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Bold Badger 2019

Well it finally happened.  I knew sooner or later my luck would run out.  You see, I don't actually know what I'm doing when it comes to growing plants.  I've just been winging it so far, lol.  I kept waiting for them to start looking better before I posted a glog, but at this point I guess it's futile.  I don't know where I went wrong exactly, maybe it was a combination of things.  For one I moved the seed starting rack to the basement, where I guess the temps were a bit lower.  I was hoping that the heat from the lights would be enough, and I'm still not sure that it wasn't.  The soil stayed pretty warm to the touch for the most part.  The other problem may be lack of nutrients in the potting soil.  I'm pretty sure I used miracle grow or something last year, but I can't really remember.  This year I went with a big cube of pro-mix, which I think is just peat and perlite with no added plant food or anything.  I probably should have given them more fish fert while they were still inside to compensate.  As is I only gave them pretty diluted doses twice before moving them outside.  Definitely going to remedy this next year.  In fact if Trent has any of his super soil for sale I may go that route.  Yet another mistake was probably failing to cull the lesser seedlings and leaving more than one to grow in most of the pots.  I should have realized that would result in both plants doing worse than a single one would have done in each pot.  The end result is that the plants were all way too small when they went in the ground.  Last year I think got around 500 lbs of peppers, this year I'll be surprised if I crack 100 lbs.  So while my dream of being the new hot sauce king of the south isn't quite dead, it definitely took a hit.
 
Further complicating matters, the groundhogs returned this year to kick me while I was down.  Out of the 180 plants I put in at the big spot they dug up about 90 of them.  They don't even eat them, they just like digging them up.  I'd find a hole where the plant was and the plant itself a foot away, uprooted and dying.  I re-buried a bunch of them more than once.  I tried cinnamon and super-hot pepper flakes, both of which would work for a while, but they'd eventually be back.  What seemed to work the best was just bunching straw up around the plant really tightly.  I guess they see any loose soil as a good spot to dig for grubs.  Lesson learned for next year.
 
I think another problem is that the soil is starting to get depleted.  This is the third year in a row I've grown peppers at the big spot and one of the three community garden spots.  The other two have had other crops grown on them for the last 3 or 4 years.  So I did some calling around and found a source for manure.  I'm planning to amend the soil at all of them this fall after I take down the plants.  Just sprinkle it around and till it in.  It should be well composted by next May when I plan to put more plants in there.
 
On the sauce front, sales have been going pretty well.  I started out with 1200 bottles and I'm down to about 300.  Been selling mostly at two farmers markets every week this summer, and the occasional special event, and I've added a few new retail outlets.  I have a hundred something followers on facebook and a few loyal customers.  I was hoping to have enough product to try to get into the really big farmers market in Lexington next year but that's not going to happen now.  I'm thinking I'll throw most of this year's peppers into my new pickled pepper recipe.  It's basically the same recipe as pickled Jalapenos except with all chinenses instead of annuums.  They're so freaking tasty it kind of blows my mind.  The vinegar seems to mellow out the sharpness of the peppers somehow, but leaves all of the delicious floral chinense flavor.  Even leaving the seeds in it's not nearly as bitter as a fresh, non-fermented sauce.  I'm not even sure if they're "novel" enough to enter into the THP awards this year, but I'm still planning to do so if there's a category for them.  I bought 300 8 oz jars for the purpose, so it's questionable if I'll have any left over to make any actual sauce, but we'll see.
 
Here's the list:
 
QTY   VARIETY
80    Yellow 7 pot
20    MOA
10    Chocolate scotch bonnet
10    Orange ghost [pl]
10    Indian Carbon Bhut [pl 2018]
10    Red Devil’s Tongue [pl 2018]
20    White 7 Pot
12    Ghost [pl]
25    Chocolate Hab
25    Carolina Reaper
 
And a few of each of these:
 
White Bullet Hab
Red Douglah
Evergreen Fatali [pl]
Sherwood’s Carbon Bhut 7 pot
Wartryx
Bhut Orange Copenhagen
7 Pot Congo SR Gigantic Red
Red 7 Pot
Red Fatali
Caribbean Red
 
 
 
 
 
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Filling pots, both with soil and gentle optimism.  Sigh.
 
 
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The bionic seed starting rack, now residing in the basement.  Seeds started on 3/10/2019.
 
 
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3/31/2019.
 
 
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4/25/2019.  They should have been much bigger by this point, obviously.
 
 
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5/1/2019.  Started hardening off, still way undersized.  I replanted some that didn't come up on 3/27, those are the smaller ones.
 
 
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5/16/2019.
 
 
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5/17/2019.  A bit of sunburn.
 
 
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5/20/2019.  Some doing better than others, but none doing well.
 
 
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About a week after planting.
 
 
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6/17/2019.  Still embarrassingly small.  No jokes please.
 
 
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6/28/2019.
 
 
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6/29/2019 at the big spot.
 
 
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7/6/2019.
 
 
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7/9/2016.  Finally hitting their growth spurt.
 
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7/16/2019, looking a little better.
 
 
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7/23/2019.
 
 
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8/9/2019.
 
 
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300 8 oz jars for the pickled peppers.
 
 
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8/12/2019 at the big spot.
 
 
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8/19/2019.
 
 
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The sauce on the shelves at an actual retail location.  Liquor Barn in Lexington, KY, for those curious.
 
 
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8/27/2019.  The curry trees are doing pretty well.  The smaller ones didn't grow much at all last year but they took off for some reason this year.
 
 
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The big ones are producing quite a few seeds.  They seem to do that every other year.  Since I'm probably not going to make the curry sauce this year I'm thinking I'll just vacuum seal the leaves and freeze them and hopefully make twice as much curry sauce next year.  That's what I did last year and they kept perfectly, vacuum sealing makes all the difference.
 
Sorry to hear about the troubles with your pepper crop this year.
 
While my stuff is on a much smaller scale, I had similar problems with many of my seedlings struggling to grow before my plant-out.
 
You're one of the first people I've seen have trouble with Pro-Mix.  I was actually thinking of switching to Pro-Mix next year.
 
I'm sure it's fine soil, just no plant food added like miracle grow.
 
I'm starting to feel a little more optimistic about things, the plants are getting more and more loaded by the day.  I just ordered one of these for next year:
 
https://www.impactfolds.top/collections/house/products/plant-greenhouse
 
The 6x10 for like $94 with free shipping.  I'm half scared it's a scam, but I paid with a credit card so I should be able to dispute it if the thing never arrives.
 
Bad luck with this years crop, but 100lbs is better than no lbs and as you say the plants are still loading up.
 
At least you are looking at it as a learning experience, so not a failure at all.
 
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