2017 Grow Log - 200 plants, 30 varieties

Nice set up and good luck with the H.S. company. 

Nice list and good luck this season, both with growing and selling!
 
Normally to post a pic I click the green box below the smile and enter the full url (http://imgur.com/a/YmqGi)
 
But it seems imgur.com doesn't allow this to work. I own a domain and ftp my pics to the server. Perhaps you should get an account here at the THP.

nice list , best of luck to ya !      

Thanks for the well wishes.
 
I see what you mean about the image button.  I guess you have to pay to upload pics directly.  I've been meaning to do that anyway.
 
I actually entered my sauce in the THP awards last year, but alas I didn't win anything, not that I really expected to.  I ordered a bottle of Pepper North's winning sauce, the Momente De Muerte, just to see what all the fuss was about.  It's pretty good, even though I'm not that big a fan of sweet hot sauces.  The flavor sort of coats your mouth, it's kind of an immediate feeling you get all over, like camphor or something, I can't really explain that.  Maybe it's the cherries.  I still like my stuff better, but I may be biased

If your going big you should join the extreme membership. You can do more and sell on thp. O welcome

Great list , good luck , there is always space for more hotsauce !
Most hot sauce makers concentrate on 3-5 different peppers , please name your go to sauce peppers.

As I mentioned, last year all I had were bonnets.  Not that that's a bad thing, the MOA has quickly taken the top spot as my favorite hab.  It used to be the Caribbean Red.  They just have so much good chinense flavor.  I'm hoping to make one batch mid-summer with fresh peppers, that will probably be mostly bonnets, but my experimental batches last year convinced me that sweet bell peppers are also a great addition to a hab sauce, so I'll probably mix in some annum and aji varieties as well.  I'm growing a couple.  The bonnets will provide all the heat in that one, but the other peppers will alter the flavor quite a bit.  I'm also planning a couple of superhot sauces, probably a berry ghost sauce, and maybe one made up solely of a few different kinds of the scorpions.  The ones I'm calling "cardi scorpion?" are clearly not cardi scorpions, but that's how they were originally labeled.  Two years ago my friend's plant got like 8 feet tall, so I'm hoping to have a lot of them, they're awesome whatever they are. All the sauces except the mid-summer batch are going to be fermented for anywhere from 1-4 months.  I'm planning to just keep starting new batches of fermentation throughout the summer then cook it up all at once at the end.  The more lightly fermented batches should contribute more of a fresh hab taste to the sauce, while the older batches will have much more of a funky fermented taste.  Planning to do wild fermentation only, it really does make a difference I've found.  Sauces I've started with yogurt whey or Caldwell's aren't quite as tasty.
 
Also last year one of my best test batches was the one I made with all the green peppers left on the plants when I chopped them down at the end of the season.  I'm hoping to do another one like that, basically a "kitchen sink" sauce.  Also thinking about one sauce made with only yellow 7 pots, and an aji (predominantly) pineapple sauce, with or without actual pineapples in it.  I'm hoping to have 5 or 6 different sauces.  Last year I was limited by only have one pepper to work with.  The other ingredients typically include carrots and/or apples, sweet onions, salt, vinegar, maybe some coriander and/or cumin, ginger, probably just raspberries for any berry-ish sauces.  The carrots and apples and onions are usually added pre-fermentation, the rest at cook time.  Last year the sauce was under 3.8 PH after fermentation, but that batch didn't have any fruit in it.  I actually had a bottle almost explode the other day, it was one that I added mangoes and pomegranate to at cook time.  I had the bottle just sitting on my desk and noticed it looked kind of bubbly so I went to take off the cap and it sprayed everywhere.  I guess some wild yeast got in there and it started to ferment.  Thinking about putting a warning about potential explosions on the bottle of any fruity or berry sauces I may have, heh.
 
Another idea I had is a really white sauce, only peach and cream varieties, white carrots, maybe coconut milk, but I'm not sure how well that would work in a bottled sauce.  Not terribly original, but I think it would be cool.  Was thinking I could call it "moonlight madness" or maybe "lunatic sauce", because, you know, the moon is white.  Obviously I haven't fully finalized my recipes for this year.  I'm planning to go buy a bunch of habs from the Mexican grocery store and make test batches to submit for the recipe approval, and substitute the real deal for the final sauce.  Last year I waited until I had my own peppers to make the test batch, and the approval took over a month so I had to freeze a bunch of the peppers.  It was a nightmare, all my friend's freezers were packed with peppers.  I had to use yogurt whey starter, so I had to put that on the ingredient list, which just looks weird.  What's yogurt doing in a hot sauce, I'm sure people were asking themselves.  I'm hoping to avoid that this year.
 
