Hi guys! This year I'm mainly lurking here. I'm following a few projects, some glogs and check for any interesting posts daily. I just haven't gotten around to contributing a lot this year. I had great plans for this season, but as always life tends to get in the way. My dad got diagnosed with cancer. Although he caught it very early, that kinda stuff still gets to you. It seems he's in the clear now though, so that's nice. Also the usual stressing about money and work got to me a little. All in all I didn't really feel like dealing with my 'internet life' as well.
All is not bad though! My SO and I each got an allotment at the local community gardens. They're right next to each other, so we basically have one big allotment. They're 4 by 25 metres each, totaling 200 square meters. That is 240 square yards? Is that the one you guys use? I get confused. Anyway, it's a lot of work but I finally have the space to plant all of my peppers in the ground. I don't really enjoy growing in pots. It can be such a hassle to get everything right. The allotment really gave me the chance to really start all the projects I wanted to start.
This year we're growing: peppers, tomatoes, squash, beans, leek, lettuce, cabbage, physalis, strawberries, few different kinds of Rubus, onions, beets, carrots and cucumbers. A lot of first-times for me, so I've made plenty of mistakes. Had some issues with onion fly and cabbage fly. The tomatoes there aren't doing great, while the ones in my home garden are doing wonderful. No clue why, but I'm guessing it's the microclimate in my backyard. It's a few degrees warmer on average and most days there's almost no wind. Although my peppers are doing better at the allotment and worse at home... I started the squash in too small pots as well, so they were lagging behind a lot. Next year I'll experiment with direct sowing as well as pre-sow in bigger containers.
The onions went great, we were one of the first with huge onions at the gardens. We planted almost a month before everyone else, they called us crazy for being so early. Joke's on them. We didn't plant enough to last us through the winter though, that'll be a point of improvement next season. My SO is Portuguese and some of her dishes call for 3 or 4 big onions, so you can imagine the amount of onions we need. The same goes for carrots; didn't plant enough of them. They last long and they're delicious, so we're planting almost triple the amount next year.
I love growing beets, but I think I'll just grow a few next year. My SO doesn't enjoy them, but my parents and I do. I'll grow a bunch of Swiss chard instead. I love that stuff, we use it in everything instead of spinach. Lettuce is another leafy green we love, but we struggle with planting the right amount at the right time. We had all of our lettuces ready at the same time. We need to apply staggered planting for this crop next season. The leeks tasted great, but we didn't know we had to plant them deep to get a long white stem. All of our leeks were short. They also got infected with rust, but I heard that isn't really threatening to the crop.
As for the beans, I have mixed feelings about them. The plant enthusiast in me loves the color and shape variation of dry beans, but the food eater in me doesn't like beans all that much. My SO and her son do like them, but eat them green. We'll have to try out different ways off cooking and grow all kinds of varieties of bean to find something we all enjoy.
For everything we grow I try to find all kinds of interesting and tasty varieties. Eventually I want to keep growing the ones we love and start breeding them to make our own interesting varieties. I have a bunch of different winter squash growing, a few kinds of tomato and ofcourse a shit tonne of pepper varieties. I want to start to do the same for cucumbers and zucchini next year. I really love variety and diversity. Plant breeding is just so interesting.
This post is getting hella long, sorry. I'm kinda using this as a way of reminding myself of everything I learned this year and everything I plan to do next season. Maybe some of you found it interesting to read and I'll take that.
While I was writing this I found out the tomatoes at the plot all got blight. Sad. The weather has been really shitty these last few weeks. Lots of rain, not a lot of sun. At least the peppers are doing okay. *knocks on wood*
Also, since taking these pictures there's been a storm that knocked off quite a few branches and even split two plants at the stem.
Varieties I'm growing
Baccatum
Lemon Drop
Brazilian Starfish
Sugar Rush Peach
Sugar Rush Creme
Aji Mango
Aji Amarillo
Aji Omnicolor
Annuum
Aleppo
Farmer's Market Jalapeño
Trifetti (aka Purple Tiger)
Fish
Goat's Weed
Thunder Mountain Longhorn
Small Orange Thai
Piquillo de Lodosa
Sulu Adana
Peter Pepper
Ethiopian Brown
Portokoleva Fifironka
Bögyiszloi Eros
Chiltepin
Chinense
Aribibi Gusano
7pot Burgundy
Chocolate Habanero
Pink Tiger
CGN 21500
Fatalii
Tiger's Tooth (?)
Some kind of white scorpion (?)
Frutescens
Ekirike
Wilds
C. chacoense
Cumari Pollux
CAP 214
Crosses
Brazilian Starfish x Lemon Drop F2
Aji Angelo x Cumari Pollux F1
Goat's Weed
Peter Pepper
C. chacoense
Pink Tiger
Trifetti. This is the mystery pepper I made a topic about earlier this season. I don't have a clue how I got these seeds though.
Cumari Pollux
Tiger's Tooth. I got this pod from a local chili festival, but Google searches with the name don't find anything.
