Caspar eggplant

Our 2026 Garden: onion, eggplant and pepper seedlings, plus an update

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I got a little bit of garden therapy in, while checking on my seed starts.

I also remembered to get a picture of how the onions are doing in the seed snail experiment.

I’m actually debating whether it’s time to “pot up” the onions. That would involve unrolling the snails, adding more soil (at this stage, I would be using potting soil rather than seed starting mix), then rolling them back up into thicker snails. I made sure to have plenty of excess foam packing material being used here to accommodate extra thickness. I think I might wait a bit longer, though.

You might have noticed the tips of the onions look dry and shriveled. I think that’s from getting too close to the shop light before I raised it higher. Currently, they have the shop light on for part of the day, but for 12 hours on a timer, they are getting full spectrum light from the larger new lamp I picked up.

In the next couple of pictures, you can see new seedlings from the pre-germinated seed starts. Well… almost see! The row at the bottom of the picture is the Caspar Eggplant, and three seedlings have broken ground. In the middle is the Sweet Chocolate Pepper, and five seedlings have appeared, a couple just barely visible through the vermiculate. The top row is the California Wonder pepper. It took some searching, but I did see the curved stems of seedlings just barely visible through the vermiculite.

In the last picture, you can see the largest of the Sweet Chocolate peppers.

I turn the shop light on for part of the day for these, too, but they also have full spectrum lights on for 12 hours. I’ve got two lights fixtures with four light strips each, and I’ve got them set up so that five light strips are over the full tray, then three strips are over the celery and luffa in the other tray. The strips with the herbs I recently sowed are off to one end of the tray, closer to the heater that I have set up to blow warm air over both trays.

I have the full spectrum light strips quite close to the surfaces of the trays. As the seedlings get larger, I can raise each strip individually, as needed. Right now, for example, the container with the celery is lower than the Red Solo Cups the luffa are in (still just the one seedling in those), so it has its own light strip that’s lower than the two that are over the taller Red Solo Cups.

I’ve made a point of spending time in the basement to have the heater on. Usually, that’s my time to do my steps (I have a step counter on my phone), but I also go over my notes. I have lists of things based on how many weeks before last frost they should be started. What I have so far has been started early, based on a June 2 last frost date, though the newly revised average has our last frost date in a range of dates at the end of May, potentially adding as much as a week to our growing season.

Looking at the calendar, I made sure to write down when the next batches of seeds should be started, though I can get away with some, like the herbs and the marigolds, to be started early. Some of them are things that could be grown in pots indoors, and are more flexible. I am mightily resisting starting tomatoes! Those are next on the list but, if I were to go by calendar dates, they shouldn’t be started until the middle of March. Being short season varieties, I could theoretically wait even longer.

I don’ wanna wait that loooonnnggg!!! <insert childish whining> 😂🤣😂

Still, spending some time with the plants and thinking these things through, even for as little time as it was, was enough to make me feel better than I have been for much of today.

In other things, I phoned my mother today. In the TCU, she can’t have a phone in her room. I call the nursing station and they transfer me to a cordless phone that they take to the person being called. They tried transferring me four times before it finally worked!

My mother was very, very happy for the call, and said she had been thinking of calling me. I reminded her that, where she is now, it’s a long distance call.

She really wants a phone and was asking if we could get her a phone, like other people have. Meaning, a cell phone.

Now, there’s no way my mother can handle a Smartphone. She could barely handle the new phone my brother got for her at her apartment, to replace her old set, and it was actually simpler than the one she had before. Still more bells and whistles than desired, and things were in slightly different locations, and that was enough to give her a hard time. My brother tried so hard to find the simplest phone set – a corded phone with an answering machine, plus two cordless phones for her dining table and bedroom – that he could, but everything has bells and whistles these days.

I do know there are cell phones made for seniors out there, so I plan to do some research later today and see what’s available here in Canada.

I explained to her that she would have to buy a phone and have a monthly phone bill. Her response was, she has money that’s just sitting in the bank, not doing anything, so she doesn’t mind using it. She currently has no idea what’s going on with her banking right now, as my brother is taking care of it for her. None of us have tried to explain to her that the hospital back dated their billing for her stay there, which was charged daily. Plus, her rent for February was taken out, but as my brother explained my mother’s situation and why he wasn’t able to give them a month’s notice, it will be refunded. Until then, she’s being double billed for the month, which she would not be able to understand and would freak out over if we tried to explain it to her. My brother is the best person to be taking care of all this for her, and I assured he, even though he’s still out of the country, he’s on top of all this and taking care of things for her.

