Archive for February, 2010

Well it looks like this years Alabama’s gulf coast spring is going to come very late. I hope we are not looking at a winter season moving into a HOT summer, robbing us of our spring. Last night the outside temperature hit under 32 (28 average last week), brrr and it might warm up to 34 tonight. All the while I have my first bunch of seedlings poking their heads up, looking for the light of the sun.

Bright Effects 65W, 2700K 3900 Lumens CFL Monster

Our seed’s germination success rate is rocking. I am hitting around 90%. Not too bad when you factor in the three Bhut Jolokias, and the other habaneros I have bouncing in the mix. My trick is using jiffy seed starter, warmth (at least 70°F), a bit of humidity and patience. I saw this tip on another blog where you place your seed trays on a clothes dryer while doing your laundry, speeding up the germination time. It works!

Dual 23W, 6500K, Total 3200 Lumens CFLs w/ Aluminum Foil Pan Reflector

We folks on the gulf coast have a short growing period for tomatoes. Lower Alabama has to deal with the hot nights of July and the wilt and blight it brings, so normally at this time, we would be thinking about putting our tomatoes into our garden. Not this year.

So with a hundred plants ready to go, and the next batch (cucumbers, etc) ready to start, it looks like we are going to have to “pot them up” and keep them inside a whole lot longer. Ergo the flurry of grow light creation activity (Mad Scientist, that I be). I am working on a platform to cover up our big old bath tub. The next three to four weeks our plants will hang out in our bathroom.

This year’s National Arbor Day will fall on April 30, but did you know that each state in the USA celebrates their observance on different dates according to their best tree-planting times? Alabama’s Arbor Day falls on the last full week of February.

Arbor Day Dates Across America

Chickasaw Plum, Southern Crabapple, Flowering Dogwood, Sweetbay Magnolia and a Common Apple (still in a bucket) next to a couple of our Banana plants.

Yesterday the Town of Loxley (our town just south of us) had a tree give away to celebrate Alabama’s Arbor Day. We showed up early with our wish list and found over 20 rubbermaid type trash cans stuffed with little tree seedlings. Not wanting to dig a lot of holes in the cold winter ground, we left with six. Doris, who lives down the road is planting a few apple trees as well, so we are hoping the wild bees in the area will be pleased and visit our farm a bit more.

Who Dat

Who Dat Won The Super Bowl? The Saints… Dats Who!

Brrr

Well it looks like Old Man Winter has no plans on leaving us for a while. My weather channel widget is projecting 29 tonight. And when it is not cold, it rains and 3 days later, it rains. But there is no time to cry, after cross checking a few online seed catalogs, we went about ordering a new bunch of seeds and pulling out last years saved seeds.

Starting Seeds Indoors

Here I have some Relleno Italian’s, Siling Labuyo, and Jalapeño seeds receiving a bath of well water. The next morning they were placed into jiffy pots and stuffed with jiffy seed starter. Just my 2 cents here… Good stuff. Works great as long as you take a few steps like sterilizing everything with a 5-10 percent bleach solution. From there we put them in rubbermaid plastic and tent them. No fertilizer. You would think the big box boys understood that the stuff they sell burns the roots of new seedlings. Or maybe not.

Not to much yet to talk about this years tomatoes. I went with TomatoFest.com this year. The seeds have not arrived. I picked out the San Marzano Redorta, Black Cherry and the Amana Orange tomatoes to start the season.

I also placed my order with ChilePlants.com. We ordered the mandatory twelve with a mix of large stuffers, italian sweets and the exotic hots. A few of the new HOT pepper plants in the order include a Habanero Chocolate, a Hawaiian Sweet Hot, a Chiltepin Fort Prescott, and a Scotch Bonnet Yellow.