Posts Tagged ‘peppers’

Lack of Food

May 5th, 2009

nofood

Well my one time healthy plants were slowly starting to not look that great.  I was concerned about the discolouring and after talking to an expert it looks like I was not giving the plants adequate food.  I had started to fertilize the plants with an organic product but kind of stopped when the plants were getting to big.  I still don’t have a hot house setup outside for room to expand (its been windy and night time temperatures are still to cold).  In order to try and revive the plants I have been using a synthetic fertilizer (10-52-10) as recommended.  A problem with a lot of organic fertilizers is the lack of phosphorus which (as I found out) is required especially at the early stages of plant development.  A solution to this is to mix bone meal into the potting soil mix (something I will look at doing next time).

For now I am hoping the plants will recover and I will need to transplant them quickly (really about 2 weeks ago).

Hot House Required

April 14th, 2009

hot house frame

You have to like good deals.  We picked up this garage shelter package on sale for a great deal.  The plan is to turn this frame into a season extending hot house.  For this year I’m going to just use 6 mil vapour barrier poly.  It’s a cheap solution that should work.  You hear warnings about the poly turning yellow and going brittle because it’s not rated for UV but from past experience you can definetly get at least one season.

pepper plants again

Hopefully the hot house becomes functional shortly because the pepper plants I started were ready for transplanting last week and I need more space if I transplant them into larger pots.

The tomato plants and eggplants were started last week and have now germinated.  The heirloom Brandywine tomatoes definitely had more irregularity in germination then the hybrids.

Plotting the Plot

April 7th, 2009

early spring garden

The snow is slowly disappearing from the garden.  Getting to the back of the land where the garden is still requires some effort.  The driveway is wet clay and some low lying spots on the trail are little lakes.  The bees survived the winter and were out at one hive, I’m not sure about the other three (although there was signs of activity, just no bees out).  At the garden the eight 100 foot x 50 foot plots were measured out with even some room to spare within the fence.

seed trays

It was also the weekend to start tomatoes and eggplants.  I planted a couple of different varieties but the majority are the Brandywine Heirloom tomatoe.  Apparently not the greatest looking tomatoe but a taste that almost can’t be beat.

The pepper plants I started a couple of weeks ago continue to grow.  I’m a little worried that the pepper plants will get to large before I have a chance to repot them and put them outside in the hot house (which is currently in the construction phase).