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Short Season Tomatoes If you live in a short season climate with early frosts, rather than growing tomatoes that have a long growing season, it's best to pick short season tomatoes so that you'll get your harvest before the cold weather arrives in autumn. Want to grow Short Season Heirloom Tomatoes? An heirloom tomato is an open-pollinated, non-hybrid heirloom cultivar of tomato. Check out our list of our favorite short season heirloom tomatoes »The tomato is a tender plant that is easily damaged by cold w...

Cilantro Pesto Recipe Cilantro tends to come in all at once (it's good to keep sowing it throughout the season as it bolts quickly once the summer warmth arrives, no matter what you do!) So, preserve your precious Cilantro harvest and make Cilantro Pesto! Cilantro pesto with almonds, olive oil, lime juice, fresh garlic or garlic scapes, and spicy green chiles like Jalapenos or serranos is awesome. :) Great with chips, or tossed with pasta or vegetables. Simple Spicy Cilantro Pesto Recipe: Ingredients: ...

Fermented Jalapeno Hot Sauce Recipe Fermented Jalapeno Hot Sauce Recipe Ingredients: 6-8 jalapeños (or any hot pepper) 1 bell pepper (or any sweet pepper) 1/2 of a white onion 3-6+ Cloves of Garlic, peeled 1 tablespoon of salt (no iodine) 32-oz Canning Jar with lid* (Or use a Pickle Pipe or a fermentation crock to avoid the need to burp!) *You can use any size glass jar that will fit the ingredients, it depends on the number of peppers and size of the onion you use. The main thing is to make sure there is about an inch or l...

Easiest Vegetables to Grow From Seed Sandia Seed has chosen our Easiest Vegetables to Grow From Seed in our new Get Real Gardening collection. These are 20+ of our favorite easy vegetables to grow from seeds that you can grow in your garden. Some of these are easy vegetables to grow in pots as well, such as lettuce and radishes. Get Real Gardening seeds are perfect for the beginner gardener because they are dependable varieties that will grow well in a wide range of conditions. You can grow your own food at home and start enj...

Grow a Victory Garden Grow Lots of Food This Year!If you haven't started your vegetable garden yet, now is a great time! Here are our top tips on How to Start a Garden: 1. Grow a Variety of Seeds! Growing different types of vegetables is a great way to harvest over a longer season! While peppers and tomatoes are great for summer growing for fresh eating, pickling, and lots of recipes to use year-round, you can also grow other veggies throughout the seasons. Lettuce, onions, cabbages, radishes, kale, cila...

Fastest Growing Tomatoes Discover our Fastest Growing Tomatoes so you can get to eating those juicy gems from your garden earlier this summer! Whether you're planting late, or live in a short season climate with late spring frosts and early fall frosts, growing short season tomatoes that harvest in under 75 days can really make a difference! What tomatoes have the shortest days to maturity?All of these short season tomatoes have the least amount of days to harvest so if you're looking for more tomatoes soo...

Chili Oil Recipe Homemade chili oil is a thoughtful, flavorful gift and kitchen staple that’s easy to make and looks beautiful in a jar! If you grow your own chiles, this is a great way to use them long after the season is over. There’s something special about giving a homemade gift that people can actually use — and a bottle of chili oil adds a fiery, aromatic touch to any kitchen. It’s perfect for drizzling over noodles, pizza, burritos, eggs, or grilled vegetables. See a couple recipes below, plus lots of ...

Should I Plant a Garden? Of course you should plant a garden! Gardening is one of the most wonderful things you can do with your time. Once you plant a seed and watch it grow into beautiful flowers, or a huge tomato plant or a robust pepper plant loaded with green chiles, you will fall in love with gardening. When you pick your first vegetable or fruit to eat, it's an amazing feeling of accomplishment and gratitude. When you see the first bumblebee visiting the flowers blooming in your native garden, you will ex...

Happy Earth Day! Happy Earth Day! Grow your own food and shorten your food chain! Just imagine how much plastic, packaging, transportation and energy we are saving by growing more of our own food and supporting local farms. Go gardening! Top 10 Ways to be Good to Mother Earth: 1. Grow Food Growing your own food saves a huge amount of resources! And heck, it just tastes better when it's fresh.2. Compost Compost is nature's free fertilizer and it promotes good soil health. Composting is also nature&#...

Types of Hot Peppers There are a ton of different types of hot peppers! Sandia Seed is all about chile peppers, and we carry seeds for over 101 types of peppers from around the world. Try growing a new type of hot pepper this year! We add new varieties each season, so you can grow peppers of the world in your garden! Looking for mild or super spicy peppers or somewhere in-between?View our List of Peppers by Heat » View our full list of all the types of peppers we carry in one place on our online seed catalog »...

