More Tomatoes and Peppers - April 30, 2025

Rain's a-comin'.  Again.  Tonight, they say.

Today, I'm going to try to get some work done in the garden.  It will require a trip to the greenhouse; I may be too lazy to go.

Yesterday, I bought 7 more tomato plants to replace those that I thought had died in the garden.  As it turned out, only 2 plants had actually died; one or two more had been broken off (or chewed off) close to the ground, but they were beginning to regrow leaves.  I did not intend to grow 32 tomato plants this year. but here we are.

In the garden shed was an almost full bag of mushroom compost and half a bag of worm castings.  I used them both up on the tomatoes but ran out of the compost before I ran out of tomatoes.  I can't decide whether to buy more compost or conduct an experiment to see if the composted tomatoes do better than the un-composted ones.  

I planted two jalapeno pepper plants and 4 hills of squash.  

Before supper, I coaxed The Husband into helping me lay down the cardboard boxes I've been saving to use as mulch.  Together with some boxes that Nanny had saved, we were able to cover most of the ground in the tomato rows.  I wish we had enough to do the whole garden . . . once it's planted.  Last year, we covered almost the whole garden with cardboard and landscape fabric.  But not as much pain as weeding, so I may be on the hunt for landscape fabric today.  

I'd hoped to get the purple hull peas and squash seeds in the ground last weekend, but it rained.  The rows could use re-tilling before I plant seeds.  The ground is still too wet to get in there with the tiller, and if it rains tonight as predicted, it'll be another week before we can plant.  I don't know why I feel so anxious about getting this stuff planted SOON.  In past years, I seldom got anything in the ground before the middle of May.

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Yesterday I went to a dermatologist to see about some skin issues.  One of them was a wart on the top of my hand.  I've blasted this thing THREE TIMES with an over-the-counter freeze pen, but it has never completely gone away.  The dermatologist blasted it with liquid nitrogen.  Today, the wart looks like a black M&M.  I'm scared it'll burst if I bump it.