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Fighting Fungus, Fungus Gnats, and Whitefly in Your Seedlings

 Starting plants indoors can certainly be more difficult that it sounds. The seedlings become your babies, of a sort, and no doubt you keep going to check on them. I find myself in a state of concern, wanting to water, then thinking I shouldn't have, and it goes around in circles. After a week of following some of the suggestions below, however, things seem to be well under control. To prevent damping off, where the stem rots near the soil, and other disease, watering must be kept to just as much as is really needed. Since the plants quickly develop a tap root which goes straight down, watering should be from below, letting the starting medium draw it up. Any water left in the tray after fifteen minutes should be poured out. The plants will be hydrated, and they should not be watered again until the soil is good and dry or the plants start to wilt. This will help to prevent fungus from growing and gnat larvae from developing. On the other hand, whitefly likes warm and dry condition
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Spring '21: A Start on Our Land

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  We came to start laying out cardboard to kill the grass and make our life wonderful; we'd bought a 250 foot roll of corrugated paper, and who should be interested in it but the NonGrata Trio. (Can they read the Private Property sign?) Of course we will be planting food for them, but the cardboard is ours! At the left in the picture is the area we covered a few months ago. We put in some of our forest soil then and planted garlic and clover, and that has provided miniscule bits of green. That's ok; it is only March. The sticks on top are because we don't have a wood chipper yet, and we can't currently get a truckload down to the area. This trip we put in fava beans (broadbeans) and daikon radish--our goal at this time is to fix the soil. We'll be planting lots of beans to help turn the whitish silt into loam, and worms will feed on the daikon radish, leaving us castings. We ran out of time or we'd have covered the soil with cut weeds. Hopefully the clover will
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Peppers Are Perennials. Who Knew?

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 I guess I'm not the only person unaware of this marvel, or the Charming Gent on YouTube's California Garden TV wouldn't be teaching it. The benefits of this information, obviously, are that 1) you don't have to start or buy new pepper plants every spring, and 2) you can get mature plants going earlier and thus begin to harvest fruits sooner and longer. (I love poblanos!) Photo by  Desi Min  on  Unsplash To learn about overwintering peppers in various climates, please see the Charming Gent video link above for good visuals. It is some work in all but mild climates involving pruning the plants back severely with a well-cleaned and sharp cutter, leaving no leaves. Cut nearly to the nodes in the crotches and near leaves. Remove branches that have no nodes and spindly branches that won't bear fruit. Put the peppers into 1 to 3 gallon pots to bring inside. Don't water them during the winter unless the soil is very dry. (Don't be afraid to grow them in a sizable
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