Pepper plants on raised beds spaced the usually recommended 16 to 24 inches apart undergo intense root competition even before their leaves form a canopy.  With or without unlimited irrigation, the plants will get much larger and bear more heavily with elbow room.

Sowing date: Set out transplants at the usual time.  Double dig a few square feet of soil beneath each seedling, and make sure fertilizer gets incorporated all the way down to 2 feet deep.

Spacing: Three feet apart in rows 3 to 4 feet apart.

Irrigation: Without any irrigation only the most vigorous, small-fruited varieties will set anything.  For an abundant harvest, fertigate every three or four weeks.  For the biggest pepper plants you ever grew, fertigate every two weeks.

Varieties: The small-fruited types, both hot and sweet, have much more aggressive root systems and generally adapt better to our region’s cool weather.  I’ve had best results with Cayenne Long Slim, Gypsie, Surefire, Hot Portugal, the “cherries” both sweet and hot, Italian Sweet, and Petite Sirah.

Potatoes

Humans domesticated potatoes in the cool, arid high plateaus of the Andes where annual rainfall averages 8 to 12 inches.  The species finds our dry summer quite comfortable.  Potatoes produce more calories per unit of land than any other temperate crop.  Irrigated potatoes yield more calories and two to three times as much watery bulk and indigestible fiber as those grown without irrigation, but the same variety dry gardened can contain about 30 percent more protein, far more mineral nutrients, and taste better.

Sowing date: I make two sowings.  The first is a good-luck ritual done religiously on March 17th—­St. Patrick’s Day.  Rain or shine, in untilled mud or finely worked and deeply fluffed earth, I still plant 10 or 12 seed potatoes of an early variety.  This provides for summer.

The main sowing waits until frost is unlikely and I can dig the potato rows at least 12 inches deep with a spading fork, working in fertilizer as deeply as possible and ending up with a finely pulverized 24-inch-wide bed.  At Elkton, this is usually mid-to late April.  There is no rush to plant.  Potato vines are not frost hardy.  If frosted they’ll regrow, but being burned back to the ground lowers the final yield.

Spacing: I presprout my seeds by spreading them out in daylight at room temperature for a few weeks, and then plant one whole, sprouting, medium-size potato every 18 inches down the center of the row.  Barely cover the seed potato.  At maturity there should be 2[f]1/2 to 3 feet of soil unoccupied with the roots of any other crop on each side of the row.  As the vines emerge, gradually scrape soil up over them with a hoe.  Let the vines grow about 4 inches, then pull up about 2 inches of cover.  Let another 4 inches grow, then hill up another 2 inches.  Continue doing this until the vines begin blooming.  At that point there should be a mound of loose, fluffy soil about 12 to 16 inches high gradually filling with tubers lushly covered with blooming vines.