Finished Planting the Warm Weather Seedlings

Most everything was under cups in preparation for a few days of cold temperatures.

Brandywine tomato freed  from its cup confinement.

The leaves of this Pantano Romanesco tomato are all scrunched from being forced into cups.

Tomatoes right before covering them with Agribon floating row covers.

The warm weather plants that were started indoors are finally all planted out. That's 64 tomato plants, 42 hot and sweet pepper plants, and 33 eggplants planted. Whew. My back is tired. At first the plants spent time under plastic cups to protect them from a few cold nights, plus any uncovered seedling ends up getting destroyed by birds. So far five tomatoes and two peppers have been loss to bird activity.

It's supposed to be warming up the next couple of days, so I went ahead and took the plastic cups off of all the plants and then immediately recovered them with Agribon floating row covers. Floating row covers can damage growing tips on peppers and tomatoes, so it's important to have a support system in place, I'm using cups which will later be put on stakes when the plants get taller.

One pole bean and not a single okra has sprouted after 10 days, but some critter has been digging around the pole bean and okra bed. I dug around a couple of the poles and only found a single bean, it has been wet and rainy the last few days so maybe the beans have rotted in the ground. Either way the whole bed will have to be reseeded.

Four rows of bush beans were directly sowed in the second to last bed at the rear of the garden. The last bed in the back is reserved for summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and vining plants. I have 6 edible luffa sprouts and 3 bitter melon sprouts that have just germinated! How utterly exciting. I haven't gotten the luffa or bitter melon to fruit here in Kentucky and these are the last of the seeds, they grew just fine in the desert so I'm not sure what the problem may be.

There is still buckets of spinach, lettuce, and Chinese greens to be planted. It's a chore, but a happy chore.

All the Tomatoes are Now Planted in the Garden

I planted the rest of the tomatoes today after planting twenty yesterday, so that is a total of 64 tomato plants in the garden this year. After watering them in, I covered them with vented plastic cups to keep the birds from eating them in the very early morning. Last year half of the tomato seedlings were lost to birds. Can you imagine the horror of coming out one morning and finding nipped growing tips and broken pecked stems? The cups will have to be removed before the sun gets too hot since it's predicted to reach 80 degrees tomorrow (26 Celsius). At least the warm temperatures will help the pole beans and okra with germinating.

The tomato plants are spaced 18 inches apart with rows 24 inches apart, and 2 rows per bed with beds 3 feet apart.

It took 4 hours to plant forty-four seedlings due to the mulch I had to work around. I am less then enthusiastic thinking about the peppers and eggplants that still need to be planted. It will probably go faster kneeling rather than crouching, so I will try that next time.