salsalady's first grow log

This whole forum has inspired me to attempt to grow a few peppers. After receiving some seeds from another forum member, I decided to give it a go myself. The original plan was to have a local farmer grow them for me, but I'd feel real bad if they did a ton of work all season and they only produced a few pounds of peppers.

SO~ Here we go!

The seeds I received are-
Red Savina habanero
bhut jolokia
trinidad scorpion
7 pot- homegrown
7 pot- other

I printed out the growing instructions from Peppermania to have something to work with, bought a couple 72-cell starting trays, some germination mix, recruited SalsaNut0.5 to help, and set to work.

We set the seeds to soak in warm bleach water, filled the trays with dry germination mix and poured water over top of the mix and into the bottom tray. Rookie mistake! An hour later and the water was still pooled up on top of the mix, hadn't soaked up at all. So we dumped the mix out into a tray, added more water and mixed it up by hand. Back into the cells and after rinsing the seeds, we were finally ready to plant!

While we had the seeds soaking in little cups, 'Nut0.5 bumped one that was pretty full of water and splashed some of the 7 Pot seeds into the Trinidad Scorpion cup. OH WELL!

We ended up filling both 72 cell trays and putting 28 more seeds in a couple other plastic things I had laying around. OMG! 172 seeds! What Have I Gotten Myself Into?!?!? And the really scary thing is......I have some Aji Amarillo, orange Peter Peppers, Fatali and Peruvian white hab seeds on the way! YIKES!


Here's the temporary set up. It's under a SS table out in the salsa kitchen (hope the inspector doesn't pop in for a week or two until I can get the rest of the set up done). There's a space heater to keep thing warm, a blanket to hold the heat in, a thermometer in the tray, and we used colored toothpicks for ID-ing the different varieties.

all tucked in for the night-

I checked this morning and the temp in the tray is a nice cozy 80F.


And, in trying to find buckets to grow the plants in, I found these-

These are 4.5 gallon oil jugs from a restaurant, the kind that fryer oil or salad oil comes in. I picked up about 50 of them at the first place I went. We took the cardboard boxes off them already. I figure we can cut away the tops, but keep the handle, poke some holes in the bottom....what do you think? SCORE or BUST?

 

[Alphaeon]

Don`t eat the Savina in one sitting... I hear they are HOTT


Nice progress! Wish I had a greenhouse. My season is ending quickly

 

[salsalady]

Don`t eat the Savina in one sitting... I hear they are HOTT


Nice progress! Wish I had a greenhouse. My season is ending quickly

thanks for the warning, Alphaeon! I'll make sure to split this one with Salsakid!

 

[salsalady]

here's some pics of the green house-

and the ones still outside, but in the new spot-
L to R
Trinidad scorpion/or 7 Pot
Peruvian White
Bhut Jolokia
7 Pot

Plus a little bonus! Found these when pulling up the landscape fabric. Saved them for the kid to start his worm bucket. Hoping to be able to add some Wigglers from ChileAddict in a few days! (hope the don't start fighting ?!?!???)

 

[chileaddict]

Thems some serious worms. Yours are coming soon. Get your worm farm ready Evan.

 

[Alphaeon]

You are gonna be loaded with pods soon

Great pics and plants!

 

[salsalady]

These are some of the Mystery Peppers- If anyone has a guess, please chime in! We'll be posting some tasting videos tomorrow to help ID them-

This first one has a smooth skin, about 2" and lots on the plant-

This next one seems hab-ish by the shape, it just looks MEAN! lol-

A whole lot of green Savinas

And Peters that come in all shapes and sizes-

 

[geeme]

VERY NICE setup you have there, SL. Your greenhouse looks bigger than my backyard!

G

 

[salsalady]

And some more off the wall stuff-

A couple weeks ago, we had a visitor, circling the property several times, came back 3 days straight. About the time they made their 3rd trip on day2, honey mooned them.

Salsakid's Peach-Peach salsa

and the first "harvest"
lots of cayennes
2 orange-ish fataliis (couldn't wait any longer!)
1 orangish-red Red Savina (same as above)
a green bhut that got knocked off the plant and a green peter pepper

Video Tomorrow!

 

[salsalady]

thanks Alphaeon- After all this work all season, we're really hoping to keep them going until they ripen.

geeme, we're fortunate that the previous owners were avid gardeners, so we inherited an 8x12 greenhouse. First time in 10 years that we've actually used it as a greenhouse!

We talked about putting the lights that were used for the seedlings back out in the greenhouse or also putting a small space heater in there on the timer just to keep it cozy in the early morning, but the weather is getting better, so I think we'll just let it ride for a while.

 

[geeme]

Did you ever figure out what was causing those peppers to get that water-logged look, and did the ferts correct it?

 

[salsalady]

I'm not sure exactly to which plant you are referring,

but ASSUMING (yea, we all know where that gets us... )...you are talking about the plant that has the curved peppers that rot at the bottom spot...

