From seed to garden

My pepper and tomato plants are planted in the garden. In past posts I've shown the progression of seed germination to seedlings in packs. As the pepper plants matured I had to give them some room to grow. I discovered an effective way to allow them more room.

By taking three of the plants out of the six-pack and spacing them in another pack.

This method allows them room to mature. Some of the larger pepper seedlings needed even more room so those were transplanted to recycled yogurt cups. But the downside as you can see is it starts to crowd the grow center. Here's the peppers under the florescent lights taking up the space that the tomatoes will need.

So even though it was a cool spring, the peppers went out to the cold frame.

There was one evening that I had to put the milk-house heater in the cold frame to keep them warm. The recycled mustard bottle is my tool for watering each pepper plant. While the peppers grew in the cold frame, my tomatoes now went under the lights. Here's a picture of them along with some eggplant and basil seedlings.

Now in Minnesota the weather doesn't really settle until after Memorial Day. And this year the holiday was early. So for the last couple of weeks I've been slowly planting the seedlings into the garden. Here are the pepper plants in the raised bed.

The top of the photo are cucumbers that are suppose to grow in a compact form. Here is a close up of the Sweet Banana pepper on the right. It already has fruit!

 And this is a picture of the tomatoes. I may have them too close together, we'll see as they mature.

Lastly, for the edibles, a picture of my Siberian Kale and beets.

 Yesterday the garden was in great shape. Today the forecast is 2 to 4 and maybe more, inches of rain. Well, at least it's not snow. And for tomorrow sunshine!