The greenhouse

We are already starting to pot up seedlings.  Several trays of broccoli are sitting there, roots free to expand in the larger pots, reaching for the sun that has FINALLY shown for the past few days.  I'm offering them at my Purple Porch Co-op next week.  Plenty of people will be happy to nurse along a little four-pack of broccoli plants until they can be put in the ground in a few weeks.  Broccoli is such a prolific plant!  And so long as you pick, it will continue to bear, a real work horse.  So that four-pack will probably provide enough broccoli for the average family of four for the whole summer.  What a bargain!

Today is a fruit day on my biodynamic calendar, so it is time to start planting tomato seeds.  And peas.  I bought these nifty pea seeds that make a fat little plant that can sit in a flower pot in the house near a sunny window.  It will produce peas for picking and eating as you walk by the plant.  Yum!!

But the tomatoes and hot peppers are my babies.  They are the ones I love to grow and raise and eat fresh and can.  This year I am growing 67 varieties of heirloom tomatoes.  Last year I ran out of nearly all of my red tomatoes.  I get carried away with black ones and orange ones and green ones and striped ones.  I just love them!  Not so much with my customers, so I've added several new reds to the line-up, including three new red cherry tomatoes.  To my taste buds, there is no better cherry tomato than Snow White, but I guess most people associate cherry tomatoes with, well, cherry RED.

As for the hot peppers, I'm growing 20 different varieties this year.  Again, I ran out of hot peppers last year, accidentally selling a tray of them that I had set aside for myself.  I ended up with only one jalapeno plant.  And because I cannot put anything but organic plants into my garden, I just had to do without.  Needless to say, there are going to be many trays of jalapeno plants for sale this year, and my plants are going to be better marked!

Well, it's a busy day today, so I had better get on with it.  Time to let out the hens and Buster.  They are enjoying this warmer weather and having the snow gone.  They are venturing far out into the pastures, and the egg production is up - undoubtedly a combination of longer days and more worms.