That one plant is still producing some nice sized pods but they all rot on the vine! It was one of the 8 plants that I basically abandoned. The other 7 plants are the aji amarillo that haven't produced squat!


The plant is still out there, and I'll take some pics tomorrow. Maybe someone knows the pepper or the issue. It grows these huge pods that rot in the middle.

 

[franzb69]

Rotting at the bottom end would most likely be blossom end rot. =)

 

[salsalady]

thanks franz- that's what I'd think except the rot happens on this one pepper in the middle of the pod.

Here's a picture of some pods from weeks ago.

the pods are fairly large and chunky and they hang down but have an upward curve. Here's a picture of pods on the plant-

it's like there's moisture in the pods or when there's dew on the pods it goes to the lowest point and that's where it rots.


It's the only plant that has done that, and it was one of those Mystery Plants...so I'm not worried or distressed. One plant out of (how many?) was a dud. I'm really happy with all the seeds that were given to me and purchased through peppermania.

 

[franzb69]

well more calcium won't hurt =D

not quite sure if it's BER.....

 

[salsalady]

Get a load of this load of peppers! There are 49 pods on this plant and it's still setting more! This is a little "mystery" cayenne-esque plant from Peppermania. We had 2 of these grow out of the mystery pack, and both are prolific producers. Nice Bite to the peppers, not too scorching. I'm saving seeds from these 2 plants!

This is on the greenhouse, a couple of different angles-

here's the plant on the back of the truck so you can get a reference of the size of the plant. (Ripe pods picked and in the front)

And just for fun, some fataliis and a nasty little bhut!

 

[chileaddict]

I sure loved your Fatalii Salsalady. It was HOT and tasty. Nice crop you got going now. Good to see those beautiful pods after all your hard work in this less-than-average season.

 

[franzb69]

those mystery cayennes look like chile de arbol to me. =D

 

[salsalady]

chileaddict- the fatallis have been getting some "attention" locally on a couple job sites with some "supposed" chileheads! And "less than good" is how the whole NW can describe this growing season.



Franz- chile de arbol...gracias~~~ and I'll check them out on grow sites to see if it looks like that it. We have saved many seeds from today's harvest because they are so good.




a couple weeks ago, a person on a job site asked me "hook him up". I said I'd see what I could do for him, to "supply his needs"....

Next time we went to the job....

I had a "special" package to deliver....when we arrived, I got the attention of the recipient, and let him know I had a Special Delivery for him. While looking furtively around to make sure no one was watching, I reached into my pocket and covertly handed him a baggie.

He worriedly glanced around to make sure no one else was watching and after glancing at the package, broke into a big grin Oh What joy this package would bring! What sweet pain would ensue!


Ah, the joy of a fresh bag of chile pepper seeds!!!

 

[franzb69]

Franz- chile de arbol...gracias~~~ and I'll check them out on grow sites to see if it looks like that it. We have saved many seeds from today's harvest because they are so good

ok. cool. chile de arbols are great as chili flakes. pretty mild heat for chiliheads like us. but nice flavor.

 

[salsalady]

The plants in the greenhouse are still surviving, but I'm not sure our budget will with the electric heater running 24/7 to try and get the last ( or should I say MOST) of the pods to ripen.

I've been picking pods as soon as they have a little color and putting them in brown paper bags to ripen. The majority ripen up just fine, and only in the last few days have there been some bad/rotten ones that had to be pitched.

This is a day's pickings from about 10 days ago-
red savinas on the left, fataliis top right, assorted peter peppers lower right, aji, carrots, ans de arbols in the top tub, 7 pods in the lower tub.

this is the fresh harvest of "green" red savinas, and red savs that used to look like the green ones but have been in the paper bag for a few days.

Peter Pepper, Fatalii and 7Pod

I harvested this batch of green pods from plants that were totally dead. There are still several plants that are putting out new leaves and I'll try to overwinter them, but many of the plants that were on the outside edges of the greenhouse just got too cold and died. These pods are headed for a batch of hot sauce (more on that later). btw- The bell peppers are from the store

A couple more still hanging on in the gh-

Some more pods headed for processing, including a SCORE from the local grocer. They'd received a box of orange habs by mistake and the habs were NOT selling. I expressed interest in taking all of them and the produce manager made me a great deal on 4.25 lbs of fresh orange habs. WOOHOO! They are in the large bowl. Also some fatalii.

Trays for the dryer- red savinas and an assorted tray of chile de arbol, orange peters, aji chinchi and fatalii, peruvian whites. I'm going to make some ground pepper flakes of assorted red chiles (chile de arbol, red peters, assorted hot red chiles) assorted yellow chiles( aji, fatalii) and an orange one (orange peters, bulgarian carrot, orange hab). Should be pretty if nothing else~

There is still at least a large bowl of red savinas and a small bowl of 7 pods on the plants in the gh. Just gotta get them to start to ripen and then hope for the brown bag to do it's trick. I honestly don't have a clue as to the quantity harvested, I haven't kept track at all since it's been so late and so sporadic.
To be continued~~~