HAPPY NEW YEAR

Neon Eggplant in my garden, 2009

Happy New Year, one and all! I've enjoyed a lovely sunny day here in Arizona, though I'm sure it won't last. I actually had to water some of the garden beds today because they were getting too dry.

I'm looking forward to a wonderful new year and our all too short spring growing season. I've got my grow lights and heat mat set up, though I probably won't start a huge number of plants until after March 1. I will be gone a few days then to teach at a painting convention. 

In the meantime I am doing what is really  more germination testing. I have a lot of really old seeds so have planted some in the hopes of getting at least one plant to save new seeds from. I also bought some fresh tomato seed because apparently I never saved any from a couple of years ago. Be sure that will not happen again!

A fun project I'm looking forward to is growing some seedlings from this Neon eggplant. Neon is a hybrid and really is a shocking pink color, the photo doesn't really do it justice. I saved some seeds from this so I expect to get all different kinds of eggplants from it in several colors. There probably won't be any this particular color, but that's ok. What I'm really after are prolific plants that have fruit with thin, tender skins and not much or any bitterness.

Be sure to check for Harvest Monday and Seedy Saturday will be back next week!