Our three cats don't care for February and March. My office provides a nice, warm place for them to nap during these wintry days. In fact, here's Pico now, doing his best to get in the way of this blog.

I was thinking of leaving the office door open, but one of our felines got curious and left paw prints in 20 of the 50 cells in the pepper and eggplant tray. Oh well...

The greens, beets, kale and chard that I planted on February 1 are a bit mixed. Some of the lettuce is suffering from damping off, but replanting won't be an issue. For the most part, all is well - there is simply so much going on that I am finding it hard to pay full attention to my seedlings (yet).

I am seeing signs of life in the Feb 6 planting of peppers and eggplant. I've been asked for the variety list, so here it is:

Hot peppers - Billy Goat, Bird, Datil, Fish, Lemon Drop, NuMex Vacquero, Padron, Peter, Pinata, and a variety given to me from my friend Bob that is highly lobed (and unclear as to whether hot or sweet).

Sweet peppers - Alma, Amethyst, Bianca F2, Bishop's Crown, Brazilian Orchid, Candy Corn, Chocolate Bell, Corno di Toro, Fire Opal, Garden Sunshine, Gusto, Kalman Hungarian, Lydia, Orange Bell, Pritiman, Royal Purple, Rubinova and White Gold.

Eggplant - Midnight Lightning, Twilight Lightning, Skinny Twilight, and a number of green skinned with purple blush findings that I am working on for a new variety, Mardi Gras, as well as a pure pale green selection, Green Ghost - as well as a purple and a white from Greece sent to me by a gardening friend.

I also planted ground cherry Goldie.

Today is day 5, and there is life in the Bianca and Brazilian Orchid cells - which is great. It will be interesting to see how the paw print cells do (fortunately, the plastic wrap was covering the trays, so no seeds were dislodged).

For the most part, my selections for this year are either old seed regeneration or various research projects to create new varieties, typically from hybrids. I will cover this in greater depth as the season progresses.