Nice list Dawn. I told Al it was going to be a sad gardening year, because I don't need to buy any seeds. LOL I do need to buy some other things tho. I need floating row cover, a pipe bender, and some greenhouse plastic. My floating row cover has seen better days and I haven't bought any for several years.

I finally went through my seeds last night, and decided that I need to plant a little quantity of a lot of things because I have lots of packs with just a few seeds in them. I just got my Willhite catalog a few minutes ago, so I plan to go over that.

Thanks Carol. Now, I just have to figure out precisely where to plant each variety. I have a general idea of what will be in each bed but some of it depends on earlier crops coming out in time for the succession crops to go in.

I haven't bought many seeds this year, and don't need to. Mostly I need to use the ones I have.

The next time I buy floating row cover, I am going to buy the one I've linked below because it is supposed to give up to 10 degrees of frost protection. Ten degrees is awesone. I have some Agribon that gives 4 degree and some that gives 8 degree, but DeWitt says their Ultimate Blanket gives 10 degrees and more.

I've been waiting for FarmTek's catalog to arrive. I always find something in it that I need (or, more accurately, want).

I need a pipe bender and greenhouse plastic too for low tunnels. I should already have gotten them and had them ready to go. I keep waiting for the winter weather to hit and make me feel like it really is winter, and then I could get excited about spring being just around the corner. lol It hit 75 degrees here today so it feels like we skipped winter and went right to spring, but the cold front will roll through here later and change that.

I did order a couple of things from Wilhite because they had the drought resistance or short DTM I was searching for.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Ultimate Frost Blanket

Me to Seedpapa: We have a pipe bender, right?
SP: Yes, why?
ME: I don't know yet. I have to keep reading this thread to find out what important project we need to take on that I didn't know about five minutes ago.

Me to Seedpapa: We have a pipe bender, right?
SP: Yes, why?
ME: I don't know yet. I have to keep reading this thread to find out what important project we need to take on that I didn't know about five minutes ago.

Just another little garden project for your DH's list: Low tunnels. You can use them to support neavyweight frost blanket type floating row covers to protect your plantings from late frosts or freezes. You can use them to support lightweight floating row covers to protect something like squash plants from squash vine borers and squash bugs, or bush bean plants from Mexican bean beetles. In the event of a late season snow storm, you could put greenhouse plastic (or any 4 or 6 mm clear plastic from a home center store in a pinch) over your hoops and place frost blanket row cover directly on top of the plants beneath the hoop for two layers of protection. You could add big 5 gallon buckets of water (or WOWs) to young tomato plants as solar collectors if the snow stuck around a few days and you needed to leave plants protected inside your low tunel. That would give your plants three levels of protection. Finally, somebody who had a little bridge, for example, could use hoops to turn it into a covered bridge. And, then, if they wanted, they could train some very long vine to cover the hoops and shade the bridge. I'm just sayin'.......you can do a lot with these things!

In my perfect garden that exists only inside my imagination, every raised bed in my garden is covered with a neat, tidy low tunnel.

Visit the website of Johnny's Selected Seeds and click on Quickhoops to see what they say about the use of Quickhoops to protect beds. (Or, you can build tidy high tunnels with a larger hoop bender.)

Or, visit Eliot Coleman's website.

Then, go to the link below to see a place that sells hoopbenders for a lower price than JSS. They have all sorts of examples of low tunnels, high tunnels and greenhouses on their website that were built using the various hoop benders they sell.

Carol and I take great delight in throwing out a couple of words to see who's paying attention. : ) Just wait and see what we come up with next!

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Lost Creek's Hoop Benders

If you don't want to invest in benders, you can make high tunnels with cattle panels. It would take two or three people to bend them and they need to be anchored well with heavy stakes on the outside of the hoop, but someone on the Ozarks forum (Helen? Christie?) showed a pic of one with green beans hanging down inside it a couple years ago. Then in the winter it could be covered with plastic for a makeshift greenhouse. You could even line up two or three or more.

