2018 Changes and Additions

What are you changing or adding for next season's grow?  I am going to add that roll out paper mulch and break in some new space to expand.  You?  Any tech stuff being added?  Drip irrigation?  Other changes?

not going to start seeds till March 1st. Hoping to transplant in stride with plant growth this year.
I ran out of room this year, started on Jan 1.
 
probably add a couple of plants
 
try to maintain a fertilization schedule
 
hopefully going to be building a raised bed for peppers

Being as this was my rookie year there are many many changes for next year. I learned a lot this year about the signs of over and under watering the result being a few stunted plants. I'm hoping that won't happen next year. Also, next year I'll be planting a lot in the ground as apposed to this year which had all my plants in pots on the back deck. Tons of new seeds to try next year thanks to the Spokanepepperman, he hooked me up big time with seeds and some fresh pods. Spring can't come soon enough!

I'll be growing more plants, trying my hand at seed starting under lights, I'll probably be fertilizing with fish/seaweed ferts and worm castings as opposed to fertilizer spikes (all I could get at that time since they're like $1/box).

Also thinking by about making the seed start box "smart" by adding a raspberry pi to control lights and fan, and maybe something else down the line. I got the idea from... Drathag? My memory isn't the best.

I'm also thinking about starting a glog next season.

So definitely NOT starting in January again, that was horrible as I also ran out of space, will continue using lights for starting that was a great thing. Will definitely tend more towards annuums rather than superhots, they are just too superhot for this climate it seems

Im going to extend my fenced in garden a foot or two forward so I can fit more plants in. Planning on branching out into other vegetables instead of just peppers. I want to convert my front yard into a garden so I don't have to mow the lawn anymore. Start a little later rather than February, and grow less superhots and more unique flavorful peppers. 
 
Does corn grow well in Pennsylvania? 

Hoping to start a glog this week as I will be doing a overwinter container grow. Trying out some Bali peppers and Aji Crystal to add to the usual Caribbean peppers, Goat, Scotch bonnet (2 types), scorpion, and a red Antilles hab.

So many types of peppers! So little room!

There's a bunch of different peppers I'm eager to try next year. I'm changing out the majority of my previous year's line-up.

I'm also going to play with over-wintering a potted Jamaican Yellow Mushroom. Typically, I only get a handful of freezes a year. I want to see if I can get away with trimming it back, keeping it away from the frost, and not doing much else.

I'm going to try both indoor and outdoor grows, to see what works best for this ever changing climate here in Eastern Washington. This year was disappointing to say the least, but did end up with some great pods and met FITN a fellow spokane pepper head so all is well! But my plants always do great in my grow room so. Hope I have a great harvest next year and early as I'm already starting some seeds now to go in the basement. And may invest in led lighting now that the prices have come down to affordable levels.

Going to cut back. YEAH RIGHT!

Really. 80+ Varieties and 150+ plants equals lots of time.

I'll experiment with micro gardening. I'm also adding suspended shade cloth over the whole growing area. Hoophouse and all. Might dabble in some hydro of some sort.

My main goal is to just have fun and enjoy the conversation among awesome people.

On the fence about building a big raised bed (or a few small ones), or to continue growing in buckets. Also getting a lot of "nots" this year. So I'll be doing a lot of isolating next year

I'm going to add a few new varieties. I feel good with in-ground and potted plant regimens. My harvest was a bit down this year from the past several years, but it was the weather. I still got enough. I may need to amend the beds with more compost.
 
What I would really love is a permanent greenhouse. Just in general. I think I may have just spent that allowance on my daughter's new bedroom furniture
 
She better realize she's stunting my garden production!

I'm going to do a little more research on pest prevention and treatment. Everytime I treated this year they just bounced back within a couple days. Terrible year for bugs. My plants actually did pretty well this year though.

Well for me I had a "hoop house" that I built so that I could control the watering.  It worked in that respect, but I think it also cut down the amount of light getting to my plants.  I can't say for sure as this was the first year of the new soil. Next year the hoop won't be up all summer.
 
For the outdoor garden, NO MORE Zucchini...Not my favorite (I prefer Cucumber), and my wife was even less interested in eating 30 lbs of them (Ha!!!). It was a GREAT year for Zucchini here in Minnesota ! 
 
I had very mixed results with tomatoes. Some of the "cherry" types did very well, but the heirlooms suffered a great deal of end rot. Next year will have a dedicated bed for tomatoes.
 
I'm going to be more selective about the hot peppers I grow. I like the Jalapenos more than any other (had a batch this year that were amazing in flavor and heat.... kept the seeds). Serranos are good too. This year I grew a lot of Super Chilis, Chi Chien and Bailey Piquin...  all good peppers but I won't need any more for a couple years. I have enough pepper flake to last a while. Stick with the big peppers next year.
 
I too had problems with germinating far too may peppers. I had to "dispatch" a whole lot of plants. I was thinking of selling the plants to the local growers.
 
For the indoor grow, the last thing on my list is an A/C unit. I'm still having a lot of heat problems with my tent peppers. I'd like to grow indoors all year long. Been trying to re-create the "native" environment of the Super Hots. Had some success so far, but the heat gets too high in the tent(s).
 
I bought seeds that were advertised as "Jalapenos", and they ended up to be "Bell Peppers".  I'm going to change my seed vendor !! 
 
I love the tech part of the indoor grow. I'll be sticking with LEC lighting for at least this next year. I know LED will eventually take over, but my LED experiments to this point haven't shown a significant advantage. Mostly due to the fact that the LED drivers are located inside of the LED fixture, and the heat introduced from the LED fixture into the tent seems to be a lot higher than when I have an LEC fixture that has an external ballast that I can locate outside of the tent. Just a casual observation at this point. No hard evidence to support this statement.
 
Anyway, hope everyone has a productive 2018.
 
Happy Growing,
 
Jeff
 
 

Edmick said:

I'm going to do a little more research on pest prevention and treatment. Everytime I treated this year they just bounced back within a couple days. Terrible year for bugs. My plants actually did pretty well this year though.

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Same here. I got hit pretty hard by broad mites at the beginning of the season. So much so that I'm just now getting ripe pods on some plants. Neem worked excellently, but it's a huge PITA when everything is in-ground. I got a lot of "true" phenos this year, so I'm trying my hand at air layering so I can overwinter a few clones for next year. Changing the line-up a bit...but still going to have a lot of different varieties. A lot of purples and bleeders...and purple bleeders...a lot of caramel varieties, too.

Polly tunnel is a focus, pie pumpkins also high on my list. See what plants survive the overwintering, will add some more, got 23 pots right now, want to expand on my Pumpkin and Red Habaneros, didnt get any this year for some reason, reds did not come up, Pumpkin growing too slow, their 6 inches right now.