Plant Sale

Given my seedling die-off and, on advice from mom, I decided to check out a few plant sales yesterday and today to buy some seedlings. I still object to this, because I want to grow things from seeds and buying young plants feels like cheating, but I want tomatoes and peppers and this might be the best way to get them, at least until I get better about starting plants from seeds.

Apparently these sales are quite a big deal, but I just randomly found them on craigslist. Yesterday (Friday) I went to a sale at one of the local Austin schools. I can't find a link to it, but it turned out to be pretty small- it was basically a vocational thing. I bought a habanero seedling and a jalapeno seedling.

UPDATE (March 8): I misremembered...I bought a Habanero seedling and a Cherry Bomb pepper seedling.

Today I went to a much bigger sale, at Sunshine Community Gardens. I showed up towards the end of the day, but the amount of peppers and tomatoes they had were massive (you can see a sample by clicking on the list at the above link). I bought two "new big dwarf" tomatoes, which I figure I'll grow outside in containers, not in the garden. I also bought a sweet pickling pepper, an Anaheim, and a "mucho nacho" jalapeno.

So here the new setup of the growing tray:

My grand champion cherry tomato is still totally dominant (its a good 6 inches tall and pretty bushy), and the black krim are coming up nice (bottom row, second from left). I am also getting some action on the other new varieties I planted a little bit ago, so hopefully that will continue.

Two "master gardeners" from the extension office had a table and I asked one of them what was going on with my seedlings. He told me that it sounded like the soil could be too dry or too wet. Big help (I'm being sarcastic). He also said that the grow light should be as close to the plants as possible, which I was confused about (I'm serious). He also told me that the extension service has an email address where you can send pictures and descriptions of your problems and experts can try to answer, which might be more promising.

Early Starters

Before I get to the dirt, I've got something a little more interesting. I figure on roughly two waves of planting: late January and early March. I'll do the January plantings this weekend and post about it in a week and a half or so. However some of the veggies (the peppers and tomatoes) need to be started indoors and transplanted into the garden when they are a couple of months old, in March. As of right now, I am starting:

• Habanero pepper
• Jalapeno pepper
  
• Bell pepper
• An Anaheim-type pepper
• Hungarian wax pepper
• Pepperoncini pepper
  
• Roma Tomatoes
• Beefsteak Tomatoes
• Cherry Tomatoes

I bought a simple Rubbermaid 24 x 12 shallow container to hold the trays. I planted the seeds in peat strips which will decompose when planted (50 individual pots in 10-pot trays). Each 5 pot strip held one type of plant, in Ladybug Seed Starter mix, which you can see labeled on the side of the container:

This is about 2 weeks after planting. All the tomatoes have sprouted, just now the peppers, especially the Habanero, are coming up.

I also bought a grow light rig (which I am quite happy with) so I can make sure the seedlings are getting the correct amount of light:

Pepperoncinis are in the regular pot

I try to give them about 10 hours of artificial, direct sunlight daily. I keep the soil fairly most with a spray bottle. Shortly after I took the above picture, I began to snip the seedlings so that only the strongest-looking one survives in each pot. Then I will choose the strongest looking plant of the 5 pot strip to put in the garden. I will give the weaklings to friends to plant. pwn3d.