Everything is planted and growing. All of the tomato and pepper plants were planted on Memorial Day. I ended up planting 4 of my tomato plants and 6 of my pepper plants. After planting I was out of town for the rest of the week, and got back late Friday. I took a look at my plants and all of them were looking good except for the ones that I started. I decided to go back to the farmer’s market Saturday morning and see what I could find to replace most of them.

The four tomato plants were pretty easy to find replacements for. I grabbed another Cherokee Purple, a Caspian Pink, a Thesolonika, and a Roma. I ended up picking up four pepper plants too, 2 Caribbean Red Habs and two more jalapeno plants. I hope the jalapenos produce, as they are the staple pepper in my salsa.

As Erika stated I had also avoided posting on here, as my starts this year were horrendous. By Memorial Day I still had 2 inch tall plants. It is like they decided to grow to 2 inches, and then sit at that size for 6 weeks. Some days it made me want to cry.

A user on one of the forums I frequent posted pictures the day before Memorial Day of some tomato plants that he had [i]sown[/i] on May 2nd. They were 10-12 inches tall and looked fabulous. I couldn’t believe it, I thought he must have typed in the date wrong, so I sent him a private message asking him. He said no, he did not have the date wrong, they were in fact sown only 4 weeks ago. Needless to say I now know his secret recipe, and I will be testing some tomato starts tomorrow using this special mix and see how it goes. If they start well I will probably throw two of them in some 5 gallon buckets in that same mix and see how much fruit I can get off of them even though they were started so late. We’ll see – I will be documenting the entire process and post progression pictures.

The list below is almost identical to Erika’s, we bought most of the same plants at the farmers market. Reading up on the varieties I am really looking forward to August! People really need to name their tomatoes better though. It seems like they don’t know how to tell one color from another. For instance, Pruden’s Purple is actually a pink tomato, and Dr. Wyche’s Yellow is golden orange, not even close to being yellow. It seems that orange and yellow are the biggest colors that you can’t count on the name to determine what color they are. We need some standards!

I have 4 super hots this year – I really enjoyed making and tasting my hot sauce last year and plan on making some more. I also want to make something in the hot range in addition to the absolute scorcher that I made last year. We will see if the habaneros have enough time to spit out ripe fruit for me. If not there is always an abundance at the farmers market in the fall for cheap. I think I will also add a few to some small batches of salsa to actually make a hot salsa. I made one last year that bordered on hot and another that was a strong medium. I might even try a mild this year, who knows.

Ok, on to the lists 🙂

Tomatoes 2011:

Tigerella
German Johnson
Roma
Moskovich
Purple Calabash
Cherokee Purple (2)
Striped German
Black Cherry
Yellow Brandywine
Green Zebra
Pruden’s Purple (Pink!)
Aunt Ruby’s German Green
Purple Russian
Pineapple
Sweet 100
Black Krim
Caspian Pink
Thesolonika

Hot Peppers 2011:

Serrano
Caribbean Red Habanero (2)
Bulgarian Carrot
Maule’s Red Hot
Joe’s Round
Orange Habanero (2)
Jalapeno (7)

No pictures with this post, but I promise some next week!