serving my time

Winter’s great for the most part. I’d rather be cold than hot. But these late winter deep-freeze spells just stink.  It was -9° with -24° wind chill last night, and more of that coming.

So I dink around with coop plans and seedlings inside. About a month ago I started Yellow of Parma onions, my first crack at onions from seed.

Yesterday I started a second variety, a storage onion called Australian Brown. Here they are getting their first bottom water in the tub…

I always bottom-water seeds. It’s just easier and less disruptive.

The goal is to have, give or take, 200 onions in the garden. I’m trying two different varieties and two different planting times because I want to learn. I’m also hoping to save seed, so I don’t want the two varieties blooming at the same time to avoid cross-pollination. We’ll see.

And I’m trying an experiment with a single bell pepper plant (King of the North, OP).  If it poops out, no big deal. I want to determine if a pepper planted this early can be kept to a manageable size indoors with pruning until weather permits planting it outside. And I just want to find out how pruning peppers affects yield.

Here’s the little guy, with its regenerated lettuce friends in the background…