Hello
2023 started of pretty mild here, the garden is full of Lamb's lettuce, chickweed and miner's lettuce.
Before christmas we had snow and it was freezing cold.

I sowed some hot peppers and eggplants on the 22nd of December, germination was quite low so far, 1/6 eggplants and 4/20 chilis.
I guess, I didn't pay enough attention to the temperature - our house get's kind of cold over night, as we're just heating with a woodstove (we just have a small solar panel, so a heatmat doesn't work)

Today I sowed the sweet peppers, some more chilis and two kinds of Dwarf tomatos (old seeds from 13 and 11 that I got recently)
For better germination I put the seed trays in a styrofoam
box with a hot water bottle that I change twice daily.
Did it last year like that, and it worked pretty well.

I also sowed two kinds of vegetableonions yesterday.

Most of the hot & sweet peppers are from the MMMSwap, thanks again to all participants and Tormato

Sweet peppers:
Ajvarski
Elephant's Ear
Franks
Gatherer's Gold
Holy Italian
Jimmy Nardello
King of the North
Ljubov Dlan
Ozark Gigant
Sirenevyi

Hot peppers:
Bell Chili (Bischofs crown?)
Espelette
Kashmiri Mirch
Pimentos
Pfefferoni Sigaretta
Prairie Spice
San Luis Ancho
Serrano
Sugar Rush peach stripey
Turkish chili

Tomatos:
Dwarf Wild Fred
Dwarf Champion Improved (EM Champion?)

I plan on around 50 tomato plants, that I'll sow in february. Not completly sure about the variaties yet, I'll wait for the MMMSwap Tomato letter and decide than.

I wish you all a great gardening year with lots of beautiful fruits & fun

I love the hot water bottle idea. Will definitely keep that in mind, if I can't run a heat mat any time.
You have some great peppers in your selection there.
Frank's is the earliest pepper we've grown.
Piment d'Esplette is a real taste treat. Quite a large plant and a bit late for us here, but memorable!

Good sweet pepper list! I recommend Gatherer's Gold. It's very productive here, and always gives me lots of beautiful golden peppers! I'll be growing Ajvarski again, and trying King of the North this season. Zupa is another good one.
Linda

Hey tomatolovers

Today was the major tomato sowing day
I sowed some dwarfs a while ago, I just like this little sturdy plants



My list for 2023

Aunt Ginny's purple
Berner Rose
Black Opal
Brandywine Cowlicks
Brandywine pink
Bulgarian Triumph
Carbon
Cherry falls
Daniel Burson
Dester
Dikovinka
Dwarf Champion Improved
Dwarf Firebird Sweet
Dwarf Rosella Crimson
Dwarf Tasmanian Chocolate
Dwarf Wild Fred
Earliana DT
Earl's Faux
Indian Stripe PL
Malachite Box
Nonna Antonia
Orange Russian 117
Paul Robeson
Pervaya Lyubov
Piennolo del Vesuvio
Pink Berkeley Tie Dye
Prue
Purple Cherokee
Regina DT
Rosovyi Myod
Sakhamyi Pudovichok
Schlesische Himbeere
Sergeant black pepper
Stump of the world


34 variaties Many from the swap & 80% will be new to me. I'm really looking forward to try all this praised tomatos.
I did 3 seeds of each variaty & I wanna have something like 50 plants in total.

Sunny greetings
Ina

Nice list

Your friends and neighbors should be happy.

Tomatina wrote: ↑Thu Feb 16, 2023 12:07 pm My list for 2023

Aunt Ginny's purple
Berner Rose
Black Opal
Brandywine Cowlicks
Brandywine pink
Bulgarian Triumph
Carbon
Cherry falls
Daniel Burson
Dester
Dikovinka
Dwarf Champion Improved
Dwarf Firebird Sweet
Dwarf Rosella Crimson
Dwarf Tasmanian Chocolate
Dwarf Wild Fred
Earliana DT
Earl's Faux
Indian Stripe PL
Malachite Box
Nonna Antonia
Orange Russian 117
Paul Robeson
Pervaya Lyubov
Piennolo del Vesuvio
Pink Berkeley Tie Dye
Prue
Purple Cherokee
Regina DT
Rosovyi Myod
Sakhamyi Pudovichok
Schlesische Himbeere
Sergeant black pepper
Stump of the world

Great selection, look forward to reading your grow notes!

Hey
Wow, I didn't realise, that my last post was when I started my tomatoes..
Well, they are grown up teeny tomatoes by now 58 of them, out in the wild East of Germany.

April and May were beautiful as always, nature awaking, flowers everywhere, birds, bees..paradise

Summer is on its way, sunny, no rain, 70-80 Fahrenheit, but the nighttemps are still quite low, some nights 40, mostly a bit more, but below 50. Quite unusual.

Some plants (most hot peppers, cucumber, melons, some pumkins) are still in the cozy greenhouse waiting for the constant magical 50+ at night. The eggplant queens are still enjoying the special treat of beeing carried in and out of the "normal" house daily.
Sure the greenhouse plants want the same service to harden of.

The tomatoes, squash, sweet peppers and pumkins got planted out on the 9th of May - back then the forecast looked promising..well, it didn't last.
So the big nightly cover/uncover game was started.
We have the plants all over the place, so it is alltogether quite a workout..

Our place looks quite special then - a pleasant mix of buckets, old blankets, plasticboxes, cardboard, plasticsheets - sprinkled with clips, stones and some rope, to keep the composition in place.

Next morning, the big removal of the delicate constructions...
And the tomatoes are not even included in the game, (no (sane) way I could cover all of them) but they are okay, not super duper happy with the cold, but they have at least a roof and most of them look really good for the conditions.

Well, as always with the garden, I keep learning and improving, next year I will do certain things differently.

ATM I feel super busy with keeping the gardens/properties in kind of a shape, weeding, mulching, watering, mowing, collecting snails, planting, sowing and so on..

Since weeks the forecast is postponing the warmer night temps a couple of days ahead..and than again and again..well, what to do..need to transplant the cucumbers and pumpkins, they are getting way to big for the pots.

Apart from the night temps everything is doing really well.

Dwarf Wild Fred is the first one to ripen, maybe a week to go (made the pic yesterday, it's more red by now




Franks is on the way to become my favorite new sweet pepper (of cause I will wait for the taste test)
I really like the compact growth and it is setting on quite a lot of fruit allready


These pics I made a week ago:

Pfefferoni Sigaretta - We tried the first fruit, still green, weeks ago, no heat at all, curious how it will taste when ripe


Prairie Spice - looking really forward to try it - I'm wondering if it is an american cross (?) cause it is unknown in Germany


I will write some more when the first tomatos is ready for tastetest:)

Hope you're all happy and well.
Sunny greetings
Ina

My Wild Fred seeds didn't get planted this year - I'm excited for you and your gorgeous Wild Fred.