landracer's 2013 glog - 50% in the ground

HopsNBarley · May 4, 2013

Very nice selection... Can't wait to see the pics!
Good luck on your 2013 grow.

Nightshade · May 4, 2013

Great grow looking forward to pics

megahot · May 4, 2013

Nice list! Looking forward to pics!

kentishman · May 4, 2013

Nice list there Stephen! I expect I'll see the Datil, Harold's St. Barts and Uba Tuba on your grow list for next year! I hope you have a good grow this year and that you'll be saving seeds for the varieties you're growing. There are a few I'd like to trade with you.

Cheers, Tom

landracer · May 4, 2013

Thanks for the encouragement everybody! Now lets see if I can figure out how to post pics. Apologies if this ends up looking like a train wreck.

I cut down a few huge eucalyptus this spring and cleared a jungly patch for these beds. This is my first foray into pouring and acid etching concrete - my back hurts just looking at this. Anyhoo, here are the beds pre-plant:

Here is a top view during a test of the drip system:

This is essentially the same view post-plant. I have added infra-red transmitting mulch. If anything, the bed is running too hot for plants with tiny unestablished root systems. The drip has 1GPH emitters. I switched from 30 minutes every 3 days to 12 minutes per day and everybody seems much happier. I am a little concerned that I am overwatering though.

Here is a planting density experiment. Most of the bed is 16" rows with plants every 18". These plants are 12"x12" next to the cukes; they are not sitting right on top of the drip emitters. I am hoping that doesn't make them grumpy.

Here is a Chocolate Habenero seeded 3/15/13 and grown under T5HO's until 4/15/13.

Here is an Aji Lemon Drop seeded 3/15/13 and grown under T5HO's until 4/15/13.

This is a "Chili Red" I snagged at the nursery to serve as a canary. It survived my experiments and is starting to flower.

And here is a Mucho Nacho which I got from Cosco. It was $7 for 3 one gallon pots (Jalapeno, Habanero, Mucho Nacho) - I picked ones which had 2 plants in each pot so that I could practice teasing the roots apart. So my $1.17 Mucho Nacho looks like it will be the first to set pods.

kentishman said:
Nice list there Stephen! I expect I'll see the Datil, Harold's St. Barts and Uba Tuba on your grow list for next year! I hope you have a good grow this year and that you'll be saving seeds for the varieties you're growing. There are a few I'd like to trade with you.

Cheers, Tom

Hey Tom,

It took all my willpower to refrain from germinating the Datil, Saint Barts, and Uba Tuba! I'm already going to be pushing some C pubescens and some Chiltepins which I germed 4/15. Unless an epic disaster ensues (don't discount that possibility when I am involved), I should have way way too much seed by August. I am hoping I can isolate a few pods of each variety. That all assume I don't have too much difficulty getting them to pod. I get hella wind and my night temps run 48-50F all summer long. But if I can crack the code and make these little guys and gals happy, I should have pods and seed to trade.

How is your grow going?

Stephen

stickman · May 4, 2013

Looking good so far Stephen, I like the look of those planters... what are they made of? Hopefully the solar mulch works as well for you as it does for me here. I'll be keeping an eye out buddy...

landracer · May 4, 2013

stickman said:
Looking good so far Stephen, I like the look of those planters... what are they made of? Hopefully the solar mulch works as well for you as it does for me here. I'll be keeping an eye out buddy...

Hey Rick,

Thanks! The planters are made from 2" concrete slabs. I had to make them purty so that my wife would let me put a couple tons of concrete in the garden. Basically they are white concrete pigmented yellow or orange, acid stained a la Jackson Pollock, and then sealed. Not too expensive and they will last foreverish, but it sure was a lot of work. The slabs are 28"x36" and they weigh about 115lbs each. The bottoms are anchored by burying them 8-10" below grade and the top has a high tension cable holding it all in. I had to put cross cables every 6 feet because the entire bed was bowing downhill in the center. Each planter takes 3-4 tons of dirt.

We will see if it is worth the extra work over raking it flat and poking peppers in it. The bed alone runs 5 degrees warmer than the ground in March/April. With the mulch and covers, it is 78F four inches down at night - the bare ground is 59 to 61 right now.

landracer · May 5, 2013

Ok, a here are a few more pics from my plant out.

This is the Plan B Garden aka the Penthouse Suite.

