The 2023 Peppers Are Now Outside

After little over a week’s time of hardening off, the peppers were ready to move into their outdoor homes. Saturday was the perfect day to get everything in ground. It was overcast and comfortable – just the right sort of conditions for the plants to be transplanted. Well, that is until it started pouring half way through the process.

Even with the rain, it was still far better conditions for the small plants than, say, an extremely hot and sunny afternoon. Besides getting soaked to the bone, it was solid couple hours of planting. As you can see in the photo above, I had my transplant map all set. It helps keep varieties organized and makes getting everything into the ground that much easier – especially as uncomfortable as it was with the downpour.

Something New

Typically, I mix in a small handful of bone meal and blood meal into each transplant spot, but this year I decided to add in a little something extra to help with plant growth. This is the first year that I have incorporated worm castings to my planting regimen. I’m hoping the added nutrients give everything a nice little boost given how small most of the plants are at this stage.

And as you can see by that last photo, the rain made for quite a messy ordeal. The rain ceased about five minutes after I had gotten the last plant into the ground and was slowly cleaning up. I was such a mess, the wife wouldn’t let me back into the house until I had at least hosed some of the dirt off. Which, of course, I did along with rinsing off all the bags of amendments and discarded seedling pots and trays.

This is the start of the plants long adventure outside and I cannot wait to watch them start taking off. Until next time, happy growing!