I also sowed mine exactly two weeks today and am thinking about potting them up, but I am a nervous wreck.

They look so happy and healthy wherethey are now,maybe I'll let them stay there another day or two. ;)

Jo

Ezzirah,

See what a difference a little experience and know-how can make? Congratulations on the young sprouts!

I gardened for a long time using purchased transplants and then, when I started raising plants from seeds in the late 1980s, I was shocked at how simple it was! It seems silly now, but I really thought raising seedlings would be much harder than it actually was. It wasn't until we moved here and I had lots of space, though, that I started raising virtually everything from seeds (except for bulbing onions, potatoes and a few other things like garlic and shallots that you raise from bulbs/tubers and not from seed).

Jo, C'mon, be brave and pot those babies up. Just handle them very gently when you pot up and they'll be fine. Little birdies have got to fly from the nest as they get older, and little planties need to be potted up so they can grow and prepare to transition out into the ground in a few weeks too.

Dawn

This is the first year for me to try to start every thing from seed. I will have to buy some peppers because I did not start soon enough. I did not start any Bell's because I knew I could buy them anywhere.

I was surprised at how fast the cole crops came up.

I hope to be set up better next year and get a an earlier start.

Larry

slowpoke gardener, I don't think it is too late to start peppers. I believe it is much better to be too late planting peppers than too early. Tomatoes can sit in cooler temperatures and sulk a while, then pull out of it. But if peppers are planted too early and the temperature drops and stays there for an extended period of time there is a risk of them becoming stunted.

I believe this is what happened to my peppers and eggplants last year. The bell peppers less so.

I plant too many and have too much time and money invested in my plants to risk putting them out too early and they get frozen or stunted. I started my tomatoes a few days ago and will start my peppers sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Now, once they have been potted up and are growing well they go into my redneck greenhouse made out of cattle panels and heavy plastic. They take off and grow in there like they would not if they stayed in the house. Before they go into the garden though they are slowly exposed to the cooler temps outside the greenhouse so they can harden and get more acclimated.

Everyone's process and equipment and risk tolerance is different. Not to mention the temperature differences in northern Oklahoma versus southern Oklahoma. Last year I started my seeds too early and the temps stayed cool longer than normal, and I paid for it. This year I'm being a bit more conservative.

ScottOkieman, thanks for the info. I will start some more peppers. I have 15 or 20 plants up and more seeds planted, some are old and may not germinate.

I am really upside down this year, I am trying too many things that are new to me and will be experimenting a lot.

I already have more sruff up than I have room for, but if it does well I will be giving plants away. Most of the seeds I grow I start in the ground. Last year I bought all my pepper and tomato plants.

Thanks for the info, I am sure I will be back to forum many times to try to get straightened out.

Larry

Larry, I agree with ScottOkiemanthat it is not even close to being too late to start peppers. Some years I start tomatoes and peppers together and some years I start the peppers a couple of weeks later, but either way, I don't transplant peppers into the ground until the soil and air temperatures are very warm.

Tomatoes can tolerate cooler soil and temperatures down into the 30s, although I don't like to put them out into the ground when it is that cool. Peppers exposed to colder temps will sit and stall and sulk and often remain nonproductive for most if not all of the growing season. The later I transplant my peppers (within reason) the better they produce.

Last year I started my peppers at the same time I started my tomatoes, but didn't put my peppers into the ground until early May and yet I harvested just over 10 lbs. of peppers on June 15th. That doesn't seem possible, but it happened, and I kind of think the very warm temps in May 2010 pushed the plants to produce quickly after they were transplanted because it was much warmer here at our house than it is most Mays. Mostly I harvested hot peppers early, but also a couple of lbs. were sweets. Pepper plants that are started indoors and kept warm and then are well-hardened off before going into the ground once temps are very warm just take off like a rocket and start blooming and producing right away. I've also noticed that habanero peppers give me a harvest 4 weeks earlier if never exposed to cold soil or air.

Our greenhouse isn't finished yet, but once it is, I can move plants out to it earlier than I do now and leave them there. Right now the tomato plants go outside into the sun/wind for part of each day as a part of the hardening off process and then come back inside onto the sunporch before temps drop in the evening. If it is going to be really chilly, I bring them back into the house.

I plant my tomatoes when the air and soil are right for them, but have to cover them up on an occasional cold night because we're in such a low-lying area near the Red River that we often have freezing temps at night the first week in May, about a month after folks on higher ground a couple of miles from us will have had their last freezing nights. I used to transplant tomatoes earlier than I do now, but it is tedious to cover up 100+ plants.

Experimenting is fun, and that's when you really learn what you can get away with in your soil and your climate!

We are having some exceptionally warm days here already, the fruit trees are blooming, we have butterflies, bees and yellow jackets all over the place and the early spring wildflowers are blooming. However, the nights are still cold. Our nights are hard to predict and the NWS often misses our overnight low by a mile. For last night/this morning, our low was forecast to be 39 and right now it is 30 degrees on the thermometer on our front porch. I never trust the forecast here! If I believed the forecast, I'd lose my tomato plants every year.

My first round of tomato plants are large enough now that I could put them in the ground, but they won't go into the ground for about a month yet at the earliest, and perhaps much later than that. It all depends on what the temperatures are doing. By contrast, my pepper plants are about an inch tall, and I am not the least bit worried about how small they are because we are a really long way from soil and air temps being warm enough for them.

Dawn

Ezzirah, congrats! Potting up is when you know for sure that spring is finally on the way!

Jo, you won't hurt those seedlings. I swear they like to be abused and called dirty names. I put on my sailor's hat (and vocabulary) most every spring, just for them.

Larry, I'm there with you on experimenting. I've gardened for long time now but have done so with blinders on, not branching out too terribly much. This year, I've ripped those blinders off and learning & trying all sorts of new-to-me things. I'm probably in way over my head but it's fun!

Diane

ScottOkieman - last year's spring was hard on my seedlings, too. I had seed that either stalled or didn't grow well because the spring temps dipped and rose like a scary roller coaster ride. Some seed didn't germinate until really late, too. I had transplants that just sat in the ground for so long doing nothing that I wondered what the heck was going on. And then all of a sudden, we got hot weather in May, without the normal segue into summer and it stayed hot the rest of the summer. We had deluges of rain, floods, and then no rain in mid-late summer. It was a wild year IMO. I'm hoping we can expect a normal, altho unruly is "normal to us", spring and summer this year.

My broccoli seedlings are growing like crazy and I need to pot them up, too. It will only be a week tomorrow since I planted the seeds, so it seems fast to me, but I haven't grown broccoli before and I don't really know what to expect.

Susan

Okay I am doing it too now. It is kind of a pain in the butt, huh? Messy too. Maybe I should do it outside. :P

Question: can I reuse the seed starting mix next year? Save it in a plastic bag? or maybe just dump it in the garden?

I hate to throw it away.

Jo

Provided there was no disease, I dump mine in the garden.

Jo,

I don't recommend saving it. I dump it into the garden if there were no disease issues and dump it onto the compost pile if there was disease so the heat generated by composting can kill the disease spores or bacterial.

You could save it if you want to, but it is no longer sterile because it has been used and has been exposed to air, water, etc. To use it next year, you'd need to spread it on flat pans with a lip (to hold it in place) and sterilize it in the oven before using it again.

Dawn