Thursday, January 12, 2017

At Time to Plant - A Time to Reap

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven—
A time to give birth and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.  - Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

Yes indeed, a time to plant - a time to uproot.  This past Saturday we uprooted the tomato plants and on the very same day, we planted more!  The previous weekend it was twenty something degrees and now, well, it was in the seventies and I was in shorts on the patio with seed starting mix and a bunch of seeds planting the spring 2017 crop.  I try to get a very early start so that I can get the seedlings transplanted in the garden as soon as I'm confident that we won't experience a frost.


I plant all of my tomato, eggplant and pepper seeds in January, and I nurture them and baby them until it is time to transplant them out into the garden.


Here is an inventory of the different heirloom varieties that I planted:
Eggplant: Louisiana Long Green and Florida Market Eggplant
Peppers:  Criolla Sella, Hot Jalapeno, Craig's Grande Jalapeno, Banana Pepper, Emerald Giant, and Horizon Peppers
Tomatoes: Black Krim, Mortgage Lifter, Black Vernissage, Black from Tula, Big Rainbow, Pink Brandywine, Thessaloniki, Amish Paste, and Valenciano 749 Yellow Tomatoes.

Seeds always strike me as such a miracle.  Each tiny seed holds so much promise, so much potential, so much life will spring forth from that dead-looking seed!

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I normally plant two seeds in each seed pot.  That gives me the possibility of getting 8 seedlings from each variety.


I cover the seeds with soil and give the soil a good sprinkling with water to simulate a soaking rain.  In a few days they will germinate and then I will install a florescent light above them.  We'll peek in on them in a few days to check our germination percent.

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