil and seeds to get the first planting of 2013 into the soil and sun!

Here is the list of seedlings sown:
5x Lemon Boy tomatoes
10x Toma Verde tomatillos (2 per pot, 5 pots)
5x Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes
13x Hungarian Hot Wax peppers

Here is a photo of the sown seeds soaking up the sun and warmth.

Future plantings will be made in the coming week once seeds on order arrive.

On order from Vesey's is:
Gusto Purple Hot Pepper
3x20 inch window sill heat mat

On order from William Dam Seeds:
Corentine cucumbers
Mesclun mix
Totem F1 hybrid tomatoes
Yellow Pear Organic tomatoes
Fern Leaf Dwarf Dill
Greenhouse growers plant clips

Stay tuned to the Just Leafy blog for updates on germination, transplanting, vegetable production, recipes and year-end canning and salsa making.  Happy gardening!

Summer heat brings peppers to life!

It is 31C in Edmonton today.  

Yesterday this heat trigged 2 of the cayenne peppers to flip from green to red.  Check it out:

And below the tomatoes are looking bushy!

Close up of the 'patio tomoato' from Arches Greenhouse; its bearing fruit all over!

Here is the lone surviving tomatillo in bloom:

Early June Update

Time for another update! It's early june and all the plants have been hardened off and moved outside.  I could be a bit paranoid but I feel the tomatoes are rather skinny, and slow growing this year.  I did re-use the soil so there could be some nutrient loss, but I mixed in compost and fertilizers to try and compensate for that.  Last year the soils were new, but unfortified (i.e. not compost) so I'm a bit skeptical that this is the sole cause.  It is early going still so there could be a warm week that gets them growing thicker and more robust.

Here are the seedlings inside for the night after being outside to harden off.

 A closer look at the pepper seedlings after transplanting into 4' pots.

 Hollyhock from Archs Greenhouses, first bloom of the year on June 6

 A view of the tomatoes and peppers - note the skinny tomatoes. 

A little burst of colour.

True Leaves Begin to Emerge

Just a quick update to say that I had to replant several seeds this weekend. Overall everything germinated, but for example the 4 tomatillos that germinated then rotted before they could get going. I had about one-third of my seedlings fail to germinate, or emerge and then die off.  I attribute this to the poor weather last weekend, it snowed and was cold an overcast so the seedlings did not get much heat or sun.  Also several of the peat pots experienced forms of mould.  This is because I did not use sterile potting soil or seed starting mix.  This is an error I won't repeat.  

So the photo above shows the remaining two-thirds of the seedlings that are off to a good start and have begun to grow their first sets of true leaves.  In the meantime I purchased a bunch of sterile peat pucks that I have used to sow a follow up batch of plants, a little bit of everything, to make sure I have a full crop this year.  Today I watered these little guys with a Miracle-Gro Quick Start starting solution plant food 4-12-4.  Hopefully they enjoy the good weather expected over the next few days.

The seeds grow despite the snow!

April 14, 2012: The seeds are a growin and the weather it is a snowin! Don't tell the seeds that on just the other side of the patio door there's a couple of centimetres of snow out there. This is just spring in Edmonton.

About April 12th the first of the tomato seeds sprouted, so right on time. The action continues today and probably through the weekend. The fist to sprout look

Here's a closer look at the hot wax peppers, a lonely pair of first-born in the lower right and upper left pots!

The tomatilos were the fist to sprout, they burst forth on Wednesday April 11. That is just under a week since they were sown. They sure are leggy though. I will need to go easy on them and help them along to ensure they strengthen up. I'll just try to keep them propped up with a small skewer or two.

I am also impressed that as of today the first few hot wax peppers are just emerging. By Monday I'll likely have them all pushing through the surface. They tend to take a while longer to break their seed pods off of their fist set of leaves.
All in all not bad considering today's snow fall. These seeds just love living on the radiator, keeps them nice an cozy no matter what's going on outside.

Just a quick update to note that today I sowed 3 more (the last of these seeds) Sun Sugar Hybrids from William Dam Seeds. Also sown today was 7 Sub-Arctic Maxi seeds from Apache seeds. And the final seeds sown this afternoon were 4 organic Sweet Genovese Basil from Seeds of Change.

That's all for now.

Propagation Pictures

The propagation photos are here!

Below are the Hot Wax peppers all the green stakes and the ones without stakes. The 4 blue stakes at that end of the tray are the Toma Verde Tomatillos. Word from a friend is these become fairly large plants once they get going so I am only going to try 4 plants this year.

I used peat pots this year to see if they can help eliminate the need to complete an interim transplant - in previous years I have propagated seeds in 1x1 cells then transferred to 4 inch pots before transplanting again into my full size patio pots. I am hoping that this year I might find a way to take them straight to the patio pots by starting them in the larger peat pots.

These seeds were sown 1 to a pot yesterday, April 7, 2012.

Above: I keep the tray holding the pepper seeds on the living room radiator, cheaper than buying a heating mat and this has worked 3 years in a row. Usually I see plants emerge in about 14 days.

Below: This tomato tray contains the Sun Sugar Hybrid tomatoes (orange stakes) and the Lemon Boy Hybrid tomatoes.

Above: I am keeping the tomato tray in the full sun on a small table right by the patio door for the warmth of the west sun. Come back and check out the progress in about 14 days, and happy gardening.