neotoma

I plugged in my seedling heating mat and rehydrated some coconut fiber jiffy pots today. I started four each of:

• Fish peppers


• Mortgage Lifter tomatoes


• Purple tomatillos


• Sweet Chocolate bell peppers


• Homestead 24 tomatoes


• Cisineros Grande tomatillos

I have more seeds for more cultivars, but I do want to get seeds for Buena Mulata hot peppers and Abraham Lincoln tomatoes before I get more trays of jiffy pots set up.

Today I started more seeds in my little seed-starting set up.

Queen of Malinalco garden berry (it's tomatillo-adjacent Solanaceae)
Aji Charapita hot pepper
Succotash bean
Buena Mulata chile
Naranjilla (now that I've actually had lulo agua fresca, I definitely want more of these)
Spacemaster Cucumber

If evertyhing germinates and makes it to the transpant seedling stage, I may have to give some of these away. But that's a worry for another day.

The first of the seed catalogs arrived today. Southern Exposure Seed Savers Exchange. I'm tempted by the Abraham Lincoln tomatoes, as I've grown them before and they are excellent slicers. I really need a bigger garden for corn, but I had fun with the Oaxacan green corn I grew this summer.

Orange cox pippin and artlet apples, bartlett pears, hardy kiwis, duck lip asian pears, buena mulata chiles, pawpaws, sweet pepper and onion chevre, salted caramel baklava, chocolate olive oil cake, Greek handpie, ravioli, gemini, and lamb ragu.

I went to Benhke's Nursery for the orchid clinic, and I'm pleased to says Pinky, Inky, Blinky, and Clyde are all doing splendidly and just needed repotting into bigger pots and a change of their rooting medium.

And it is the first day of the 227th year of the Revolution!

Got home today and when I went to water my plants, discovered someone had stolen at least one of my pots...

and done so by clumsily dumping the strawberry plant that was in that pot to another pot.

I'm baffled and annoyed. Who *does* that?

Leeks, white onions, chicken empanadas, tamales del elote, 3 quarts strawberries, 1 quart sweet cherries, a pint of blueberries.

Plants: malabar spinach, fringed lavender, Jamacian broadleaf thyme, lemon verbena, and a moonflower thrown in free.

Quart of Mocha Moo, quart of berry smoothie, cheese curds, pink lady apples, asparagus, sandwich steak, loaf of struan bread, garlic scapes, spinach, a potted spearmint, tiropita, pita, feta cheese with greek spices, lemon poppyseed olive oil cake, galactoboreko,

Spent an hour and half this morning turning over one of the flower beds and planting all my hot peppers (NuMex Joe Parker, Anaheim, aji chapparita, pasilla, poblano, shishito, buena mulata, fish), the two bell peppers I picked up at MDSW (Islander cultivar, a purple bell), both tomatillos, the Red Robin dwarf cherry tomatoes, and the sunflowers. The tomatillos and the mammoth sunflower got cages. Repotted the cotton plants in larger containers, and repotted most of the smaller potted herbs into larger pots as well.

Planted three pots each of Oaxacan green corn, Atomic Orange corn(a dent corn and a flint corn), and Trail of Tears black beans, and two pots of Candy Roaster Squash. The plan is to transplant them to the flowerbed with the mint after the groundskeepers whacked it back -- hopefully the squash will smother the mint infestation and I'll have a kind of milpa this summer.

I harvested two of the candy roaster squash today -- on was 8lb and the other was 13.5lb.

Someone stole the third one out of the garden sometime in the last week -- so I have a terrible neighbor, somewhere.

The table gold acorn squash are progressing well. I might harvest one of those soon as well.

I planted my three hardy kiwi plants in pots today. As they arrived as four inch tall plugs, I figure they could use the time to grow a bit. I also planted za'atar (Syrian oregano), Provencal lavender, 2 pink-flowered strawberries, a red snapdragon, spearmint, and an Italian oregano in pots.

I was going to plant some of the hot peppers, so I weeded out the larkspur which is everywhere in the one bed -- at first I was hoping it was carrots, but it's definitely larkspur and while it was nicely shading out the mint some idiot planted in the ground years ago, I don't want larkspur when I could have vegetables. And piling the pulled larkspur plants on the mint makes a good sunblock, so maybe that will help control the mint for a while, too.

However, I can't find my trowel, at least not this early in the morning. I'm going to clean off -- transplanting pots gets you covered in potting soil -- and look for it again.

At the very least, the day is comparatively cool and a bit overcast, with rain promised this evening. I've set out most of the seedlings. I want to put in the ground out in the approximate places I want to put them, to get them acclimated on a not-brutal day. I'll plant them today or tomorrow, even if I have to buy a new trowel to do so.

And at the very end, I was scattering bone meal and blood meal among the plants in pots and in the ground, and one of my neighbor's French bulldog puppy was very enthusiastic about investigating what I was doing. It probably smelled wonderfully disgusting to him.

Planted the sunflowers, bell peppers, thyme, lavender, and rosemary today.

Repotted a mini-rose I picked up at the grocery that needed rescuing. It may not survive, but it's still better off than it was. Potted the Atilla strawberry seedlings -- they're still teensy, and might not make the transition.

Thinking about planting melons, beans, and more corn when I get back from my trip. It might be hot enough by then.