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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.
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all tucked in for the night-
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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-
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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?
 
I have used it in the past but not now...for preventive measures, I use the slug snail bait...I know it is not natural, but it works best for me...

as far as it killing lady bugs and such...I don't know whether it will kill the adults or not but I would say it would kill the larva...but the larva don't leave the plant IMO, they are just hungry little aphid eating machines...
 
AlabamaJack said:
I have used it in the past but not now...for preventive measures, I use the slug snail bait...I know it is not natural, but it works best for me...

as far as it killing lady bugs and such...I don't know whether it will kill the adults or not but I would say it would kill the larva...but the larva don't leave the plant IMO, they are just hungry little aphid eating machines...

Gotcha, I thought about using DE as a top layer on the soil in the pots to discourage nasty lil plant munchers but wasn't sure if it was a double edged sword. I planned on using slug bait myself, and NOT the beer kind although my neighbor home brews and has quite a bit on hand! :D
 
And now...back to our regularly scheduled program! SL...as I said before...your doing a great job and things are looking good!
 
Thanks everyone for the encouragements. I am making notes on my shopping list and so far I have-
pyrethrin
neem
slug bait
liquid nutrients
liquid Karma
ProMix or the Atami (sp?) stuff


What's your favorite nutrients brand?
Anything else I forgot?
 
April 23, 2010 update-

here's a couple shots of the "jungle"-

The peter peppers are the tallest in this picture, and the Peruvian Whites already have blossoms starting. I removed most of those as the plants are still in 20 oz beer cups.

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continuing.......
 
Here's the other table with the 18 hour lights-

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A tray of Fatalii-ies (what is the plural of Fatalii? Fataliis? Fataliiys? just wondering~~)
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And since I ran out of paper and plastic cups, I resorted to using old salsa tubs, which is actually kinda cool since now I can see some Bhut roots!
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The fataliis re looking a little yellow on the inner leaves, but I haven't been giving them any nutes and they are a little wet after a friend did watering for me last week. I'm working on drying them out and then will start the nutes.

I've decided to use some plastic disposable grow bags this year since I can't score any used ones from the landscaper. And I've found a local supply for 1-yard totes of compost and potting mix. Compost is $63/yard and potting mix is $83. They are in those big plastic tote bags that you have to lift with a forklift. I can have them drop the bags into the back of the truck, and I'm good to go.

I'm very happy to have found this local and seemingly cost effective solution for lots of dirt. I'll be adding some dolomite and slow release fert to the mix as I go. Next I have to get them out of the kitchen and start toughening them up/ I like the idea someone else posted about having them in the back of the truck, makes it easy to put to bed at night.
 
Well, my friends, I finally have something to update.

I had 2 yards of 50/50 topsoil/horse manure delivered a couple weeks ago, and am finally able to actually do some potting up. Here's the mixing site. Borrowed the neighbor's cement mixer and it works great. There's just a LOT of shoveling! I'm mixing about 10 shovels of dirt, 10 handfuls of peat and 3/4 cup dolomite lime powder.
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I started putting the peppers in the truck so they could be moved in and out of the garage for the nights.
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In the truck are...
Peruvian whites up by the cab
Fatallis on the left drivers side middle (they are pretty short but very green and healthy)
Aji Amarillo on the passengers side middle (they are very tall, some were probably 30" before transplant out of the beer cups)
a few mystery peppers on the tailgate left
Peter peppers on the tailgate right
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And here's the rest of the little darlings,,,,waiting for their new home.....

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I've been moving them inside at night until last night, when it finally seemed safe to leave them out. They did fine, even with a little rain. Both the truck and the ground peppers are in spots where they will get afternoon shade so they hopefully won't get too much sun.


continued...
 
So I know this is not really part of the grow log, but I thought I'd share today's happenings.

I had promised my chiropractor a bhut plant, so yesterday I took 2 bhuts, a trinidad scorpion and a mystery pepper to our next door neighbor's house. She works for the Chiropractor and I figured she could just take them to work. Well, her hubby comes out and is asking all these questions about the hot peppers, turns out he's kind of a chilehead himself! So I told him, just come on up, I'll give him some plants.

Well.... today.... as Salsadude and I are in the middle of cutting down a LARGE tree close to the house that needed to go away.......here comes Dr. Mark! He'd been down at the neighbor's getting a hair cut and ...Guess What?!? Neighbor's Hubby took the plants I had left for the Doc and planted them in his own garden! That scoundrel!

I talked to them later in the day. They told me hubby found out the hard way about peppers and privates. (Serves him right! Stealing Someone's Peppers!!! LOL)

Well anyway, Dr. Mark got a few more plants and he's just as happy as a clam.

