Peppers

I planted 144 pepper plants today. I bought 60 plants, the rest I seeded into small containers at  the end of February. Once they sprouted, I kept them in our sunroom on a shelf. Because of the cold I had to take them into the house every night, but now I found out if you want the stems to get thick and not too spindly it is a good idea to keep the plants cool at night. That will stunt them but make the roots grow thicker in their pots. Mine were quite tall and thin. Mind you, pepper plants are like tomato plants. You want to plant them deeper. I removed the bottom leaves, dug a hole deeper than the rootball (about 5 inches deep) and planted the peppers. To protect them from cutworms I put a toothpick beside every plant. That way the cutworm cannot circle the stem and cut it off. I never had problems with cutworms before, but a couple of years ago I lost 4 plants to them. I always put collars made from newspaper around my tomato plants for the same reason. That works quite well. I'll be planting my tomatoes Thursday. Then I'm almost done with my garden. I'm late this year because of the cold weather and the rain we've had. My lettuce and the radishes are already sprouting.

144 pepper plants protected by a strip of plastic

A toothpick beside the stem to protect from cutworms