Fatalii
Aleppo
Aji Amarillo
Brazilian Starfish
Brazilian Starfish x Lemon Drop F2 pheno 1
Another pod from the same plant. I really like this one, I hope it tastes good too. I'd like it to get a little longer than this but keep the ridges along the sides.
Pheno 2. I don't like this one.
All is not bad though! My SO and I each got an allotment at the local community gardens. They're right next to each other, so we basically have one big allotment. They're 4 by 25 metres each, totaling 200 square meters. That is 240 square yards? Is that the one you guys use? I get confused. Anyway, it's a lot of work but I finally have the space to plant all of my peppers in the ground. I don't really enjoy growing in pots. It can be such a hassle to get everything right. The allotment really gave me the chance to really start all the projects I wanted to start.
This year we're growing: peppers, tomatoes, squash, beans, leek, lettuce, cabbage, physalis, strawberries, few different kinds of Rubus, onions, beets, carrots and cucumbers. A lot of first-times for me, so I've made plenty of mistakes. Had some issues with onion fly and cabbage fly. The tomatoes there aren't doing great, while the ones in my home garden are doing wonderful. No clue why, but I'm guessing it's the microclimate in my backyard. It's a few degrees warmer on average and most days there's almost no wind. Although my peppers are doing better at the allotment and worse at home... I started the squash in too small pots as well, so they were lagging behind a lot. Next year I'll experiment with direct sowing as well as pre-sow in bigger containers.
The onions went great, we were one of the first with huge onions at the gardens. We planted almost a month before everyone else, they called us crazy for being so early. Joke's on them. We didn't plant enough to last us through the winter though, that'll be a point of improvement next season. My SO is Portuguese and some of her dishes call for 3 or 4 big onions, so you can imagine the amount of onions we need. The same goes for carrots; didn't plant enough of them. They last long and they're delicious, so we're planting almost triple the amount next year.
I love growing beets, but I think I'll just grow a few next year. My SO doesn't enjoy them, but my parents and I do. I'll grow a bunch of Swiss chard instead. I love that stuff, we use it in everything instead of spinach. Lettuce is another leafy green we love, but we struggle with planting the right amount at the right time. We had all of our lettuces ready at the same time. We need to apply staggered planting for this crop next season. The leeks tasted great, but we didn't know we had to plant them deep to get a long white stem. All of our leeks were short. They also got infected with rust, but I heard that isn't really threatening to the crop.
As for the beans, I have mixed feelings about them. The plant enthusiast in me loves the color and shape variation of dry beans, but the food eater in me doesn't like beans all that much. My SO and her son do like them, but eat them green. We'll have to try out different ways off cooking and grow all kinds of varieties of bean to find something we all enjoy.
For everything we grow I try to find all kinds of interesting and tasty varieties. Eventually I want to keep growing the ones we love and start breeding them to make our own interesting varieties. I have a bunch of different winter squash growing, a few kinds of tomato and ofcourse a shit tonne of pepper varieties. I want to start to do the same for cucumbers and zucchini next year. I really love variety and diversity. Plant breeding is just so interesting.
This post is getting hella long, sorry. I'm kinda using this as a way of reminding myself of everything I learned this year and everything I plan to do next season. Maybe some of you found it interesting to read and I'll take that.
While I was writing this I found out the tomatoes at the plot all got blight. Sad. The weather has been really shitty these last few weeks. Lots of rain, not a lot of sun. At least the peppers are doing okay. *knocks on wood*
Also, since taking these pictures there's been a storm that knocked off quite a few branches and even split two plants at the stem.
Varieties I'm growing
Baccatum
Lemon Drop
Brazilian Starfish
Sugar Rush Peach
Sugar Rush Creme
Aji Mango
Aji Amarillo
Aji Omnicolor
Annuum
Aleppo
Farmer's Market Jalapeño
Trifetti (aka Purple Tiger)
Fish
Goat's Weed
Thunder Mountain Longhorn
Small Orange Thai
Piquillo de Lodosa
Sulu Adana
Peter Pepper
Ethiopian Brown
Portokoleva Fifironka
Bögyiszloi Eros
Chiltepin
Chinense
Aribibi Gusano
7pot Burgundy
Chocolate Habanero
Pink Tiger
CGN 21500
Fatalii
Tiger's Tooth (?)
Some kind of white scorpion (?)
Frutescens
Ekirike
Wilds
C. chacoense
Cumari Pollux
CAP 214
Crosses
Brazilian Starfish x Lemon Drop F2
Aji Angelo x Cumari Pollux F1
Goat's Weed
Peter Pepper
C. chacoense
Pink Tiger
Trifetti. This is the mystery pepper I made a topic about earlier this season. I don't have a clue how I got these seeds though.
Cumari Pollux
Tiger's Tooth. I got this pod from a local chili festival, but Google searches with the name don't find anything.
Fatalii
Aleppo
Aji Amarillo
Brazilian Starfish
Brazilian Starfish x Lemon Drop F2 pheno 1
Another pod from the same plant. I really like this one, I hope it tastes good too. I'd like it to get a little longer than this but keep the ridges along the sides.
Pheno 2. I don't like this one.
