Thursday night I got ambitious and decided to plant my peppers and onions. My onions I always start from seed in mid march so that they have time to get a bulb started before I plant them out. If you don't start them early enough, you will have very small onions by the time you have to pull them from the garden.
Peppers are a different story. Generally I plant them 6-8 weeks before last frost which ends up being 8-10 weeks before I plant them out in the garden. However, this year I found a new YouTube channel called Alberta Urban Garden (link on the right under the YouTube links section). It is a guy from just outside of Edmonton who makes excellent videos that are much more relevant to someone growing in my zone. He's in zone 4a but his planting and ideas generally work for me.
SO. He plants his peppers in December (!!) because he prunes them a bunch of times. Yep, prunes them. I was skeptical but he has made enough videos about it and can actually show that by pruning his peppers, he ends up with more of a pepper bush than a pepper plant by the time it's planting season. If you want more detail, go watch the video yourself on his channel. Long story short, it makes them have a much stronger stem and more branching.
I decided better late than never, and planted my peppers at the same time as my onions hoping that I can get at least one pruning in before they go outside. This is about 13-14 weeks before they will likely go outside and I'm hoping to see some increased yields.
They should start to emerge from the soil in the next week. My seeds were from last year so I'm hoping they still germinate.
Seeds planted March 9th:
Onions:
- Candy Hybrid (85 days)
- Spanish Onion Superstar Hybrid (95 days)
- Northstar Hybrid (68 days) [Green]
- Mucho Nacho Jalapeno Hybrid (68 days)
- Mohawk (65 days) [Yellow]
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