I didn’t write anything last week. There wasn’t much to write about. We were still enjoying winter in May. Everything outside was completely dead. The plants inside were running out of room, nutrients, space, light, etc. It wasn’t fun. Luckily, the weather improved. I’m feeling much more confident about planting things outside now. I’m guessing we may still get another freeze, but we can deal with it if it happens.

I want to put a plug in for two of my favorite tools that saved us lots of time and energy today. First, our Honda FG-110 mini tiller. Second, my pitchfork. My peas have started coming up, but so had a bunch of weeds between the rows of peas. In just a few seconds with the mini tiller, the weeds were gone. I never had to bend down and pick a single one… magic. We used the pitchfork to turn over the raised beds in the garden… most notably, where the tomatoes and peppers had frozen just a few short weeks ago. The pitchfork is also the best tool for turning the compost pile. I don’t think I could garden without it.

Today we planted a whole bunch of stuff outside. Tomatoes, Peppers, Tomatillos, Eggplant, and Squash. We picked up a roll of black cloth that we put down over the raised beds, then cut holes at various spots in the cloth where we planted our plants. Hopefully this will help keep the weeds at bay, and also stimulate root growth of our plants. Hopefully it won’t get so hot that all the plants die. We haven’t had much luck with our experiments thus far, but I’m hopeful this one will turn out well.

Despite having 7 of the raised beds planted, we still have a lot of plants growing in trays. It’s time to start giving the plants away.

Well, it looks like it was a little too early to be moving things outside. We’ve had 4 or 5 inches of snow this week. Although the low temperatures were hovering in the mid-40s, they have regressed to the high-20s. It’s been as cold as 25 degrees this week, and they’re predicting more cold and snow this week. Somebody needs to tell mother nature that it’s May, not March.

None of the potatoes or peas have sprouted outside yet. We didn’t cover the broccoli, cauliflower, or onions, but they all seem to be doing fine.

The covers we placed over the tomatoes, peppers, and squash claim to protect crops down to 29 degrees. It’s been below 29 degrees every day this week. I’m pretty sure the squash are a complete loss, and it looks like the tomatoes are at least 75% gone as well. The peppers seem to be fine, other than the damage they have taken from the cover rubbing against them in the wind. Maybe it would have been better to not cover the peppers at all. We’ll never know.

Everything is continuing to grow and need more room to expand. We’re going to be forced to move even more plants outside this week, so let’s hope it stops snowing sooner than later.

We’re also starting to plant seeds for other stuff that doesn’t take as long to get going. We planted Armenian Cucumbers (a melon that looks and tastes like cucumber), Cucumber, more Cherokee Purple Tomatoes, and a bunch of pumpkins. Now we just need it to warm up!

Despite the recent snow, and the threat of more snow in the next few days, we decided to start planting things outside. We figure we can cover them a week or two to protect against frost. But seriously, why are we still getting frost when it’s almost May?!? But I digress.

After I uploaded the photos to the computer today, I clicked on the “Last 12 Months” short cut in iPhoto to see how this year’s garden is shaping up compared to last year’s garden. I was amazed at the difference. I guess those Master Gardener classes Charmaine took last fall are really paying off!

Planted outside this week:
16 Roma Tomatoes
18 Jalapeno Peppers
6 Squash
Broccoli and Cauliflower
Onions (from seed)
Beets (from seed)

It suddenly turned warm this week, and we found ourselves planting peas and potatoes. We planted 2 beds of potatoes and a few short rows of peas. After planting 6 rows of peas, I wasn’t able to tell which bag of peas I had used… it’s clear to me that we bought way too many peas (seems the cashier at IFA was right). We tilled two of the raised beds from last year to plant the potatoes.

At a certain point, when you’re hobby grows to a certain size, you have to ask yourself, “is this still a hobby?” I’m not really sure anymore. We were in Herriman for a birthday party, so we hit the Home Depot there… and they still had our favorite shop lights in stock, so we picked up 4 more. We have 16 (sixteen!) shop lights hanging from our racks. I don’t think we’ll need any more.

I decided to do a full count of what’s growing this week:

Large pots:
33 Roma Tomatoes
24 Jalapeno Peppers
18 Poblano Peppers
16 Cascabella Peppers
12 Banana Peppers
3 Winter Squash (pumpkins or banana)
2 Anaheim Peppers

Medium starter pouches:
21 Sweet Red Peppers
21 Tomatillos
20 Brandywine Tomatoes
19 Big Boy Tomatoes
18 Orange Sun Peppers
12 Sweet 100 Tomatoes
12 Big Jim Peppers
11 Habanero Red Peppers
11 Hungarian Wax Peppers
10 Big Bertha Peppers
10 Jalapeno Peppers
10 Peperoncinis
10 California Wonder Peppers
10 Cherokee Purple Tomatoes
9 Anaheim Peppers
7 Eggplants
6 Winter Squash (pumpkins or banana)
4 Poblano Peppers

Tiny sprout starter:
48 California Wonder Peppers
40 Anaheim Peppers
12 Jalapeno Peppers

We picked up 5 more shop lights this week. It’s amazing how much light that seed starting rack puts off now. I call it the artificial sun.

If that wasn’t enough, we stopped by IFA in Riverton today… $100 later, we’re planting even more seeds (and we have “all” the seeds we’ll need this year). Now I’m not only going to need more lights, but probably another whole rack when the seedlings get big enough to need a little more space.

So, today we planted:
24 Hungarian Yellow Wax Peppers
24 Big Jim Peppers
24 Tomatillos
24 Sweet Red Peppers
12 Eggplants (Ichiban Hybrid)
12 Big BerthaHybrid Peppers
12 Cherry Tomatoes
8 Spaghetti Squash
4 Banana Squash

And here’s what has sprouted:
22 Jalapeno Peppers
20 Big Boy Tomatoes
19 Brandywine Tomatoes
13 Orange Sun Peppers
12 Banana Peppers
11 Pepperoncinis
10 Cherokee Purple Tomatoes
9 Poblano Peppers
4 Anaheim Peppers
3 Habanero Peppers
1 California Wonder Pepper

Still nothing has sprouted from the crappy Jiffy soil. Isn’t that just pathetic? That’s 288 seeds that probably won’t sprout. The lack of sprouts in the Jiffy soil probably played a large role in convincing us to buy more seeds and seed starters today. I’m still very frustrated with Jiffy.