Homegrown National Park in your Yard! We recently read the wonderful book, Nature's Best Hope by Doug Tallamy, and it has inspired us to plant even more native plants in our garden to create what he calls, own very own “Homegrown National Park.” The idea is that if you plant native plants, you create an wildlife oasis no matter if you're in the heart of a busy city, or if you're out more in the countryside. Native plants are best suited to the birds, the bees, butterflies and other wildlife in your area. As home veg...

Shorten your Food Chain Shorten your Food Chain Shorten your food chain this summer with a vegetable garden, CSAs, and farmer's markets! 1. Grow Food Growing your own food saves a huge amount of resources!And heck, it just tastes better when it's fresh. We sell hundreds of pepper seeds from around the world, plus over 44 of our favorite tomatoes! Find the fastest growing vegetable seeds so you can eat sooner from your garden this season! 2. Join a CSAIt's hard (nearly impossible) to grow ALL your own...

Potted Pepper Plants Grow your own potted pepper plants with any of our seeds. Sandia Seed carries seeds for over 100 peppers from around the world, so you can grow the perfect potted pepper plant for your home or garden. Some people even train peppers into bonsai-type pepper trees that live for years. We carry a wide variety Ornamental Pepper Seeds that are show-stoppers as potted pepper plants, and they are all also edible ornamental peppers and are beloved in the kitchen for use in flavoring everything from sa...

Is it too late to start tomatoes and peppers? Around March, April and May, customers ask us this question: Is it too late to start tomatoes and peppers?What we have to say is – it's never too late to start seeds! In the spring, you can grow faster growing peppers if you want to get a harvest in a shorter time. For example, many of the fastest growing peppers are ready in 57-65 days from planting! If you start them indoors in a warm place (pepper seeds like germinating at 80-90˚F), then they will get a nice head start for transplanti...

Salsa Recipes Salsas can be made hundreds of different ways. We like to use whatever we have on hand to make salsa, including everything we are growing in our garden – so don't worry if you don't have the exact ingredients for any of our favorite recipes below – make the recipe you're own! Salsa Recipes:Carolina Reaper Salsa Recipe »Trinidad Scorpion Salsa Recipe »Vinegar Pepper Sauce Recipe »Ghost Pepper Salsa Recipe »Orange Salsa Recipe » Pico de Gallo Recipe »Tomatillo Salsa Recipe »Hat...

Pickled Pepper Recipes Pickling is a great way to preserve your pepper harvest!Pickled peppers are delicious for snacking, or as a topping for sandwiches, soups, chile stews, frittatas, pizza, you name it! Here are a few of our favorite Pickled Pepper Recipes: Pickled Jalapenos Recipe »Pickled Banana Peppers Recipe » Cowboy Candy and Cowgirl Candy Recipe Candied jalapeños, are also known as Cowboy Candy, and Cowgirl Candy refers to a variation that includes pineapple for a sweeter, making a more tropical flavo...

Backyard Chile Breeding Have you ever wondered what it takes to create new chile peppers with unique colors, shapes, and tastes? Do you want to save your own chile pepper seed from the garden to keep a line of plants all your own? The process is relatively simple but requires commitment. Choosing your chile pepper Deciding on plants to save for seed is a blend of observation, knowledge, and personal preference. We all can see what chile pepper cultivars grow best in our farms and gardens, but there are many traits...

Easiest Peppers to Grow If you haven't planned a garden yet, now is a great time. We have picked out some of the fastest growing peppers which are also of course the easiest to grow so that you can get your garden growing quickly! Here Is Our Favorites List Of TheEasiest Peppers To Grow: Early Jalapeño Seeds Early Jalapeño - The best pepper for short seasons and cooler climates! These are one of the earliest peppers, and everybody loves jalapeños because they can be prepared in so many different ways. Jalap...

Is it too late to plant tomato seeds? Is it too late to start tomatoes? Definitely not. You can plant tomato seeds anytime in the spring. Many people around here don’t sow them until April or May, as they are fast germinators and fast growers. We find they often do even better when they are planted in the ground when they're younger (after it warms up and all chance of frost has passed, of course). We are in the West, so we typically start our Tomato seeds in late in April or early May. How early you start them depends on ho...

Vegetable Seed Catalog Looking for a vegetable seed catalog? Sandia Seed carries tons of seeds of what we think are the best vegetables you can grow – Chile Peppers and Tomatoes! Our new Vegetable Seed Catalog has over 100 peppers of the world, and over 44 tomato seeds including heirlooms and hybrids, you're sure to find tons of vegetable seeds to choose from! Try growing something new this year, if you like spicy we have lots of hot peppers including the hottest peppers in the world such as the Carolina Reape...