The bearfan 2011 garden has the tomatoes planted.

I still need to put in my peppers. For tomatoes I planted:

Early Girl X1
Rutgers Select X2
Tomato 444(heat tolerant) X2
Champion X2
Mortgage lifter X1
Whopper X2
Carnival X1
Beef Master X1

I didn't go with all Early Girls like in years past. I'm not using Miracle Grow this year. I'm using some organic fish emulsion and seaweed liquid fertilizer. I would much rather have 4 foot tall plants with gobs of tomatoes instead of 7 footers with hardly any tomatoes like last year. I'm going to prune the tomatoes and not pinch off all the yellow flowers until they reach 4 feet tall. I'm short on time these days so I'm going to basically just let them go and see what happens. For my peppers I will go with Hot Banana X2, Sweet Banana X2, Peter X3, and Poblano X2. I'll need to get my sun shade up in less than a month. I'll post pics when they start taking off.

IIRC, we are a bit North of you (Central Arkansas),
and ours are still under the lights.


We are watching the forecasts closely,
and may put some out tomorrow (April 5th).
That is a bit early for our area, so we are keeping some in reserve
in case of a late frost.

Creoles (4) and Rutgers (4) will be our main For Eating crop.
Several San Marzettis (Roma) for Canning and Marinara Sauce.

We will experiment with Bloody Butchers (who can resist THAT name),
Sausage,
Campbells 1327,
Japanese Black Trifele,
& Brandywine
(It may be too hot here for Brandywines,
but we're going to try again because it gets so many
rave reviews.

Over the 4 previous years,
Rutgers & Creoles have been our best.
Rutgers for taste + reliable production
Creole for pure "now THATS a Tomato" taste (hands down)

We are excited!
:hi:

I ordered all my seeds from Burpee this year so this year I've got

1 x Better Boy @ Home, 2 x Better Boy @ community plot
2 x Marglobe @ community plot
1 Black Krim @ Home, 2 x Black Krim @ community plot
2 x Orange Slice @ community plot
1 x Black Pearl @ Home, 2 X Black Pearl @ community plot
1 x Cheriees Jubilee @ Home, 2 x Cherries Jubilee @ community plot

Doing 4 hot peppers (Jalapeno, Serrano, Thai Chili and Carribean Red) and 2 sweet (bell) peppers as well.

my all froze in 6b-7

The peppers all died and I had to replant new ones. I have the shade up already. Mrs bearfan says I'm obsessive compulsive about everything including gardening. I pinched off all the yellow flowers last year until the plants were about 4 feet tall. Then it was too hot for the blooms to set. I went to the dollar store and bought some buckets and cut the bottoms out. I put them around the tomatoes so when I water the water will go straight down and not run off. I bought the plants that were about a foot tall and buried the entire thing except for about 2 inches from the top. This is one month of growth.









And of course the nosy dogs have to see what's going on.



Here are some pics of gardens I grew from the last few years:







I grew Cherokee purple one year.



I sure hope our table looks like this in about 6 weeks:

The garden isn't tilled yet and there's no point in bothering to do that until next week. The chives are in a barrel planter and they're beautiful.