Long time no see...It's gardening time!!

Sorry about not posting anything in awhile but waterfowl season is over now soooo on to gardening!!!
 I have been doing some seed starting I promise I'm not sitting on my fanny eating cake and ice cream which really doesn't sound to bad right now.  I even have pictures to prove it..

These are some tomato seeds I winter sowed the first week of January we had a record snow fall and then started having pretty warm weather so they started sprouting a little early and I freaked out and grabbed anything that held dirt to plant them in I have never had my winter sown tomato seeds sprout this early.

These are how the tomato seeds started.

This is them now.

and more pictures of them now

here are the winter sown tomato seeds this morning (March 13th) when I took them out of the cold frame.  I'm leaving them in the cold frame and just covering the cold frame with an old blanket if it gets to cold at night.

  My pepper seedlings are pretty pampered they get to stay in under warm lights with a fan moving the air around and they get taken outside when it is around 70 degrees which we have had a few of those days.  They are getting a little leggy but I think they will be okay.

This is how the pepper seeds started out.

This is them now.

so basically I treat my tomato seedlings like my red-headed step-kids, all my seedlings get watered with real weak chamomile tea to help prevent damping off.
  I also started my sweet potatoes inside on March 7th. I have a real technical way I do this so I thought I would post a picture to go with the instructions on how I start my sweet potatoes. 1. Get a sweet potato.  2. Get a container and put dirt in it. 3. Stick the sweet potato in the dirt.  I'm so high tech it is scary.....

 

I keep the sweet potatoes in a warm place in the house until they start sprouting (which are the sweet potato slips)  then start moving them outside when the weather gets nice and warm to start hardening them off.  When the sprouts (slips) get about 4 inches long you can brake them off and plant them in the garden or in a  container I try to get mine planted out around June 1st.  Sweet potatoes are a tropical plant so they like it hot and they are drought resistant and really a trouble free plant to grow.  I grow them in the garden by making hills with compost or in a container of compost I have planted them in the garden and in containers and get good results both ways.  When you dig them up remember not to move them around to much because the more your sweet potatoes are moved around in storage the sugar in them starts to turn to starch and they won't be as sweet.  If you love sweet potatoes you should really try to grow your own the flavor is so much better than store bought.  Here is a really cool video by Our Engineered Garden.  Here is a good  article in "The Current" about growing sweet potatoes.

Thanks for reading,

Jeana

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