Sorry about the lack of posts; I will try to one update to cover the last few days and then will start posting daily again.

Last week we worked on fertilizing the peach trees; there are tons of tiny peaches on them which means that we need to thin the fruit.

We also worked on the electric fence last week. Pretty soon it will be difficult for the deer to get into the crops and do damage (at least we hope so.)

Since it was rainy last week, we did more transplanting:

Tomatoes:

• Big Beef

Peppers:

• Giant Marconi – an 8 inch long Italian type sweet pepper
• Telica – a large jalapeno
• Bianca – an ivory bell pepper
• Vivaldi – a bell pepper
• Mandarin – an orange sweet bell pepper
• Ariane – an orange sweet bell pepper

Eggplant:

• Zebra – a purple and white variegated eggplant
• Hansel – a deep purple finger shaped eggplant
• Millionaire
• Machiaw – an Asian type eggplant up to twelve inches long and slender
• Vittoria – a purple eggplant

The crew spent a lot of time today (since it was cold and damp) working on the tomato and pepper transplants. Here is a summary of what was done today:

TOMATO (most of the these I have described in previous posts, I will describe only the new ones)

• Super Marzano
• Aunt Gertie’s Gold
• The Secret Magicland Farms Tomato
• Mountain Spring
• 4th of July – This is an extra early tomato (the name implying how early they are). We are crossing our fingers that we can get some really early tomatoes this year. They are getting quite large so we planted them in large pots until we can get them in the field.
• Cherokee – a purple tomato with a sweet rich flavor.
• Amish Paste – an heirloom paste variety
• Pruden’s Purple – an heirloom variety similar to Brandywine
• Aunt Ginny
• Green Zebra
• Virginia Sweet
• Razzle Dazzle – a Burpee variety with deep raspberry color, not quite red and not quite pink.
• Rocky

PEPPERS

• Lantern – a top quality sweet pepper from Holland (new for us)
• Colossal – a bell pepper
• King Arthur – a bell pepper
• Tula – a Jalapeno variety
• Grande – an extra large Jalapeno
• Ancho Villa – an ancho/poblano type pepper

Today, the crew worked on transplanting peppers from seed flats to peat pots.

The varieties worked on were:

• King Arthur (a green bell pepper)
• Mavras (a purple bell pepper)
• Gold Crown (a yellow bell pepper)
• Sweet Pimiento
• Red Knight (a red bell pepper)
• Giant Marconi (a green tapered pepper about 6-8 inches long)
• Ihlara (a banana pepper)
• Big Early (a green bell pepper)
• Ariane (an orange bell pepper)

Yesterday more transplanting from seed flats to peat pots was completed. The varieties we transplanted were: Our super secret variety, Super Marzano (a paste tomato), Estiva (a new one for us), Mortgage Lifter (a great tasting heirloom), Pink Beauty (another new one for us) and Ultra Sweet (a red beefsteak, new for us).

It was way too rainy to even think about doing field work so we concentrated on transplanting tomatoes from seed flats to peat pots. The following varieties were worked on today:

These ones we have tried

• Our secret delectable Magicland Farms variety
• Aunt Gertie’s Gold – a heirloom variety that produces very tasty tomatoes

These are new varieties for us

• Stump O’ the World – a large pink heirloom
• Delicious – developed by Burpee from their Beefsteak tomato
• Rocky – a heirloom paste or sauce tomato
• Virginia Sweets – an heirloom gold/red bicolor tomato
• Giant Belgium – a large dark pink heirloom variety
• Aunt Ginny’s – a purple heirloom variety

We also transplanted some eggplant:

• Primetime
• Cloud Nine – a white eggplant
• Vittoria
• Night Shadow
• Nadia