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HillBilly Jeff's 2016 Slimmed Down Grow

Just threw together some numbers and it looks like my entire pepper grow this season will be 72 plants.  One tray.  I think I can get them all in the raised beds.  Not sure if I will do them all in the raised beds, but I think I can.  
 
I have a lot of peppers still in the freezer.  I have enough sauce.  I have a lot of powder.  I just need some fresh peppers to grow through summer.  
 
I will be hitting tomatoes harder this year though.  I have a lot of tomatoes I want to can.  
 
I will try to get my preliminary list up tomorrow.
 
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Reaper are finally popping and I have a manzano hook.  Peach Ghost is up as well.  The only ones I can recall not popping are the choc and red douglah, which I planted to see what all would pop, the white hab, yellow hab and yellow ghost.  
 
This is the very last time I plant all seeds in one pot as an emergency "hope I get something" plan.  I hate thinning and saving three or four from one pot is hard on the plants.  I haven't lost any doing this, but it increases the workload and isn't good on the plants.  Might put two or three per pot, but will thin those.
 
Definitely seed saving season.
 
I am done repotting peppers.  Everything is in their own container except a few of the "strongest will survive" or "the better looking of the two" pots.  I was having tons of trouble getting my reapers to come up.  Now if everyone of the ones survive that I just repotted, I'll have 8.  
 
The only pepper that I had planned to grow that didn't come up was the yellow ghost.  I guess I will need to do a SFRB pod exchange this year :)  
 
Thank goodness I am late with peppers this season....I don't know where I'd fit them all if I have to pot up to 1 gallon pots.  
 
6 weeks and they will be hardening off.
 
April 1 the tomato seeds will hit the dirt.  Hoping they don't end up 3 feet tall like they normally do.  Once they germ, they go out to room temp.  I want shorter sturdier plants.
 
Last weekend I made it out to the Illinois river and scored a limit of sauger.  Sort of makes me wish I started fishing there years ago!!!  What a fishery.
 
 
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Devv said:
When's dirt day?
 
Pics, we need pics Jeff ;)  At least I do...LOL
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Dirt day will be third week in May.  Once I could have planted out May 1st and been fine, but its hard to unplant that many plants lol.  Too much of a pain to cover that many in garden as well.  So I play it safe.  
 
I'm sure I can do my raised beds sooner since I do have covers for those, but that's a bit of a pain to open up to cool them down if they get too hot.  Especially if I'm not here.
 
How are you surviving your weather???
 
HillBilly Jeff said:
Dirt day will be third week in May.  Once I could have planted out May 1st and been fine, but its hard to unplant that many plants lol.  Too much of a pain to cover that many in garden as well.  So I play it safe.  
 
I'm sure I can do my raised beds sooner since I do have covers for those, but that's a bit of a pain to open up to cool them down if they get too hot.  Especially if I'm not here.
 
How are you surviving your weather???
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 So far we're good, no hail, but my son's car got trashed, he's about 90 minutes from us in Seguin. San Antonio (north) was hammered by baseball hail the other night. And the next few days are going to be dicey, We're usually out of the hail loop, except for last year. First real hail in 27 years. I guess life on the high ridge helps ;)
 
The hoops and raised beds look great!
 
Devv said:
 So far we're good, no hail, but my son's car got trashed, he's about 90 minutes from us in Seguin. San Antonio (north) was hammered by baseball hail the other night. And the next few days are going to be dicey, We're usually out of the hail loop, except for last year. First real hail in 27 years. I guess life on the high ridge helps ;)
 
The hoops and raised beds look great!
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Well I hope Dixondale got missed.  My onions come from them.
 
HillBilly Jeff said:
Tomato seeds are hitting the dirt tomorrow.  Planning on 72 plants, but a few are extra.
 
Campari
Mortage Lifter
Super Sauce
Big Mama
Sun Sugar
Debut
Gold Slicer
Better Boy
Box Car Willie
Choc Cherry
Opalka
Amish Paste
Giallo De Summer
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Not sure if I mentioned it, but my tomatoes was a 100% germ rate.
Only broke two pepper plants so far this year.  One when moving them outside and today I noticed one was broke off when I moved them to the beds.  No accidents with the lights this season which is a first.
 
HillBilly Jeff said:
Not sure if I mentioned it, but my tomatoes was a 100% germ rate.Only broke two pepper plants so far this year.  One when moving them outside and today I noticed one was broke off when I moved them to the beds.  No accidents with the lights this season which is a first.
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Looks great Jeff. Thanks for the pics.

If I remember right, I think you have a bunch of wild berries out on your property. When do they harvest?

Did you go turkey hunting?
 
OCD Chilehead said:
Looks great Jeff. Thanks for the pics.

If I remember right, I think you have a bunch of wild berries out on your property. When do they harvest?

Did you go turkey hunting?
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Yes, lots of wild berries.  June is the raspberry harvest time.  Trouble with the black raspberry plants is they get diseased after time.  That's why there isn't much market for them, hard to keep going.  My older patches are on the downhill slide.  I do have newer patches coming on, so I should be able to make my jelly, desserts, juice, and perhaps a hot sauce???
 
July the blackberry and dewberry will be coming on.  If we get some rain.  There are some wild low bush blue berry patches, but they are a pain and they're small.
 
September the elderberry will be ready to go.  Awesome jelly.  Best ever.
 
I did go turkey hunting.
 
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This guy strutted for about a half a mile before he got into range.  Probably more like a 1/4 mile, but he'd strut for a few minutes, take two steps, gobble, then strut for a few more minutes.  Took seven days to finally get in front of this boy.  Just over 24 pounds with an 11 inch beard.
 
 
Raised beds showed no sign of transplant shock or sun burn.  Liking this shade cloth.
 
 
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Sweets and milds along with some volunteer potatoes I put in a row this morning.
 
 
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Had a couple hoses go bad on me.  I believe I will switch the raised beds over to drip irrigation next year.  In front of the back garden I am thinking about putting in a bigger raised bed for herbs and the other half for strawberries.  The current strawberry raised bed will be made into onions or perhaps peppers if the onion idea doesn't look like it will work.
Volunteer potato and onion in the compost pile.
 
 
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