You can put seed trays or pots in your little greenhouse, but you will then have to provide water for them. You might want to also cover the containers with plastic or place them in plastic bags until they germinate, the extra humidity is very helpful.

Carol, It is fairly hot, although the heat is moderated by the fact that so much of it is sweet peppers. It isn't so hot that I cannot eat it and I am a medium-hot pepper eater. I don't care for eating something like habaneros straight off the vine, though I love them in Habanero Gold. Much depends on how hot your hot peppers are. I grow a blend of jalapenos that have Scoville Heat Unit Ratings ranging from 2,000 or 3,000 SHU to 8,000 to 10,000 SHU. I can regulate, to some extent, how hot the pepper relish is just by choosing jalapenos with a higher or SHU rating. (Clearly this means that when I harvest, I have to harvest each variety separately, and it also explains why I label each and every jalapeno pepper plant.) Also, in a very hot and dry summer, you know, the heat can be much more intense in hot peppers. So, if you are trying to keep your pepper relish a little less hot, use peppers grown either in a cooler, milder summer or use the ones from the first harvest of the season. The jalapenos from my first harvest of any given year, which usually occurs soon after about June 10-15, usually are not as hot as the ones I harvest in July or August, since they formed, grew and matured in generally wetter, cooler weather. If I wanted to make a milder hot pepper relish, I'd use those....even if I had to chop them up and freeze them and wait for enough sweet bells to be ripe. Tim, for the record, generally doesn't think any pepper or pepper product is too hot, except for raw habaneros. I did make a triple-hot Habanero Gold pepper version once that is too hot for him and almost everyone else who tries it. A co-worker of his who is from a Caribbean nation where they love lots of hot, hot, hot stuff did think the Triple X Habanero Gold was wonderful, as did her son. Remember that all peppers are interchangeable in tested canning recipes that include peppers since they fall in a similar pH range so you could replace some of the hot peppers with an equivalent amount of sweet ones to reduce the heat. Because Pepper Relish requires 10 cups of peppers per batch, to me it seems like the perfect end-of-the-garden-season recipe. During the peak harvest/canning season in summer, I am using lots of peppers while making Annie's Salsa, Jalapeno Rings and Candied Jalapenos. So, in order to have enough peppers to make those routinely every week or so, I'd rather wait and make Jalapeno Relish at the end of the summer because that's normally when I have a huge bunch of sweet peppers available---when I strip the plants right before the first killing freeze. Last year I made a list of what I wanted to can. It included Annie's Salsa (needed to make at least 50 jars), Candied Jalapenos (needed to make at least 100 jars), and Zesty Bread and Butter Pickles (needed to make at least 100 jars). I achieved those goals, but most of those were given away as gifts, so in order to make me happy this year, I need to can twice as much. I also canned oodles of dill pickles as spears and slices, regular bread and butter pickles, sweet pickle relish and dill pepper relish. After all that, and with jars of canned goods hidden in every nook and cranny of the house, the last thing I needed to do was to make 5 batches of Pepper Relish......but you've got to use the harvest you produced, so I did. Someday Tim will retire and won't be carrying boxes and boxes of gift bags to work every Christmas, and I'll be able to can 25% of what I can now and it will be plenty. I think of our pantry as an endless pantry or a bottomless pantry because even when I think we've used up all Blueberry-Lime Jam, or Annie's Salsa, or Candied Jalapenos or whatever else, if I get in there and look long enough, I'll find some jars of what I need. We rarely run completely out of one item before I'm canning more of it. Still, I need a bigger pantry so I can store it all together. Lots of the stuff goes into plastic underbed storage boxes with snap-on lids. Those are the ones I pull out and carry downstairs when it is time to put together the gift bags. So, the holiday season doesn't empty out my regular pantry as much as I think it will---it just depletes my overflow storage area. I do go in and remove everything from the pantry and reorganize it once harvest time is approaching, so that the oldest canned food is moved to the front of the pantry where it will be used first. I also put the date on each jar so I know which jars are the older ones. Carson'smimi, Well, of course, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. Sounds to me like one girl needs to eat some Habanero Gold and cream cheese on crackers. I keep the Mrs. Wage's mix in the fridge too for a few days in between batches. I usually put it in plastic Ball Freezer Jam/Jelly Jars so my family knows what it is and leaves it alone. Moni, Yes, you use the lid wand with a magnet on the end of it to lift the lids out of the hot water and put them on top of the jars. I have three of them from various kits bought over the years. After we moved here, we stuck the box of canning stuff (unintentionally) up in the attic and then I had to buy a whole new set of canning utensils in order to can that year. When we got the Christmas decorations down out of the attic, we found the old canning utensils, so I had two sets. The one from the late 1980s or early 1990s is a sort of turquoise blue, the one from the late 1990s is red, and the third one (I don't remember why I bought it---or maybe it was a gift) is dark blue. My favorite one is the older one because the magnet in that set is super-strong. I need for us to add on a big canning pantry off the laundry room so I can store all my canning items together, along with all the canned goods. Unfortunately, our list of things 'to do' to the house is long and we are really slow about getting around to doing them. By the time we finally get around to adding a canning pantry, Tim will be retired and I'll be canning a lot less since he won't be sharing canned goods with all his coworkers after he retires, and we won't need a big canning pantry. The empty canning jars do pile up and I store them in the same underbed storage boxes after they have been emptied out at Christmas time. Sometimes I store the empty jars in Rubbermaid storage containers in the tornado shelter or in the garage....just wherever I can find a place to stash them. I also have 10 or 12 cases of jelly jars (new and unopened) stacked up in the guest room closet. There's barely a room in this house that doesn't have canning stuff stashed away in every spare corner of a closet, cabinet or shelf. Whenever I see canning supplies on clearance (and sometimes they pop up at odd times---like mixed in with Christmas clearance), I grab them. It is amazing how they'll discount last year's jars or lids merely because the new supply has arrived. MRS'S WAGES MIX ALERT: Yesterday I checked the canning aisle at our local Wal-Mart. They had just put out all the Mrs. Wage's Mixes. They had several kinds for pickles (but not the Zesty Bread and Butter Pickles), salsa, and spiced peaches, as well as pickling salt, pickling lime, pectin, etc. NEWBIE ALERT: If you've never canned before and you need canning salt, you will get a larger amount for a lower price if you buy it on the spice/baking aisle and not the canning aisle. It is the same canning salt, just from a different manufacturer. And, if you're going to make pickles, it is cheaper to buy your spices in bulk from someone like Pendery's instead of buying the pickling spice blend or Mrs. Wage's mixes. Sometimes in a big pickle year I do that. The best time to buy anything I need for canning is in spring because by summer, the stores stay sold out of almost everything. Now that we've discussed pickling and canning so much, I need to go back and look at my grow list, and make sure I included enough of the tomatoes and peppers needed to make lots of what we can every year on top of having all those veggies to eat fresh too. Dawn

