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  1. Organic Control for Tomato Hornworms on Peppers Tomato Hornworms are really big green caterpillars that can devastate your pepper garden. Giant brown moths lay pearl-like eggs on your pepper leaves, from which the monsters will hatch and start to eat voraciously. They can decimate all the leaves on a plant overnight. The best organic control might be picking the caterpillars off the plants, but by then it could be too late to save your plants. Also, touching and pulling them off is gross, but depending on how mad you are, you won’t mind! ...
  2. Pepper Plant Companions Wondering what to plant with your chile peppers to help them thrive? Flowers, chives, carrots, radishes, squash, basil, parsley, dill, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, cucumbers, eggplant, and onions all do well when grown in close proximity to peppers. But don't plant them too close that they will shade your pepper plants: Squash and cucumbers, for example, need ample space so we plant them at least 3-4' away from our pepper patch. You can also use trellises for your cucumbers to grow th...
  3. Why are my pepper plants so small? We have this question quite often: Why are my pepper plants so small? There is a number of reasons that your peppers may not be growing larger. TOO BRIGHT LED LIGHTS Recently, we had an experience (see the sad & small pepper plants above) where we had placed a super bright 100W Sansi Floodlight above our transplanted seedlings about 8" away. Sadly, it was TOO bright – if we had it farther away, such as a couple feet, the seedlings may have been fine. But, since they were fairly clo...
  4. Best Salt Substitute: Hot Peppers! Watching your salt intake? One of our favorite ways to spice up a dish without salt is none other than hot peppers! Any spicy peppers are a great way to get your tastebuds excited about anything you eat. We love growing hot peppers and then drying them and crushing into hot pepper flakes or powder so that we can sprinkle flavor on anything including sandwiches, soups, tacos, burritos, wraps, burgers, pizza, you name it!! Clean Salt-Substitute: The great thing about hot pepper flakes is that ...
  5. Best Tomato Cages What are the Best Tomato Cages?Sturdy ones. We like using the sturdier thick cages, but they're a little harder to find. If you grow tomatoes, they're probably one of your favorite crops, like ours, and you want to ensure that the plants are healthy and supported so you get a great harvest. What kind of Tomato supports do you use?Those darned flimsy wire "tomato cages" that are sold at hardware stores are useless once a tomato plant gets large, as you can see in these photo...
  6. Spicy Pickles Recipe Grow and make your own spicy pickles! Here's a couple recipes: Spicy Refrigerator Dill Pickle Recipe » Jalapeno Pickles Recipe » Spicy pickles are one of the easiest ways to preserve your cucumber harvest for year-round enjoyment. You can make spears or slices so you can use them on sandwiches, burgers, or just as a snack anytime. Of course, we think spicy pickles are the best, and we like to experiment with using different chiles to flavor them. Try adding Hatch Chiles for a Ne...
  7. Succession Planting It is smart to succession plant seeds for lettuce, radishes, beets, carrots, cucumbers, nasturtium, green onions, and peas all season long to keep the harvests coming. Our Little Gem Lettuce is a Chef's favorite! A cross between butterhead and romaine, Little Gem has the unique trait of having romaine’s crunch with the sweetness and small size of a butterhead. It grows 8" high producing a sweet and compact heart that is the perfect size for interplanting with your other veggies! We r...
  8. Grow Carolina Reaper Peppers - Part 1 Here is one method you can use to grow Carolina Reaper seeds into big pepper producing plants. Start with great seeds that will grow true Carolina Reaper peppers from a well-established company. Plant them into a deep 72 cell round insert tray with a solid tray underneath to catch the water. Fill the cells with seed starter mix and then gently push your fingers into cells. This will remove any large pockets of air and make the soil level with the top of the cells. A great seedling mix is Co...
  9. Growing Carolina Reaper Peppers - Part 2 We begin Part 2 (see Part 1) with Carolina Reaper plants that are more than 12 weeks old and still growing in a cell tray. They have already been hardened off to withstand normal outdoor conditions. Note - Some seedlings will be ready to be transplanted directly to the outdoor garden at this time, and some will enjoy being bumped up to the next container size and remaining inside under artificial lighting. These plants will be bumped up to the next container size and stay outside. Fill all 7...
  10. Free Seeds for Lettuce! NOTE: This offer is expired, stay tuned and signup for our newsletter for future deals.Now through June 30, 2021, you can get Free Seeds for Lettuce from Sandia Seed with the purchase of any of our Get Real Gardening vegetable seeds. We will add a free seed packet of our delicious Little Gem Lettuce in with any vegetable seeds in our Get Real Gardening collection. Looking for more more seed deals? Check out our Discount Seeds » Chef's love Little Gem Lettuce as it is a cross between ...