Dorothy, I have one with a bend at the top that goes across my sidewalk, and I grow Sugar Snaps on it early, then usually Tess's Land Race Currant and Zuchetta Squash for the hot season.

I ordered the bender tonight and I am just buying the one that you bend conduit with and it makes a four foot wide hoop. I will use it for a garden extender on both ends of the gardening season, and also to keep some plants covered until they require a pollinator. I hope to hold the pest off as long as I can.

I have a limited amount of space for gardening so I have to grow vertical as much as possible to grow as much as I do. I think Diane has 4 or 5 panels placed together creating a tunnel.

We have an old shed that really needs to be torn down and when we replace it, I am going to either include a greenhouse in the plan or attach a lean-to to the south side of it. That is about all of the room I have left that doesn't have trees or lateral lines. I had hoped to put a greenhouse in place of the shed, but my DH thinks I need a wood shop. I think my power tools are getting in his way. LOL So I guess I will be saving my dimes until I can build a shop with a greenhouse. If I don't change my mind again. Until that time, I am going to practice growing a few things under row covers.

Dawn, I read about the ultimate frost blanket, but I didn't find any light transmission figures. That sounds like it would be great for short term coverage, for overnight, or to get through a day or two of law temps, but I would be afraid that you couldn't leave that one. It would be nice to find a strong one that also let enough light through, but I don't know if they exist. The last ones I had were very thin and tore up very easily. Of course, in your case where you already have a lot of lightweight fabric, this would probably be good for a short term protection. In my case, I am just about starting over because I don't think I can salvage much of mine.

Dorothy, I think it was Glenda who posted photos of her cattle panel bean tunnel.

Carol, I didn't find anything about its light transmission either, but I only planned on it for short-term frost protection on very cold nights, or in case we have a late-season snowstorm hit.

My lightweight row covers have functioned really well on nights I thought might get too cold for them. To increase the protection level, all I did was put down a double layer instead of a single one. I doubt that exactly doubles the degrees of frost protection you get, but is surely is better than a single layer.

I also do get frustrated with the fact that the very lightweight row covers only last a few years. My 6-8 degree ones are significantly heavier and last longer than my 2-4 degree ones, so I won't buy the 2-4 degree ones any more.

I love how the row covers look when I first unroll the material off a new roll and it is sparkling white and beautiful. Then, after a day or two in the garden, it is muddy and a whole lot less beautiful. Of course, it works the same whether clean and perfect or dirty and well-worn.

Dawn

I will list my other lists besides the tomatoes in 2-3 posts. This is my tentative list for peppers. I may sow all of the bells I have listed but will likely pare the number I actually plant down. Bells don't normally do as well here as the chile types do. Jay

2012 Pepper Seed Inventory Chile and Jalapeno types

Chiles

Agco Fire Red
Ancho Mulato
Ancho/Poblano
AZ-20 Curry Farms variety
Barker's Hot
Big Jim Legacy
Casados Native
Chilipeno
Chimayo - Will grow plants from 4 sources to compare
Hatch Green Chile
Isleta Long
Jarales
Kim's Colossal
Larson's Big Kim
Larson's Colossal Kim
Nambe Supreme
Negro de Valle
Nu-Mex Heritage 6-4
Nu-Mex Heritage Big Jim
Pico de Gallo
Pico de Pajaro
San Felipe
Vallero
Velarde
Zia Pueblo
Zia Pueblo Mix

Jalapeno

Biker Billy
Craig's Grande
Gigante Jalapeno
Grande Jalapeno
Jaloro
Lawson's Jumbo Jalapeno
Nu-Mex Jalamundo
Nu-Mex Vaquero
Ole
Rome
Santa Fe Grande

Others

Black Hungarian
Doux D'Espange
Hungarian Volcano - A new favorite. Must grow. Hot but very good flavor. And a steady producer regardless of the environment.
Italian Relleno
Leutschauer Paprika
Nu-Mex Suave Red - Mild Habanero
Pasilla Bajio
Serrano Tamperquino
Summer Sizzle
Tunisain Baklouti

