This is the time of year when I’m planting like crazy. A few weeks ago I planted the first batch of seeds in our makeshift greenhouse in the basement that will grow into summer veggies, such as tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. I spent some time over the winter scouring the internet for sources of unusual pepper seeds from different cultures and cuisines, such as Aji Amarillo, which is used for making a delicious spicy paste (it’s from Peruvian cuisine). It’s a relatively rare pepper in the U.S. so I’m eagerly anticipating experimenting with it. I got it from TradeWinds Seeds.
Next up for planting are potatoes. I ordered several different kinds of seed potatoes a few months ago that need to go in the ground around St. Patrick’s Day (so I guess I better get on it!) Last year a resident family of rodents (either ground squirrels or field mice, or both) got into the potatoes and ate most of them. We had to dig up the remaining ones long before they were fully formed, so we had a meal of tiny potatoes that were supremely delicious, but unfortunately there were only a few handfuls of them. Ramon just put out traps for the rodents so hopefully we can stop them from raiding our potatoes (and everything else) this year. I was hoping the snakes would get to them and do our dirty work for us, but that wasn’t the case last year so I don’t want to take a chance this year. Once you discover the damage it’s pretty much too late.
In other news we are working on revising our special use permit application to fit the new zoning ordinance update and should have that resubmitted in the next week or so. Everything is moving along!