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Welcome to my personal blog. I have another blog, Herbert's Place, but that one limits me to what I sometimes want to publish, because it is mainly used to promote my books. As it says in the header, I want to use this blog to write about things that have nothing to do with my books. There is no real theme here. I'll be writing about anything that causes me to either be happy or somethings that concerns me. It could be political, travel, a hobby, or anything else. So come and visit me sometimes.

Monday, June 4, 2012

Tomatoes and Peppers

I finished transplanting my tomatoes on Friday. All 42 of them. I went a little overboard with my tomatoes and peppers. I planted the peppers on Wednesday last week. 109 plants. The problem is I seeded a bunch of tomatoes and peppers into small containers and they developed and grew. I planted all of the peppers (I bought 66 and the others are my own.) I probably bought about 30 tomatoes, they were quite reasonable pricewise and I couldn't resist. I just couldn't throw away any of the ones I seeded myself, so I planted tomatoes wherever I found an empty spot in the garden.
This year I'm way ahead of other years. The lettuce, beets, carrots, corn, Swiss Chard, and most of the other vegetables I seeded a couple of weeks ago have sprouted and are growing nicely. The weather has been good, today it was quite hot and I watered everything. The plants look good.
If everything goes well, I should be eating fresh radishes in about 3 weeks. I should have plenty of lettuce and all kinds of tomatoes and peppers. That's okay, because we love them. We make salsa and pepper sauce. The pepper sauce is a recipe we got from my mother. You need peppers and tomatoes for that.
I grow some hot Hungarian peppers to make the salsa and the pepper sauce a bit more spicy. I don't grow any chili peppers. I did last year and they were so hot I gave them away to people who like hot peppers. The Hungarian ones are hot enough.
My soil is good this year. I mixed plenty of dried sheep manure into the soil and also fertilizer. In April I tilled a bag of clay buster and 2 large bags of Alfalfa pellets into the garden. Last fall I also tilled in a thick blanket of leaves. This year my soil is nice and fluffy. I should have a good crop. I also mulched my tomatoes with dried grass to avoid the soil splashing against the leaves when it rains. It should keep the blight away...I hope. It also keeps the soil from drying out too soon. I put cages over all of my tomatoes. I've been doing that for years and it works for me. Some people stake their tomatoes but I find cages are easier to work with. I wrapped the whole row of tomato cages with plastic sheeting to protect the newly planted tomatoes from high winds. I did the same thing with my peppers. They need warmth and the plastic does the trick. Later one, when all of the plants are tall and established, I remove the plastic.
Now I can relax a bit and pray we get some gently rain regularly, no heavy downpours, no hail, no high winds, no scorching heat waves. I know that is wishful thinking, but one can hope.

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