Here's the tree we cut down today. A Box Elder tree, full of water. VERY heavy. We couldn't get it to topple with the undercut and a couple wedges. Ended up having to chain it to the truck and pull it over.

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It was unbalanced towards the house so I climbed up the tree and cut off a couple big limbs to try and get some weight off the back side of the tree. This limb fell on the back deck.
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And One more picture to get it back on peppers~
PODS! But it's on one of the Mystery Peppers..........No Idea what it might be.
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Time for an update as we FINALLY got everything repotted. The weather has been really crazy until a couple days ago so yesterday and today, we had the planting blitz.

Here's some of the grow bags filled with dirt awaiting plants. SalsaDude and SalsaKid jumped in to help which was AWESOME! We gave up on the cement mixer and just started layering dirt, peat,and lime on the tarp. By the time it got shoveled into the bags it was mixed just fine.
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The back of the truck worked great as a potting station since everything had to be moved around the garage to the sunny location anyway.
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overview of the pepper patch-
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and a little closer of part of the patch-
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more to come...
 
Another view
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Some bhuts
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Red Savina habaneros
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and my homemade deer repellant-
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The spray bottle has been sitting for a couple days so the oil has separated. I did not shake it up for the photo on purpose so you can see the oil in the bottle. And the beer is for me, not the bottle..LOL! Recipe is-
about a tablespoon pepper extract
1/2 tsp dish soap
1 quart water

The first night I sprayed the plants to keep the deer away, SalsaDude moved a couple of the bags and then rubbed right below his eye.............WRONG MOVE! Don't need to tell you guys how it looked for the next 24 hours. The spray seems to be working for the deer, but I saw a couple leaves today that look like other bugs have been munching on them, so tonight, I'll re-spray and see if it helps. I am wondering what the chile spray will do for ants, aphids and ladybugs.

The other thing I haven't dealt with are the cut worms. I was thinking about putting little piece of copper wire down in the soil and around the base of each plant if anyone thinks that it would help. I do happen to have a FEW scraps of copper wire laying around. -wink-

Final count is-
20 Red Savina
31 7 Pot/or/trinidad scorpions *see story below
23 7 Pot from AJ
37 bhut
16 fatalii
9 aji amarillo
15 peter pepper
18 peruvian white habs
4 Douglah from Josh
11 Mystery peppers

about 60 peppers given away, including one aji that another neighbor talked me out of. I really did not want that one to go, but she was so excited when I told her what it was. Aw well, what can ya do? Others were generous to share with me, so I gotta keep it going. I've given away bhuts, red habaneros, peter peppers, mystery peppers, ?trini/7pots? and 1 aji amarillo.

* 7-pot scorpion story-
When we had the seeds soaking in little plastic tubs prior to planting, SalsaKid bumped on of the tubs, which hit the next one and splashed a bunch of 7 pot seeds into the trinidad scorpion tub. So I have no idea which is what until the pods come on. More Mystery peppers, but at least I know it's one of 2 choices!

Some of the mystery peppers already have some pods coming on. I used one in the last throwdown and it was really mild, no heat at all. But so fresh tasting! YUMMY!

So, after 2 days of planting, my nails are trashed, my back is sore and I have one doozie of a sunburn! Time for a little pain killer....CHEERS!
 
Well done SL, at least the hard work is all done.... for a while anyways, wait till it's harvest time, sheesh you are gonna have you're hands full then. Good luck with keeping those deer away! How's you're neighbours form? stealing you're chiro's plants!! Tisk tisk on him!! Hope SD's eye has learnt it's lesson too ;).

:cheers:

Jas
 
Yea, that neighbor planted the peppers meant for the doc and then came back for more!!!

I can't believe I found a pepper whore right next door. And the crazy thing is, you would NEVER expect it from him as he's this quiet talking cowboy rancher, total meat-n-potatoes kind of guy. Cowboy boots, jeans and long-sleeved shirt every day. I just laughed when they told me the hot pecker story, and that was just from jalapenos!
 
thanks SS and Mel. I have staked about half the plants, so I still need to get stakes for the rest. And I found some 16-16-16 fertilizer in the back shed, so I think I'll put some of that on the plants along with the epsom salts which are already on the plants. I saw AJ's post recently about a Tbsp of salts and a Tbsp of ferts every 2-3 weeks. That sounds GREAT to me! I'll still do the Alaska fish fert when I can, but for now, the little darlings just need to grow, Grow GROW!

Harvest will be interesting.....I'm working on a couple recipes using store-bought jalapenos, just trying to get something dialed in for fresh peppers.
 
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