The dear wife is behind on her seed starting this year so I’m trying to hedge my bets a little bit and get an early jump on this warm weather by supplementing our efforts with commercially grown seedlings. There’s not yet much variety at any of the local garden centers but I took a flyer on a couple six packs of peppers – jalapenos and purple bell. Since she has designs on the raised beds I had to find a new location to plant them so I decided to dig a trench a few feet in front of my new grape trellis. It’s a perfect south-facing location that gets a solid 7-8 hours of sun. The soil is all sand so I amended heavily with composted cow manure and peat moss. The grapes are already going strong and will be well along before the peppers are large enough to cast any shade across them. Let’s just hope the bunnies don’t eat them.




This turned out to be one of those unexpected and unexplained failures. The peppers just never grew. Yes, this summer was cold and rainy so that they never got the real warmth they needed to thrive. But the soil was prepped well and this is the sunniest location in the yard. Meanwhile, the grapes planted right behind grew well and are thriving in 2010.