I planted 4 tomato plants today. These are from the seeds I started 30 days ago. I get some criticism from folks online that tell me I’m planting too early. I know! But I like to plant some plants out early. Most years, I it works in my favor because by the time the “acceptable date to plant tomatoes” is here, I already have a nice big plant that has fruit on it. I use the “walls of water” towers to allow the plant to survive and thrive in colder weather.
I planted a few things in the front raised beds toda.
Varieties of Pea:
Varieties of Radish:
Beet Variety: Detroit Dark Red, Medium top
Varieties of Turnip:
Varieties of Greens:
Varieties of Carrot:
I sampled soil from some of my raised beds with old, established soil that I’ve been adding compost to for years and also from my backyard tilled garden. I was a bit surprised to see the results were this good. I expected to need nitrogen because every soil test shows you need nitrogen. What I was most impressed with is my high organic matter percentages. Most farmland is under 5% with 1% being pretty typical.
I managed to get the backyard garden area tilled today. This is about a 40′ x 60′ area where I’ve been moving in lots of topsoil from other parts of the yard for several years now. Last spring I filled the rows with wood chips, and I vacuumed up a lot of leaves and piled that up, and added soiled chicken bedding material too– all that material is now tilled into the soil. My goal is to keep adding lots and lots of carbon to increase the organic mater content and improve the soil over time, even though I till it each year. I’ll let it sit like this until late March, then I’ll hill it up and plant in it. I think I’m going to get plastic weed block this year, because I was not able to keep up with the grassy weeds last year. This is the first year I was able to till the area without breaking a sheer pin on my tiller machine, so I think the soil is getting looser.
I like using drip tape. It does a good job, it is low cost, reconfigurable, and reusable. A problem is how to roll it back up for storage after the growing season. It is like toothpaste, once you take it off the factory roll, it is just a mess that will never be organized again! I decided to make a tool to use on a drill that will help. The first generation of the tool didn’t work that great and is now in the trash bin. I broke out the welder to create version 2. I took an old allen wrench and welded a bolt to it. I use a wingnut to secure a second wooden circle to make a temporary spool. Then I tightly hold the drip tape as I run the drill and in about 60 seconds I have it all on the spool. If I used the correct amount of pressure, removal is pretty easy, use a Velcro strap to hold it in place and I’m done!
I seeded 36 tomato plants. I made a shallow row in a 1020 tray of potting soil and placed 6 seeds in each row. I place the tray on a heat mat and plug the heat mat into a temperature controller. Varieties are:
The peppers and tomatoes I seeded a few weeks ago were transplanted into 2″ pots and moved under grow lights.
I set up the seed-starting equipment today: a set of wire shelves, 2 100W LED grow lights, a heating pad, a temperature-controlled switch for the heat pad, and a timer switch for the grow lights. I filled one 1020 tray with potting mix (Pro-Mix BX) and planted 11 rows of seeds w/ about 6 seeds in each row.
Varieties of Pepper:
I also planted
I ordered 4 bunches of onions from the Texas-based Dixondale farms, which are known for having excellent quality onions. I was impressed with how fresh the plants looked.
It took 4+ raised beds of space to get them all planted. I can’t wait to see how well these do.
The varieties I picked are
I harvested all the remaining jalapenos this afternoon. Many were not big in size but the volume of peppers was big. I filled up 3 large containers. I have 3 varieties, TAM, mild, and regular.
I’m going to make fermented Louisiana hot sauce out of these. I filled a half gallon jar with green ones. I think I’ll do one jar of only red peppers. And I think I’ll try to roast some on the smoker for another batch.
UPDATE: (11/9/25)
I separated out all the red jalapeño peppers, and added in the Red Corno Di Toro and one or Two of the sweet bells that were red, next I chopped them up and removed most of the seeds, and packed a quart jar with salt brine (5%) using distilled water. I’ll let it sit for 2 weeks to ferment then blend it and mix with vinegar to make hot sauce.
I chopped up 8 pints of smaller jalapeños packed into canning jars, and pickled them. I used a combination of white and apple cider vinegar, and added some honey, garlic, salt, black pepper, and oregano for the brine to make it special.
I couldn’t leave it alone! I want the new blackberries to do well, and it bothered me that the oak tree 50ft away was stealing nutrients from my raised beds. So I started digging. Glad I did, more roots than I imagined. The pic shows the trench I dug to break the roots. I have to go back and cut back the roots seen here so I can install root barrier
some of the roots were almost 2 inches in diameter.
this is the root barrier I’m going to use.
most interesting to me is the amount of energy the tree uses to grow horizontal roots near the surface. I would think growing roots deeper would be beneficial, but the tree chooses to burrow under concrete more than burrow down. I didn’t find any root below about 12″ of depth.