Momofsteelex3, That's an incredible amount of rainfall. If there is anything at all that Oklahoma gardeners have mastered, it is the art of dealing with the weather. When I moved here, someone in Texas told me that we only have one season in OK--the "hot" season. After living here a while, I told them that we do too have all four seasons, and some years it seems like we have all 4 seasons in the same week. When we lived in Texas, the biggest challenge was the hot summers. Here, every day in spring seems to present its own challenge---anything from wildfire to strong winds to hail or floods, lightning or tornadoes, derecho winds, microbursts, etc. One think about OK weather is that it never is dull. I'd never even heard of thundersnow, derecho wind or graupel before we moved here. I have used pots and pans before to protect plants from hail, even though it meant I had to wash a ton of pots and pans the next day. This explains why my garden, which sits about 100' feet from the roadway always looks like a redneck garden....I've covered plants with lawn chairs and other patio furniture, the white folding tables used to hold flats of plants in normal times, pots, pans, trashcans and cardboard boxes with bricks orconcrete pavers on top to keep the wind from flipping them over, 5-gallon buckets, baskets, cat litter buckets, old quilts, sleeping bags, etc. One day I had so many tables, chairs and quilts in the garden to protect plants from hail that a neighbor asked me if I was decorating the garden for a garden party. I also used handfuls of chopped/shredded autumn leaves or hay placed strategically on top of and around plants to protect them from late freezing weather or hail. Sometimes I have completely buried potato plants in hay and straw mulch prior to a hard freeze so the foliage wouldn't freeze back. It is amazing what the weather here will cause you to do. Hail certainly is nothing to take lightly in this state and some years we have a whole lot of it. I'm thrilled for all who got meaningful rainfall, but hope the damage doesn't take all the fun out of getting the rain. Larry, We still were at 76 or 77 degrees around midnight after reaching a high of 86 degrees at our house yesterday. I had rototilled the back area where we're building the new garden in advance of the rain to take out all the weeds that have sprouted since last week's rain and then I mowed the lawn grass on a hot and humid afternoon hoping to get it cut before the rain arrived. Finally wind and rain arrived here sometime after midnight and maybe it even was after 1 a.m., but I don't think any hail fell here, not even small pieces. It currently is very windy and only 44 degrees which is a big change from yesterday. We got less than an inch of rain (about 0.85" in the rain gauge) but are getting lots of wind. This afternoon I will cover up the plants that are in the ground to protect them from the overnight low temperatures....and then next week we'll have another very cold night/early morning and I will do the same thing all over again. I never thought floating row cover was worth the bother when I lived in Texas, but I use it like crazy here for plant protection during late cold spells. This year for hail protection I have put hoops over all the beds as they are planted. Then I attach deer netting to the hoops and leave it for the first month or so. That gives the plants a chance to get established before hail pounds them into oblivion. Older and more well-established plants can bounce back quickly from hail for the most part, but younger smaller ones cannot, and plants like corn cannot if their growing tip is broken off. Last year we had hail here at our house 11 times, though it never was really big hail, so I have taken a little time to give the plants more protection early in the season this year. I'm waiting for one of y'all to get rainfall that breaks my garden's rainfall record of 12.89" in 24 hours from April 29, 2009. If we'd had to give a name to the garden that year, it would have been "A River Runs Through It" but for us it was a welcome river as it instantly took us out of the drought that had affected us for most of 2008 and all of 2009 until that point in time. It is rare that you get enough rainfall in one day to end a drought. I'm going to link the rainfall map for the last 24 hours that shows rainfall recorded at the OK Mesonet stations. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: 24-hour rainfall accumulation

Duly noted for next time! :) I share cuttings, leaves, and babies from my succulents all the time, given the prodigious nature of those kinds of plants. However, I'm not sure how I'd react if I had a prize-winner and someone wanted a leaf. It seems ... overstepping. But I should state for the record that I typically don't scavenge for leaves or try to snatch bits of plants in garden centers or anything. Her plants, which I mentioned in another post about critters, have only recently recovered from some sort of infestation, and while all green and fuzzy again, they're certainly a bit battle-raggedy. Neither pinched leaf left any noticeable dent.