  11. Fastest Seed Shipping in the West! Our small seed company is working hard to provide the fastest seed shipping in the West! While other larger seed companies have been backing up with the huge seed demand increase, we've been able to keep on top of orders and ship within 1-3 days of ordering so you'll get your seeds in record time!Plus, for a limited time, get free shipping on our seeds: Click here to apply discount code automatically to your cart: 2021FREESHIPPING*not good with any other discounts, only good for US...
  12. 2021 Seed Catalog is at the Printer! Sandia Seed's brand new 2021 Seed Catalog is at the Printer and should be arriving to be ready to ship out in a couple weeks in early January. So, if you are looking for something exciting to grow, you have found the right place. Enjoy our new 2021 Seed Catalog and we hope you find a new variety to grow along with your favorites. Sandia Seed expands our seed catalog every year to meet demand for different and unique peppers. This year is no different with 8 new seed varieties. Here at Sa...
  13. Gardening Gift Baskets Looking for unusual gardening gifts for your Mom, Dad or other family and gardener friends? This organic food garden seed collection is the perfect unusual gift that is sure to please any gardener in your life! It's not exactly a gardening gift basket, but it's even better! It comes with a garden tote that is perfect for collecting veggies in the garden or sharing the harvest, or shopping! The Organic Food Garden Seed Collection is designed as the perfect gift for gardeners! A one...
  14. No-Peel Salsa Recipe from Homegrown Tomatoes Can you leave skin on tomatoes when making salsa?You sure can! This is the easiest way to make salsa!Using your food processor to make canned salsa with your tomatoes and peppers is the perfect way to save some time! No-Peel Tomato Salsa Recipe: • Tomatoes• Hot Peppers• Garlic Cloves, diced • Onion, chopped• Cilantro, chopped• Lime, juiced• Salt, Pepper, tiny bit of sugar to taste• Dash of Cumin (optional) DIRECTIONS: Core your tomatoes and peppers, slice in half. We like to use all types...
  15. Little Gem Lettuce Have you grown Little Gem lettuce? Also known as Sweet Gem lettuce and Winter Density, Little Gem lettuce is a small lettuce that is a cross between romaine lettuce and a butterhead type lettuce. Little Gem lettuce has a thinner stalk and thicker, juicier leaves than Romaine lettuce. Cooks and chefs like Little Gem lettuce because of it's crunchy texture, and it even has the ability to withstand heat in cooking. Little Gem is also good for summer lettuce as it is more heat tolerant than...
  16. Packet Contains 30 Seeds Want to maximize your budget? Or are you planting a big garden such as a community garden?Many of our seed packets contain 30 seeds or more. Check out all of these vegetable seeds that have at least 30 seeds so you can plant a large garden and grow a lot of food: Discounted Seed 3-Packs Get the most seeds for your buck with discounted seed packets including three of our most popular varieties. Our Jalapeno M, Poblano and Serrano Tampiqueño 3-pack, each with 30 seeds per packet, with a total ...
  17. Green Tomato Enchilada Sauce Green Tomato Enchilada Sauce Recipe This is a delicious sauce to use up your green tomatoes at the end of the season and store them for winter enchilada casseroles! You can make as much or as little as you want, depending on how many green tomatoes you have, if you're canning just use 4 Tablespoons per Pint jar, 8 Tablespoons per Quart jar of lime juice to make sure it's acidic enough to be shelf-stable. Of course, you don't need to can this either, you can just refrigerate for 1...
  18. When to Plant Sugar Snap Peas for Fall Harvest If you're looking for good fall crops to grow from seed, we have you covered! We have a new lineup of our favorite easiest-to-grow vegetable seeds to complement our chile pepper and tomato seed collections. One of the top growers are our Easy-to-Grow Pea Seeds. When to Plant Sugar Snap Peas for Fall Harvest In the fall, plant sugar snap peas in the last 8 to 10 weeks before the first expected frost to guarantee a plentiful harvest. Or, you can also provide cover such as a hoop house o...
  19. Powdery Mildew on Zucchini Got Powdery Mildew on Zucchini, Squash and Pumpkin Plants? This happens to all our pumpkins, squash, zucchini and cucumber plants every summer late in the season, treatments like milk or baking soda sprays don't seem to help. We usually prune off the worst affected leaves to give it more air circulation, but have learned to accept that this is the natural late-season stage here in the West. So don't worry, the squash, zucchini and pumpkins will still ripen! One thing about powder...
  20. Zero Waste Gardening Best Zero-Waste Gardening Ideas: • Store your veggies in glass dishes! We steam our fresh roasted chiles in our favorite pyrex cooking dish, no plastic needed! Works great, and you can reuse it again and again. Don't have one? Go buy one at a thrift store, they have tons of these beautful, long-lasting dishes that you can use to store cooked vegetables without the use of plastic.Fresh-roasted homegrown green chiles are the BEST!! Any glass dish with glass lid will work, we love ...