2018 - The Farm

TrentL · Sep 27, 2018

Heh I'll see what I can do next year. Rocotos proved to be pretty tough last time I tried to grow them. Stubborn plants.

...And the seed pile multiplies...

m1hagen · Sep 28, 2018

Are you SURE you want us to throw those in there? They didn't order anything close to that heat"

"Yeah."

I told 'em to toss a Moruga x Reaper in there too but the girls drew the line at throwing random ultras in to the mix of milder ones (that, and we were already hard-pressed to fill some 15lbs of ultrahot orders we got over the weekend).

It was perfect, my first order had scotch bonnets in it and they were fantastic! Thanks again!

TrentL · Sep 28, 2018

Looks like today might be the last pick for sale, tomorrow is our last farmers market of the season.

We'll still pick to fill internet orders on an as needed basis, through first frost (generally around Oct 24th but could be any day now).

With lows of 41F tonight, it might not be far off this year.

At this point we're shifting focus to seed harvest, and tear-down of things which are done for the year. Will probably finish with teardown and putting up the new high tunnels sometime mid-November. Then will be starting seeding for 2019 in mid January, so won't have much of a break!

Got a LOT of plumbing to do indoors since I will be using drip emitters instead of bottom watering this winter.

The drip emitters I played with this summer, shown here;

They are cost-effective enough to use them indoors on a larger scale.

So plan for this winter is to plumb overhead piping in the grow room, drop 1/4" lines down to emitters in each 4" pot. I'll direct sow seeds to 4" pot, skipping the 72 cell starter trays entirely, so we don't have any transplanting crap to worry about. That'll cut down on a ton of labor in late March / early April.

So that'll be 3200 drip emitters plugged in. I'll build a 1" manifold so that I can control each table independently of each other, then use a splitter and inline valves to break each table in to "halves" (so 15 tables, that's 45 valves, total; 15 main table valves and 30 half table valves).

The only complicated part is the fertilizer injector for soluble nutes, and a forked pressure regulator so I can switch to a low-pressure-low-flow regulator when I'm only doing a few tables, and a low-pressure-high-flow regulator for when I need "all the water" ..

Not all of the tables will be seeded at once; most will be vacant until I start annuums in early March, and tomatoes late March.

But I guess that'll all go in the 2019 glog. Just thinking out loud here.

ShowMeDaSauce · Sep 28, 2018

If you liked Aji Limo you would probably also like Aji Arnaucho. My 2 tiny plants are still putting out pods. Heat is on the low end for chinense but they got heat. Really attractive pepper also. Goes through multiple color changes. Anything after the green/purple phase is edible.

They start out like this. Even the shaded side gets that blush.

And end up like this starting mid july.

BTW if those Biker Billy seeds are from your pods ive heard of poor results saving seeds. Pods from saved seeds can be all over the place. Im giving rocotos another shot next year. Aji Oro looks promising for our climate.

TrentL · Sep 29, 2018

I'm not too worried about the biker billies, as far as them being viable. The pods were damn near mush when I harvested the seeds out of them.

People harvest seeds WAY too damn early and then wonder why they get shitty results. With Jalapenos if you try to harvest seeds from big green pods they aren't going to germinate. The seeds are still immature. You have to let them turn dark red, stem fully dessicated (hard and brown), and the pod will be soft and mushy. THEN they are ready for seed harvest.

The pod has to be near (or at) rotting before the seeds are viable. Anything with fungus / mold in the pod gets tossed, no dark seeds allowed.. but yeah, it's not an entirely pleasant business if you are doing it right, because the pods will be near rotten by the time you can harvest viable seeds. The stems should be totally dessicated before you pull them from the plant. If the stem is still green, they aren't ready. Not nearly ready.

fcaruana · Sep 29, 2018

Trent, I’ve been meaning to ask - you said that the pods with less seeds in them seem to be more likely to have been self-pollinated, but I’ve found in my personal experience that any pepper that I intentionally cross pollinate always has way less seeds than normal. I was just wondering if you would elaborate or pass on where you saw/read that, I’m interested!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

ShowMeDaSauce · Sep 30, 2018

The problem is the Biker Billy is a hybrid. Chances of them growing true are very slim. People who have done it had mixed results. I leave pods on longer too if saving them for seed stock. Seeds ive saved are pushing 90% or better from ripe pods left on the plant a week after being ripe. I would say they were not even close to rotten or drying out yet.

CMJ · Sep 30, 2018

I never leave seed stock pods on that long either and I have 90+ percent germination rate as well. I agree though, they definitely need to sit for a bit after ripening. Soft and past the fresh-looking stage is when I pull them for seed.

