Our Edible Landscape

Is it really winter? I cannot believe that we are in January and the temperatures are in the upper 70’s! We have only had one freeze the entire month and my winter garden is a bit confused. Don’t get me wrong- I like warm weather. I just don’t like it when I think of all my fruit trees and bushes that need those chilling hours to produce the juicy fruits we love to eat fresh in the summer and plan to save for making pies and cobblers in the winter. This would have been the first year for apples and pears at my house, but I fear we may not get any for another year. I know that I will be inundated with them in future years, but the wait for those first fruits just about drives me crazy. Fortunately, I have other fruiting trees that do not need chilling hours and are producing enough to distract me.

Normally at this time of year, we are approaching the coldest time for us. This is the time when I prefer to not have to go outside and seed more radishes, carrots, or peas. It is the time for starting seeds inside my warm home. The plants from these seeds are destined to be transplanted after the last frost has come and gone somewhere around March 15th. Starting seeds indoors is always a lot of fun for me. Over the years, I have fine-tuned my methods, but it never fails, every year I always learn new things from my mistakes.

Last year, I had seeded a tray of several varieties of peppers in one of those modern seed starting set-ups with soil “sponges” inserted into Styrofoam holes. I had carefully charted the varieties using a grid system I had written on the Styrofoam block and balanced the tray on a windowsill in the kitchen. After a few days, most of the seeds had germinated and I was very excited. About two weeks into the process, someone who will not fess up, sent the tray flying across the kitchen. I heard the screams and looked up to see the sponges flying out of the block like escape pods and then bouncing in various places throughout the kitchen. The unlucky few that remained in the block were decapitated when it made its crash landing upside down on the floor. Being the caring parent of these poor pepper babies, I gingerly picked up the jettisoned sponges carrying their precious cargo and placed them back into the Styrofoam block. I was able to save 30 of the original 60, but now I didn’t know what their names were. I was plagued by questions such as which ones died and which ones lived? Are they hot or sweet varieties? How will I plant them in the garden? After some thought, I figured that once they started bearing fruit I could tell them apart. It would have been fine if I was only growing one type of Jalapeno or cayenne or tiny rainbow-colored pequin pepper. Alas, there were some that were a mystery until the frost claimed their lives in December.

By the way, after that fateful incident, we finally broke down and bought an indoor light garden set up for starting our seeds. Given the amount of use that it has gotten in the last year, I feel we made the right decision in buying it, but you certainly don’t need one to start seeds indoors. Just make sure your plants are not balanced on a ledge anywhere. It will save you from stress later…

May your peppers have less flight time than mine,
Tiffanie