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

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)

A lot of our time has been occupied with starting our tomatoes and peppers in the basement, using fluorescent lights, these past few weeks. Basically we start the seeds in seed flats and continue to transplant them to bigger peat pots as they grow until they are ready to be planted in the fields come May. The tomatoes destined for the High Tunnel will be planted sometime in late April, I believe.

We have a wood stove in the basement which we keep fired up to give the seeds the warmth they need to germinate and grow. Once the weather warms up, we begin to put them into our unheated outside greenhouse to give them the benefits of the sun.

As you can see from the pictures below (sorry about the poor lighting but it is the basement!), we have set up shelves and fluorescent lighting around the wood stove. The heat from the stove helps the seeds to germinate better.

And below is a picture of what results from the above process. A tiny plant that we hope will eventually give us lots of luscious tomatoes starting in July!