Quote:
Originally Posted by JRinPA
My problem I have with starting the peppers early is I have no place to go with them. Last year it got so cold after I put them outside, nights down to 40, and before they went in the ground the peppers and eggplants got sickly and started dropping leaves. The peppers lost about three leaves from each plant middle; I planted deeply but they still looked pretty sad. They produced at the normal time, but I have to think a moderated/heated greenhouse would allow them to fair better during that in between period and maybe bump the production or make it earlier. I've been thinking maybe this is the year for one of those $200 HF greenhouses. It would be a big investment in space, though, for my back yard.
I think some years it wouldn't matter, but a warm, pleasant spring combined with a plant with a head start might combine for sooner production.
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If you have a back porch you can cover it with 4 mil plastic. I have been doing that for years and it really helps when I have plants set out to harden and a cold snap comes along. Even down here in the deep south you can get burned by those things. Just not as often. We usually get burned by too much heat way too early.
My first tomatoes are about two inches tall and I have successive plantings still popping up and will have for a while. Since I try to graft all my tomatoes I have to start them about a month early. I usually start my first planting of bell peppers at the same time as they usually take far longer to germinate and grow slower. I will be starting more bells sometime this month to go out in early summer so I can hopefully have some decent peppers at the end of the summer and through the fall.
The biggest problem for me is when we have this constant rain and cloudy weather with fairly cold nights. It causes leggy plants and sometimes even damping off because the surface of the planting medium stays too wet. I start all my small seeds in DE and it has greatly reduced the danger of damping off but increased the need to fertilize my seedlings much earlier and more often.
Bill