Sweet Peppers

Bells

Declaration hybrid
Gordo Hybrid
Green GIant
Lady Bell Hybrid
New Ace Hybrid
Olympus Hybrid
Ozark Giant Bell
Summer Sweet 8620 Hybrid

Non Bells

Giant Aconcagua
Giant Marconi
Golden Treasure

Good grief Jay, your pepper list is worse than mine. In fact, I don't know if I have that many packages of pepper seed (but I'm not counting). I am fond of the non-bell sweet types. I like the Marconi types, and Yellow Monster, but I haven't tried the other two you list. Lots of days in summer, my lunch would be a big sweet pepper filled with cream cheese.

Carol,
I do see a couple of varieties I meant to delete off the list. I have a bag full of culls I need to donate to someone. The seed swap you used to have was a good avenue. As most can tell Chiles are my weakness and no deleting there. I grew up on them and jalapenos and still use them in almost all of my cooking. I like the different flavors and heat levels of the various Chile varieties. I did notice I left off 2 chile varieties. They are Big Jim Legacy developed by a NM grower and according to some the most flavorful and Lumbre an extra hot- very spicy chile. According to some the hottest of the NM Chile types. Jay

Jay, That is an amazing pepper list. Owiebrain will be drooling when she reads it.

I really, really, really have cut back my pepper list the last few years and now just focus on growing from seed the varieties we use the most and that preserve well, and it shows in my pepper list which is getting shorter and shorter every year.

With all the salsa and candied jalapenos we make and can every year, I could plant nothing but jalapenos and Chichen Itza habanero peppers and be perfectly happy. Well, you do have to have a lot of sweet bells for Habanero Gold so I grow them too, and we like sliced or chopped sweet peppers in salads.

It isn't summertime around here if I'm not roasting and freezing jalapenos for the winter months. Right now, we are down to our last 5 or 6 ziplock bags of frozen jalapenos in the freezer and I am trying to ration them out and make them last until I start harvesting jalapenos in June.

I used to grow a lot of ornamental peppers but haven't done that the last couple of years because of the droughts. I might plant them this year, but since they are for ornamental purposes, I'll put them on the flower/herb list.

Carol, A lot of times in the summer, I make a big cookie sheet full of jalapeno pepper halves stuffed with cream cheese with a little piece of bacon sitting right on top or each. I could eat those for three meals a day. Because I eat so many of them, I've switched to Turkey bacon and low-fat cream cheese for most of them so I don't feel so guilty about eating so many of them.

When you have a garden, 'fast food' takes on a whole new meaning. I love it when I can pick something from the garden, take it inside and immediately turn it into a meal, with no drive-thru required. As far as we live from town, fast food isn't fast anyway.

Dawn

Dawn,
Thanks. I'm growing some of the chile types to save seeds this year as some of the seeds are reaching their age limit. I like to roast/grill the chile types and grind them up all together and freeze. This adds flavor and heat to most everything I eat. From sausage gravy to a hamburger. I can just chip off a chunk and microwave for a few seconds and ready to use. I mix the jalapenos in with the chiles many times. On the smaller peppers I don't even peel them if I roast them well. This last fall I had a bumper crop but due to my work schedule got very few roasted. So starting to run low. I had some left from 010. So another reason I will be growing more this year. As for the bells/sweets they don't do as well here. I will probably limit what I grow myself to 5-6 plants and sell give away the rest. The 3 sweet non bells seem to produce a little better so will plant 5-6 plant of them. I keep trying a few new bell varieties every year trying to find a good producer here. As for the chile types I hope to keep it around 30-35 plants but that maybe hard. The chile types sell better here than the sweet types do. Several grow the sweet/bell types but not that many grow the chile types especially as many varieties as I do. I had a waiting list last fall for the chile types. Jay