April 10, 2006

Planting Chiles Before the Rain Arrives

The current rain storm is moving into the area. Although the sky was very overcast, I decided to try and get my garden planted this morning while it was still dry outside. I purchased more chile plants at Armstrong Nursery. Four fresnos, two hungarian yellow wax, two garden salsa and one celebrity tomato plant. Next, I bought four more bags of garden soil at the Home Depot. While there, I noticed that they had pepperoncini plants on sale, so I picked up a pair of them too. I have never grown garden salsa or pepperoncini peppers before. I'm glad to have a couple of new varieties of peppers in my garden this year.

Once I got home, I put the soil into my raised bed and was rewarded with a soil level that comes almost to the top of my double cinderblock raised bed sides. I feel that I finally have enough depth in my garden to give my plants real root support. Once the soil was spread, I planted most of my pepper plants. The only two I didn't plant were the fish pepper and the fatali, simply because they are still very small and more susceptible to cutworms. They will have more protection in their plastic pots while they gain some size.

Just as I was finishing planting the last the of peppers, the rain started. So I quickly called my dog to pop her into the house and then got all the trash picked up and tools stored. The only thing that I didn't do was put in guards around the chile plants so that they would have some cutworm protection in the night. I'm worried about the plants, especially the ones that I purchased at the Potting Shed since I can't replace them if they are killed by cutworms. However, with all the rain outside, I might have to just cross my fingers that the plants are large enough to survive the insects since it will be a soggy proposition to install cutworms guards today.

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