Then I told her that I had going to mass yesterday, where prayers were said for her health, which she was very happy to hear about. I then told her I had been on the way to visit her when something went wrong with the truck, and I had to get a tow truck. She immediately said, I need a new vehicle. *sigh* As if we don’t know that! So I told her about my BIL driving me home in his truck, and that he was planning on selling it in the summer. If we can come up with $5000 by then, we will buy it from him. It took a while before I realized she didn’t know who I was talking about at first, so I said my BIL’s name again. Oh! You mean… and then she said his Polish name (his family are also from Poland). 😄 So she was pretty keen on the idea of our getting a truck from him.

We talked about a bunch of other stuff for a while. She’s not liking where she is right now, and I can’t blame her one bit. Not only is she now in a smaller room that’s being shared with someone else, it’s very close to the nursing station, which is right next to the entry doors. Lots of traffic, lots of noise. I explained to her that everyone else there is waiting to go somewhere else, like she is. Her response was, I don’t care about anyone else. I just care about me. *sigh* I said it meant that she would be seeing a lot of changes in who is there with her. She is doing a lot better, as far as care needed, than many others and that’s part of the problem; people with higher needs are going to get beds in nursing homes faster than her, typically. I reminded her that, when it came to nursing home spaces, we’re basically waiting for people to die, as that’s pretty much the only way beds get freed up. She thought that we could talk to people about getting her into a nursing home faster, because where she is is not good for her health. I told her, where she is now is the first step, but in the end, it’s the ultimately the provincial government that decides. So she said we should tell them to build an addition to the nursing home she wants to live in.

…

*sigh*

I didn’t even try to explain. Our province certainly needs more beds for long term care and assisted living, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before that happens.

Our conversation went all over, and she gave me messages to pass on to my siblings. I mentioned again that it’s long distance for me to call her now, but not for my sister. She was all surprised by that (not sure why; my sister lives only 15 minutes away, at most) and started saying my sister should phone her more often! She’s not understanding that it’s harder to do that through the nursing station where she is than how it was before. Then she wanted to know when I would be visiting her next. I reminded her, the truck was at the garage and we have no idea how long it will be, before we have transportation again.

Oh, so you want me to give you money for the truck now?

?????

I said no, I was just letting you know that it might be a while before I can visit and why. That’s all!

I can give you a check…

????!!!

I told her again, I wasn’t wanting anything like that. I was just letting her know why I might not be able to visit anytime soon, but we just don’t know right now.

But the money is just sitting there, not doing anything… I can write a check.

???!!!

Finally I deflected and said, we can talk about it the next time I visit. She happily agreed with that and we dropped it.

I wasn’t going to ask, but I’m not sure if she was offering to pay for the repairs, or to give us funds to buy the truck from my BIL! I fully expect her to forget about it long before I’m able to visit her again, and I will certainly not bring it up again! The offer was totally out of the blue and not at all what I meant by telling her about the truck. That’s the sort of thing our vandal was constantly doing to her and my late father for many years, which might be why she thought that, by telling her about the truck, I was actually asking her for money. I do appreciate the offer, but I will not ask or bring it up again.

Over all, for all that my mother is not liking where she is, she did sound happy. Even when, at one point, she started rather playfully referring to herself as an “orphan” for being there. She told me to make sure to pass that on to my sister, so she will call and visit more often. 😁

I really hope my mother isn’t there for very long. Still, it’s the first step to getting her where she wants to be, at least.

Meanwhile, I’ve got my homework assignment, and will start seeing if there is some sort of phone out there that will work for her and where she is. That won’t be easy!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: eggplant and peppers

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A couple of days ago, on checking the seeds I’ve set to pre-germinate, it looked like some were just starting to show radicals. Nothing ready, but it seemed they soon would be.

So I grabbed one of my deep celled trays and prepared it in advance. These trays have 21 cells, and I’m looking to have 1 row of each of the seeds I have pre-germinating right now. The seed starting mix in the cells are all pre-moistened, ready and waiting.

When I tried pre-germinating seeds last year, I let them sit for probably too long. Their roots started to go into the damp paper towels and had to be very carefully pulled free. From what I’ve been seeing online, they really should be potted as soon as the radicals appear.

So that’s what I’ve already done with the luffa.

Yesterday, that first seed I saw that looked like it was starting to show its radical – a Caspar Eggplant – had started to germinate. Just the one. So I planted it into a prepared cell, then topped it with vermiculite, partly so I could easily tell which cell has a seed planted in it.

Today, I found another eggplant, plus some Sweet Chocolate peppers.

I would prefer to have these on another heat mat, but I only have one. The light fixture above them, however, does put off some heat. With smaller seeds closer to the surface like these, it will actually be enough to affect them.

I did have to raise the light fixture another inch to fit the large celled tray under it, but that should be okay. I’ll keep transferring seeds over as they germinate. With these larger cells, I should be able to avoid potting them up for some time, if at all.

As long as the pre-germinated seeds survive the transfer, I should have 7 plants each by using this tray. If I’d been using the Red Solo cups, I can fit 9 cups in each of the bins I have to hold them, so that’s what I would have been shooting for as a total. Seven should be enough, and I am not expecting 100% germination rates, nor 100% transfer survival rates.

