We sell seedlings, so all told, I start about 50 different hot peppers, 50 sweet peppers, 20 eggplant and 100 types of tomatoes for our sales (aiming at about 5000 plants) - then another 200 or so different things for my tomato and pepper and eggplant research projects. It is pretty much a full time job from now until the end of summer!

So, you're a pepper guru, too?

Do you have any favorite mildly hot peppers -- say, less than Jalapeno level on the Scoville scale?

Some of the mildly hot peppers I've grown and enjoyed have included:

Spanish Spice, Garden Salsa, Ancho/Poblano of various types, Anaheims, Pasilla bajio, Greek and Italian Pepperoncinis, and a couple of the Numex varieties like Big Jim.

I've also grown some of the "imposters" like Aji Dulce, Sweet Cayenne, and 'Fooled You' Jalapeno.

Always on the lookout for new, mild hot peppers.

part of gardening. Strangely, I even enjoy it more than picking the vegetables and fruits that I grow. It is just such a miracle to watch the tiny sprout rise above the ground. You never know what will happen. Sometimes my seeds do nothing. Sometimes, they sprout long after I planted them. I love the surprises of that early stage in gardening.

By the way, your videos on planting seedlings have been very helpful to me.

I live vicariously through people in the South this time of year.

Here in Southern California, my tomatoes and peppers are still in small pots in a window. I plant to set them out this month.

I have so little space in my garden that I have to wait to plant my squash and beans until my peas have finished -- and my peas are doing so well that could take a few weeks.

I haven't been gardening that many years -- only since I retired. This is the first year that I planted peas and that did really well. I've worked on my soil (and replaced much of the clay natural to my garden with purchased composted soil), and it is just beginning to pay off.