Just walked out through the yard in deep snow (our first this year -10") to check my containers and MY POPPIES HAVE POPPED. Not all of them but at least 5 containers (including a match with Vera for the Lauren's Grape - if you have this one go check it!) A very nice surprise on a day I was feeling down cause of work stress. It made me smile and it felt like a sign that things work out. I mean, if poppies can germinate and start growing in solid blocks of ice....anythings possible!!! Nancy

Thanks everyone! And I completely forgot, thanks to LindaLou for the green tomatillo salsa recipe she shared on my earlier post. It is DELICIOUS with my green tomatoes! Much more exciting than the red tomato salsa. I think using Brandywines in canned salsa was a mistake-- there's just so much water. Not much chunkiness to it. But the green tomato version.... PERFECT! I've googled to try and figure out where I got that first recipe link and now I can't find it again. No mind, I'll use the NCHFP one, and will note to not rely on web versions from here on out. One more question: does adding dill affect a recipe? I would like to add dill to that NCHFP recipe but I don't want to mess it up. Does pickling salt add dill flavor or just "pickle" it? I'm guessing the latter. I can just taste them in my bloody mary now.... tracydr, that is just ONE of the ways I enjoy them! Eating them straight up is pretty fantastic too. :-) I agree, they are really pricey in the store. I can't wait to make some of my own!

I always hear about how peppers need to be dry and in hot weather to make them spicy-hot, but Im not sure how true this is. I immagine it has more to do with the macro and micro nutrients provided to the plant. The reason I mention this is my lemon drops were grown indoors at comfortable "air-conditioned" tempratures, in hydroponic nutrient (which is almost all water) and my lemon drops are plenty hot. The amount of light will affect the size of the pods though. My first harvest had huge peppers (the plants were smaller and still fit under the light hood pretty well. They are also supplimented by sunlight through the window. Each harvest after that as the plants got bigger and sticking out from under the hood (no longer getting direct light, the pods were smaller. I think they would go back up in size with full sunlight. Anyway, back on topic here, you can germinate the seeds, and transplant them if you dont want to grow them in your aerogarden completely. Be careful not to damage the fragile plants though, and if you are super careful, you may even be able to reuse the sponge.

Remember, all of these plants evolved to grow under "natural" conditions, aka the day/night cycle. During the day, the plant makes food for itself via photosynthesis. It puts most of it's effort into this during the day. During the night, when it can't make food, it uses it and works on growth and restoring nutrient supplies through the roots. While 24/7 light means it makes as much food for itself as possible, the plant is also programmed to focus on that as much as possible when it has light available, which means it won't grow as much. Plus, there is a limit to how much food the plant needs, which means that any extra time in the light is essentially wasted anyway. By giving the plants a night cycle, you give them time to rest and put all that energy they stored during the day to good use. Raising plants is sort of like raising kids. If you shelter them and pamper them too much, they'll never grow up to be well adjusted adults. I killed my first batch of bhuts by over-pampering them, actually. Had a small number of seeds I wanted to be sure nothing would happen to them that by the time they saw what the real world was like they just shriveled up and died (guess I should have spent more than a week hardening them off, but I digress). Yeah, like people, give your plants a good 8 hours of sleep at night and they'll be much happier.