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Exhibitionists

W

wordwiz

Don't start salivating - not yet!

How many people show stuff at the local county fair or a similar venue?

The local fair's manager said I can exhibit a hot pepper display, a tomato display and one for growing potatoes in a container.

If you've done this, do you have printouts visitors can take with them or just a sheet showing info about the plants.

Because the Fair runs five days, I cannot spend all the time the fair is open by the displays (though they will be protected).

I'm thinking of a sign that denotes what each plant is, its most notable features and a link to a web site where interested people can get more in-depth info.

Another goal is to promote container growing, city slicker style. One where a person can use a 2-liter pop bottle to grow carrots, beets, onions, lettuce, radishes - probably other veggies (I'm open to suggestions!).

Simply put, get more people interested in growing their own and attending the fair to see how.

Mike
 
are you going to enclose your plants Mike?
 
AJ,

At the fair? They probably will be put on shelving that will be hard to get to. A risk - sure. Some thug could destroy a lot of stuff, though the fair always has a volunteer watching. But hey, while I'm at work, a hail storm could destroy my plants.

Our fair only has like four categories for peppers: Jalapeno, Habenero, Hungarian Hot Wax and Other pepper,

I do like their potato category, they have one: Red Potato. Alas, I think they are talking about the skin and not the color inside! The ones I have growing is completely red (or blue). And they don't ahve a category for blue potato!

If you have room in your concrete garden, you ought to try a potato. You can grow in in a cage (line it with screening to keep the dirt in) and see how tall it will grow. Every time the plant get six inches tall (from the soil) add four inches of dirt/straw/mulch. As long as your summer is, you could possibly grow a six foot potato plant in a one square foot area and harvest more than 30 pounds of potatoes. Then again, given your green thumb, make that an eight foot plant and 50 pounds.

Mike
 
I don't know about the green thumb Mike, but thanks for the compliment anyway...

What I had in mind was going to walmart/kmart/home despot/lowes and looking at some thin plexiglass...cut it in lengths and widths to make a grow box big enough to house the plant...you could get fancy and put a CFL in the top of it and have a controlled environment...use a heavy duty glue that will not be toxic to the plants or simply use 1/4" thin wood slats glued to the plexiglass about an inch wide for the corners....leave the bottom open so you can "slip" it on and off the plant...just an idea for a display...

you got to admit, it would look nice if you had a description of the plant afixed to the inside of the plexiglass somewhere...

this could be used for the display and keep peoples hands off of the plants plus you could use it for overwintering...

what do you think?
 
AJ,

I don't have the time, talent or treasury to do what you suggest for 65 plants or so! Not only that, but the space they will be displayed in is normally very, very hot and dry. Last year, except for Sunday, the temps during the fair were close to 100 outside - inside that building they were considerably higher.

To give you an idea of how I suspect the plants will be displayed, think of a set of bleachers that have five rows of seats - not chairs, but rows of aluminum. The plants will be on the top three rows, making it hard to reach over and grab a pepper or tomato. Not impossible, just not something one could easily do.

I like the idea of a display case and if it works out good this year, I will search for one for next year.

Not sure about overwintering - I plan on growing stuff this winter, using at least 15 linear feet of my grow room. (As an aside, my 16 year old daughter wants the area for her bedroom.) I plan on eating ripe, garden tomatoes all winter and spring!

Mike
 
sorry mike, thought you were only going to take 3 or 4...my mistake...
 
Are you selling as well wordwiz?

since you've got many plants & only a few varieties, you could try color coding the pots for each variety. It would make it easy to list if your doing pamphlets & people can see what's what without having to get too close. Also makes life easier at the register if there is one.

Good luck spreading the pepper word.

Great tip with the spuds, I'm going to try that. You mean if i just keep throwing dirt into the cage, it'll keep growing up & putting out more potatoes.

Awesome! So the ones at he bottom will get ripe first?

If my cage was in vertical sections and was built so that i could take off the bottom 1' of cage, harvest whats there and place the empty section back on top for more dirt. Would cutting the main root at the base kill the plant? (without disturbing the rest of the plant)?

lol...look-out i've turned nerd again
 
Bentalphanerd,

I won't be selling anything at the fair, though if I have enought ripe pods I might give away a few samples.

Regarding the potatoes: once you get about six inches of stalk and leaves, add enough dirt to cover all but the top two inches. Supposedly, you can harvest potatoes during the year by gently removing them from the soil. In theory you could remove a section but I would probably just pull out a couple spuds here and there.

BTW, you don't have to use dirt, according to what I've been told. You can use mulch or straw instead.

I'm curious to see how tall a plant I can grow and how many potatoes it produces. The seed potatoes were between 3.7 and 4.4 ounces when I planted them and it would be neat to get 37-44 pounds of potatoes from them.

Mike
 
i've heard of this too, only with tires (was it a thread here? maybe...). anyways, they said 3 tires high but i don't know if that's an absolute limit. also, wouldn't you want to get to the bottom potatoes first? or would you just get all the potatoes at once? (note: i've never grown potatoes in any way so i don't really know the ins and outs of potato harvesting to begin with...) i kinda wanna try this now, i like potatoes...
 
GB,

If you use tires you cannot get at the bottom ones first, at least not very easily. Three-four tires may be the limit but I suspect it depends on your growing season. We always planted them in April and by mid-July, they had grown enough to make digging a few hills worthwhile. The plants tended to die toward the middle-end of August, but there is still a good month of time left. Using one 20 watt CFL bulb per plant, the best one is growing about 2 inches per week. If it can maintain that all summer, by the end of September it would be well over four foot tall and by Christmas about 7 foot tall.

It would probably be the most unique Christmas present I have ever unwrapped!

Mike
 
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