Barefoot In My Garden: No big till, Peppers

Thursday, April 19, 2012

No big till, Peppers

The rototiller never showed up today. It was dampish, rainy-ish. Maybe that's why? I saw more than one gardener approach the garden. Stand at a distance. Hands on hips. Look around. Look at garden. Step closer, look down. Look around. Shoulder slump, and turn away.

Tiller day is an especially big day when the weather is so warm. We don't have a very long growing season and we've been up to 85F here in balmy Minnesota, but it snowed lightly on Monday and today was a possibility. The ground has totally thawed and warmed a bit. I'm going to put plastic sheeting down to help the ground warm up.

I've been reading my Country Wisdom & Know-How. The gardening section is big and there is a lot of detail on different kinds of plants, the proper manure and soil pH, the best growing conditions...

I've started taking notes. First from the seed packets, then looking through the book, and then looking online for clarification of details, such as, "what is friable soil?"

I've got one full hand-written page with notes about the 8 varieties of peppers I've started. There isn't a lot of difference between them, but they ripen at slightly different times and there are notes about optimum size and color.

They are nightshades, like tomatoes, but they have to have lots of warmth for the seedlings to come up, so I moved them away from the window that is cracked open and watered them with warm water. The quiet ones I worried about are springing up. They also need to be pretty big - 5 true leaves - before they can go outside. The soil has to be a certain temperature and there is a threshold for the lowest temperature at night.

I've got notes on how deep and how far apart they should be, what to bury with the plant (compost, fertilizer and matches) and how often to water. NOT intuitive, but I've managed to get good peppers for the last two years. This year should be big fun.