I am experimenting with Sub-Irrigated Planters (SIPs/SWCs, etc.). These have a 15" bed of Pro-Mix or Sunshine #4. The ~70% peat provides enough capillarity to pull a decent amount of water up about 12". So the bottom 12" of the planter is moist and the top 3" is progressively drier. There is a fabric wick at the bottom of each bucket which acts as a bridge to get water from the rain gutters to the media. If the air gap between the gutter and the bucket is 2-3", then pretty much the entire "perched water table" (the overly damp layer at the bottom of a high peat mix) is mostly in the wick. The buckets are lined with geotextile to keep the roots out of the gutters (the square bucket and the geotextile may also trap the roots and keep them from circling - we will have a look at the end of the season). I should be able to regulated the top end of the moisture profile and the temperature with a plastic mulch, but I am waiting to see how they function without it first. The setup should result in constant water supply as long as I keep the gutters from going dry. So far, I have been topping them up every day - I did let them go two days as a test and they were nearly dry.

Here is what it looked like 2 weeks ago.

The little Thai Hot in the front on the left has just exploded. It has gotten twice as tall and twice as wide; and it looks like it is going to flower.

landracer · May 14, 2013

The Bees are back in town! A year ago I had an engineering dispute with my hive when I tried to install deep frames into medium supers. The bees fixed the problem, but blocked their ability to expand upwards into the new supers. By the time I noticed the problem, they had abandoned the hive, flown straight up 80ft, and set up shop in a hollow of a eucalyptus. They're still around, but were not as tight as we used to be and they don't give me honey.

This week, my two nucleus hives arrived. They are localized "survivor bees" bred from Russian bees that clean mites out of the hive on their own. These seem even less defensive than my 2011 bees. Both nucs are now installed and booming, foraging my lavender like maniacs at the moment.

I finished planting out the SIPs in the grow camp. They all seem to be pretty happy, though there is some invisible critter in there chewing holes in my leaves...probably mites. I neemed the heck out of everything.

The Black Hungarian is also flowering.

The beds are doing well also. Everything seems to be well rooted now and I have dialed back the water to 8 minutes per day. The Tomatillos have grown a foot in the last week and have dozens of flowers.

The tiny little Sangria F1s have forked and are flowering. This is both of them (I could not get them separated). They are only 6 inches tall!

I planted all of my culls in 3 gallon containers. Clearly my culling skills are deficient.

Nardello cull flowering.

Lipstick cull flowering.

The purple Jalapeno in the SIP is also flowering.

I think most of my annuums are just about ready to flower. Should be plenty of bees for them!

stickman · May 14, 2013

How cool is that! When I was a teenager, my Dad got about 4 hives of Italian Bees. We tended them together until I went into the Army and He got Multiple Sclerosis and couldn't do the heavy lifting any more. I'd have some now but my wife is terrified of the idea of having them so close. Good luck with your adventures in apiculture!

Chiles in your planters look good and Tomatillos look great! Keep 'em green buddy!

megahot · May 14, 2013

Great looking and healthy plants as well as set up! You are really going out with a bang this yr! I will be following!

landracer · May 14, 2013

How cool is that! When I was a teenager, my Dad got about 4 hives of Italian Bees. We tended them together until I went into the Army and He got Multiple Sclerosis and couldn't do the heavy lifting any more. I'd have some now but my wife is terrified of the idea of having them so close. Good luck with your adventures in apiculture!

Chiles in your planters look good and Tomatillos look great! Keep 'em green buddy!

Hey Rick, you should totally get some bees! They only need about 5-6 feet of personal space, maybe 15 feet if you want to give them extra elbow room. Everything fruits better when they are around; they are pollinizing maniacs. In 2010 we got about a gallon of blackberries for the whole season; in 2011 and 2012 we could pull in about a gallon per day all through July and August - that might be a slight exaggeration since we stopped harvesting when the freezer reached capacity and we ran out of people on which to pawn off blackberries. Plus, who doesn't want 20-40lbs of free honey? I also think that eating honey from the yard has made my allergies less crippling. These ladies are so gentle that I have stopped even putting gloves on when I feed them.

Great looking and healthy plants as well as set up! You are really going out with a bang this yr! I will be following!

Thanks Jon! I'm sure I will create all sorts of interesting problems for these poor chiles and need a ton of advice. Glad to have you along for the ride!