 

Edit:  Another idea I'm playing with is one really mild fermented sauce, made with only seasoning peppers and maybe some ajis.  The Turkish Snakes I'm planning to just sell at the farmer's market, because they look cool.  The Pepper Joe Not Ghosts are from seeds I ordered from Pepper Joe several years ago, they were supposed to be ghosts, I don't know if they were crossed or what, but whatever they are they're a great pepper.  A small red 7-pot kind of chinense.  The ones at the bottom of the list are all varieties I ordered from the Hippy Seed Co this year.  The rest are mostly seeds from folks on here.

A few updated pics.  Things are coming along nicely, but they're getting crowded.  I already gave away about 35 plants, but I'm still have about 40 extras on top of the ones I'm actually going to keep.  Hoping to hit up the farmer's markets this week and sell as many as possible.  
 
 
 
A wide variety.  The dark ones are chenzo chillis, the only frutescens I'm growing.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
These are mostly bonnets.  They look the same as last year's, all short and stocky with crinkly leaves, so I think my plan to get non-crossed seeds worked well.
 

 
 
 
 
A few more random plants.
 

 
 
 
Overall shot.
 

All looking good however I think you mean first sentence #8 .... MoA your favourite bonnet not Hab

See that's where I've always been confused.  I always thought any chinense variety could properly be called a hab.  What exactly is it that makes something a hab?  Just the name, like an orange hab, or a red hab?

Habaneros are a pepper type unto themselves,
just like Fatalis, or any other c. chinense.  The
Habanero is one member of the c. chinense species
of the genus Capsicum.
 
There's a quick tutorial on pepper classification:
 
http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/2011/shook_john/classification.htm

Hrm.  I need to adjust my thinking, I call everything a hab and it clearly confuses people, lol.
 

theBelvidere said:

Hrm.  I need to adjust my thinking, I call everything a hab and it clearly confuses people, lol.
 

Click to expand...

Most of them are already confused, my friend  
But, now you know, so good on ya for asking.
 
There is a little learning curve to the pepper growing 
thing     and always more to learn, especially on this
forum.
 
Good luck, tB.

Quick update.  Not much going on, the chinenses are getting bushier, the rest are getting taller.  I've adjusted the chains on the lights a bit, still have them on 24/7.  Started giving them low doses of fish emulsion and epsom salts a few days ago.
 
A few pics:
 

 
 
A padron flower:

 
 
Various:

 
 
Mostly bonnets:

 
 
The non-chinenses:

 
 
Various:

 
 
 
 
 
I was originally planning to get the plants outside on the 7th, but it looks like the weather isn't going to cooperate, so my new goal is the 16th.  This week I've been working on the soil at the big garden spot.  I borrowed my friend's rototiller, but the grass is way too thick and healthy.  The tiller just bounces right off it.  So I've been loosening it up with a shovel, which is a shitload of work, let me tell you.  It's about 15x100.  This is after about 6 hours of work:
 

 
 
The tiller can deal with it a lot better that way.

Its going to be a field of dreams!

Looking good, always nice to see a plan coming together .
Keep us updated.
 

GhostPepperz said:

Its going to be a field of dreams!

Click to expand...

 
lol, maybe Kevin Costner can come and do some shoveling for me.

After more shoveling and two passes with the tiller, the soil is done, man.
 

 
 
I'm going to go over it with a rake before I put the plants in.  Planning for some time between tomorrow and the 16th.  Here's the 10 day forecast:
 

 
 
On the one hand, I'm thinking tomorrow would be the best day to put them out, because it's going to be overcast for the next two days, which will help to harden them off.  I'm planning to do NO hardening off, mainly because my landlord already hates me and I know they won't be cool with a bunch of plastic trays full of plants sitting around outside.  I live in an apartment that's way too small for this shit, heh.  On the other hand, those days when the low is going to dip to 51 make me want to wait until Sunday evening to get them in the ground.  But that gives them one less day to get acclimated to full sun.
 
Another idea I had was maybe piling some straw on top of the plants, really loosely, to act as a screen for the sun, then remove it a few days afterward.  Not sure if that would be wise or helpful.  I can't think of any easy way to shade such a large area.  Last year I did far less hardening off than I should have, for the same reasons, and they wound up dropping a bunch of leaves before recovering with new growth.  They still turned into bushy little monsters by the end of the season.  This is from last year, all MOAs, originally from Judy:
 

 
 

 
Last year it was bonnets, this year I'm growing all yellow 7 pots at that spot.
 
 
Back to current day, already got a pod on one of the rosemary pepper plants: