I planted some of my tomatoes and peppers on Saturday, since the weather has warmed up so thoroughly. If we get a late frost I'll do what I did last year, cover the little seedlings with a layer of soil overnight. It worked like a charm last time, no damage at all to my toms after a 28 degree night in early May. I planted the little 30 inch wide 20 ft long strip on the side of the house with 10 tomatoes and 9 peppers staggered in between and in front of the toms. There'll be some bush beans staggered in between the peppers, I soaked some of my Romano Bush beans the other day and they're starting to sprout. No pics of the bed yet, since the seedlings are hard to see at this stage!
Tomatoes, left to right when facing the bed:
Opalka
Yellow Brandywine
Black from Tula
Wapsipinicon Peach
Copia
Black Cherry
Brandywine OTV
Cherokee Purple
Sungold
Happy Gardening!
4 comments:
So you pile your tomatoes with soil to keep away the frost? I've not read about doing that before! That is a very tempting idea! My tomatoes are about 5-6 inches tall now, and I'd rather have them getting real sun than lights! Do you find that staggering your tomatoes and peppers allows the peppers to get enough sun? I did that last year, and felt like I had low pepper production. Obviously could have been a number of things, but I'm going to try to keep my peppers in clumps (near the tomatoes) but separate to get more sunlight.
It worked like a charm last year, not a bit of damage!
The tomatoes are planted in a line 2 feet apart, with the peppers planted a foot in front of that line in between. (so they're two feet apart too, and on the south side of the toms) I've never planted them in this configuration (together) before, but I'm planning on pruning the tomatoes pretty heavily to keep them strongly upright. I've always let them be a bit sprawly, and I want to see what difference in yield versus space used per plant I get with this method. So we'll see. :-)
The problems I've had with peppers has been that the nights get so hot in summer that the flowers don't set fruit. Last year was cooler than normal and I had a bumper crop! I'm hoping that trend will continue this summer.
So many hybrids???!!! I haven't even heard of 'em! I looked up the Quadrato Rossi (or is it Rosso?) Pepper online and sounds great. Unfortunately it might not grow here as I think it requires cooler climates
Actually, they're all open-pollinated and some are heirlooms.
On the pepper, I've see several spellings, they seem to vary with the source! All peppers stop setting fruit when the night time temps are in the 80's, so it may be a cooler season crop where you are. Some people I know who live in southern Florida grow tomatoes and peppers over the winter!
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