Take My Tomatoes! Please!

(Time to go, kids)

I have this little problem, see. I start more tomatoes, peppers, greens, what-have-you, than I myself actually have room to grow, with the conscious anticipation that I will give them away. I just want everyone to garden, plain and simple. Even if it's a single tomato plant.

...

If that's wrong, I don't wanna be right.

...

In truth, I think it's probably where my unused maternal energy has landed and taken up roost, child-free as I am.

...

I start them at my seedling station, harden them off, and start sending out e-mails a week or two before our last local frost date. Then I lovingly send them packing, like a kid off to college. And like a parent, I've enjoyed them, they've enriched my life, it's been totally worth the effort yada yada, but really, I can't wait for them to leave.

Whew.

(Green Babies!)

I just got off a twelve-day work week last Friday. Big push/ hot due date for a customer- you probably know the drill. Subsequently, the minute the project was put to bed, all my stress went directly to my rotten, good-for-nothing neck (whiplash in grad school, and natch, it was never properly treated), so I had to lay pretty low this weekend. Did some knitting. Took naps. Drank Bloody Marys. Started some salad greens in flats. My favorite version of lazy.

But look! Seedlings! Today was their first day in the sun. Just for an hour. I swear there is new growth (even though I've read that seedlings store energy during the day and use it to grow at night).

Here pictured:

Pink tomato (a big, tart sandwich slicer)

San Marzano tomato (sauce and paste pear tomato)
Paul Robeson tomato (the best tomato I've ever eaten- seeds saved from last year)
Japanese Black Trifele tomato (a good fresh tomato, I hear- I've yet to try it)
and one Supersweet 100 for my in-laws. (I don't like cherry tomatoes, but I grew this last year. It's astonishingly prolific. Too prolific- I've got tomatoes sprouting in my worm bins from using "finished" compost as bedding. Tomato seeds are notorious for surviving compost.)

There are a few straggler peppers I haven't put out yet- peppers need a lot of heat and their feet are a bit cold, so they don't even have true leaves yet. Which leads me to my wee pepper disaster- and hey, here's a fun recipe for you to try!

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How to make Pepper Surprise:
1) Fill expanded peat pellets with seed, correspond to a hand-drawn diagram.
2) Tip peat pellets onto floor.
3) Watch in horror as they bounce all over the floor like little tires.

I'll never use peat pellets again- for many reasons- but this was the topper. No more peat pellets! Nein, nunca.

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Fun Fact!
The reliable way you can tell the difference between peppers and tomatoes when they are babies is this- tomatoes have hairs on their stalks, and peppers don't. Other than that, it's a tough business. All nightshade babies pretty much look alike.

Happy equinox!

(Mmmm, thawing dirt)

Today is the first day of spring, when the Sun crosses the celestial equator. The word "equinox" is a combination of Latin words: aequus (equal) and nox (night). But it's sort of a misnomer, ever since our blasphemous discovery that the earth is not flat. The occurrence of an equal day and night totally depends on your latitude on this big sphere. That 24-hour period is called the equilux, when sunrise and sunset are basically 12 hours apart.

Even so, I get a little psycho-spiritual jolt on the calendar's equinoxes. Especially the vernal one, ever since growing vegetables completely took over my life. In recent years, the atumnal equinox really bums me out. It feels like I'm doomed to 5 or 6 months' worth of Mondays.

I celebrated my vernal equinox by scraping off some dirt from the semi-permafrosted pile that's been on my porch for 5 months, and prepping a little box for some early spring lettuce. I'll scrape off a little more every other day, so the sun will melt it faster. As I go, I'll plop the dirt in another box and sprinkle in some more seeds. And patiently wait for the only miracle I know of.

So, how did you celebrate the equinox?