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: starting peppers, celery and luffa

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Normally, today would be my day to go into the city for our first stock up trip for February. With the truck having issues and an appointment to get it checked tomorrow morning, today was a home day, instead.

Which turned out to be a good thing.

I didn’t think I’d pushed myself yesterday, but the pain started hitting last night, and this morning I could barely walk. I managed to feed and water the outside cats, grab a quick breakfast, pain killered up and went back to bed for a couple of hours.

Thankfully, that seemed to help a lot.

Which meant I was up to setting things up in the basement to start more seeds.

That included testing out the heat mats. I’d bought a new one last year, because the old one stopped working, but I tested it again anyhow. For a while, I thought I’d need to buy another heat mat, but the new one did eventually warm up quite nicely. The basement is always between 13-16C/55-61F, though it does feel warmer after we removed the cat barrier in the “window” between the two basements, now that we don’t allow the cats down there anymore. I set up just one of the lights, choosing the one that actually warms up a bit when it’s on.

Then it was time to get the set of seeds to start this early. I decided against starting thyme. I’ll see if the varieties we planted last year survived the winter under their thick mulch and blanket of insulating snow. If they didn’t, I will buy transplants, instead.

I also decided against trying the Sweetie Snack Mix peppers again, and will start more of the other two varieties, instead.

This is what I started today.

There’s the luffa, of course. I probably could have started those at the same time as the onions. There are sprouts in all four onion seed rolls now.

Then there’s the Caspar eggplant, a new variety I’m trying this year. The Golden Boy celery is the first time I’ll be trying to grow celery. The Sweet Chocolate peppers are a variety the girls suggested. They grew well when we had them before. When it comes to flavour, they really don’t find much difference between any of the varieties we’ve tried. The California Wonder Bell pepper is a new variety for us that I chose specifically because they are described as being thick walled.

I decided to pre-germinate the peppers, eggplant and luffa, as the seeds are larger and will be easier to move and plant, once the radicals appear. I could also use a damp wooden chopstick to pick up the pepper and eggplant seeds.

With the peppers, I was thinking a total of 9 plants. When it came to pre-germinating the seeds, though, I ended up going for 9 seeds each – though the California Wonder got an extra when one of the seeds I grabbed looked like it was damaged. We’ll see how many actually germinate.

I also started just 9 seeds of the eggplant. I’m hoping to get 4-6 transplants out of those.

I was seriously tempted to pre-germinate more than 4 luffa. Even with pre-germinating, they do struggle to survive. We’ll see how many germinate – and how many survive until transplant time. Last year, I started with four, three pregerminated, one didn’t survive being planted, and of the remaining two, only one really grew much at all.

When it came to dampening the paper towels for this, I made sure to use warm water, too.

As for the celery, the seeds are so tiny, I decided not to pre-germinate them. Instead, I repurposed a clamshell from strawberries. The holes on the bottom are fairly large, so I set a paper towel on the bottom to keep the medium from washing out the bottom. Normally, I pre-moisten the starting mix in a large bowl I have for that purpose, but for such a small amount, I filled the container with dry mix, then used the warm water to thoroughly soak it, first, making sure there were no dry spots. Then I pressed it down to get rid of any excess water, and ensure there were not air gaps.

I have a little seed dispenser that I used to scatter the seed lightly over the surface. With seeds that small, the hard part is keeping them from being too densely sown. Also because they are so small, I didn’t top them with more seed starting mix. Instead, I added a layer of vermiculite. That got a thorough spray with warm water.

All of these fit into a seed starting drain tray and are now set on the heat mat, under the light. The light has “legs” that fit on the ends of the aquarium we originally got it for, so it only needed a couple of the fire bricks I’ve been using as supports. The other light we have rested directly on the aquarium frame, so if we need to bring that one out, it’ll need twice as many bricks to get the same height. The handy thing is, as things grow taller, we can just add more bricks to raise the lights by an inch per brick.

For the peppers and eggplant, I’ve got some deep cell trays I can plant them into. The less potting up, the better.

In the beginning of February, I will be starting tomatoes. I will probably pre-germinate, then use the Red Solo cups for those. I’m still torn between starting three, or all four, of the new varieties I got.

Oh, who am I kidding. I’ll be starting all four.

It would also be the time to start herbs, such as tarragon and savory.

Hopefully, this will work out. Aside from the luffa, these varieties have a relatively short days to maturity on them. It’s not just frost free days we need to think about though, but soil temperature. Last year, we had such warm days in May, but the overnight temperatures were so low, we still couldn’t transplant our seedlings until well into June.

Hopefully, this year will be a much better growing year, without the drought, heat waves and smoke!

The Re-Farmer