ShowMeDaSauce said:
The problem is the Biker Billy is a hybrid. Chances of them growing true are very slim. People who have done it had mixed results. I leave pods on longer too if saving them for seed stock. Seeds ive saved are pushing 90% or better from ripe pods left on the plant a week after being ripe. I would say they were not even close to rotten or drying out yet.

stettoman · Sep 30, 2018

TrentL said:
People harvest seeds WAY too damn early and then wonder why they get shitty results.

The pod has to be near (or at) rotting before the seeds are viable.

The stems should be totally dessicated before you pull them from the plant. If the stem is still green, they aren't ready. Not nearly ready.

I understand the necessity of a pod to be fully developed for a seed to be fully viable, but to the point of rotting? Then perhaps I've been wasting my time on mine.

A note: My wife brought home a bag of YUGE red bells from Costco this summer, hydroponically grown, truck produce, so who knows how long before they'd been picked. I dried some seeds for over a month, then as an experiment planted five of them in a peat pod. Two weeks later, five very healthy sprouts had popped. I actually expected none.

Is there a database charting the state of a ripe pod to the viability of seed by pepper specie and variety? Or are you specifically relating to Jalas?

ShowMeDaSauce · Sep 30, 2018

I did the same thing with some ripe Fresno i got at our market. Every seed sprouted. Only bad thing was half the pods looked/tasted like the original pods. The other half were a different pheno and heat level.

TrentL · Sep 30, 2018

fcaruana said:
Trent, I’ve been meaning to ask - you said that the pods with less seeds in them seem to be more likely to have been self-pollinated, but I’ve found in my personal experience that any pepper that I intentionally cross pollinate always has way less seeds than normal. I was just wondering if you would elaborate or pass on where you saw/read that, I’m interested!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The ones I've bagged and allowed to self pollinate in the past always have fewer seeds. Whether if that is because less pollen is taken in? I dunno. I'll leave that to someone with more knowledge to answer - when I go plant to plant pollinating w/ a qtip, then bag, those pods are LOADED with seeds. The ones bagged and left to their own devices? Very few.

But you are right, in that crosses (especially cross-species, annuum/chinense) will yield the fewest seeds - sometimes hardly any at all, if they even take.

ShowMeDaSauce said:
The problem is the Biker Billy is a hybrid. Chances of them growing true are very slim. People who have done it had mixed results. I leave pods on longer too if saving them for seed stock. Seeds ive saved are pushing 90% or better from ripe pods left on the plant a week after being ripe. I would say they were not even close to rotten or drying out yet.

Well, by rotting I mean "going soft" with dried out stems; the stems are a big tell in that they are fully done. Unless they get invaded by something (caterpillar), then the plant can abort them early.

In our case it's not hard to find over-ripe pods, we've been picking to order this year and I have probably 40 bushels of pods on the plants right now just.. slowly going to waste. We're literally removing plants at this point to get to pods easier.

stettoman said:
I understand the necessity of a pod to be fully developed for a seed to be fully viable, but to the point of rotting? Then perhaps I've been wasting my time on mine.

A note: My wife brought home a bag of YUGE red bells from Costco this summer, hydroponically grown, truck produce, so who knows how long before they'd been picked. I dried some seeds for over a month, then as an experiment planted five of them in a peat pod. Two weeks later, five very healthy sprouts had popped. I actually expected none.

Is there a database charting the state of a ripe pod to the viability of seed by pepper specie and variety? Or are you specifically relating to Jalas?

No I misunderstood what he was saying above. I thought he was talking germination rate and he was talking an unstable hybrid. Since Jalapenos are usually picked green & sold *before* changing color or being fully ripe, folks who try to save seeds from them get disappointed. (We harvest ours at the color change point; I want max heat and flavor but not the 'tart' / 'tangy' they get when they turn red; so ours get picked as they change color)

ShowMeDaSauce said:
I did the same thing with some ripe Fresno i got at our market. Every seed sprouted. Only bad thing was half the pods looked/tasted like the original pods. The other half were a different pheno and heat level.

I'm curious to see what our % is on growing true next year. Each of 20 types we harvest this year is getting 25 transplants planted out next year so I can gather some data. (20 varieties x 25 plants = 500 plants). I can't do a larger sample size than that - if I did 100 of each I'd be close to max out my grow room footprint (can only grow 3200, total, unless I build another building..).

Except for Tekne Dolmasi. We sold every last damn pod we picked of those this year at market. Next year I'm growing a LOT of those out. By far our most popular / best selling pepper - and the nice thing is, the plants are small, compact, and you can plant them super dense, yet they remain easy to pick. Only downside is the damn critters like them as well as humans do, we lost about a third of our crop to predation.

The cross experiment will be a pain in the ass to track but no worse overall than what I did this year on sprouting media, and the time will be spread out over the course of the season instead of being very time consuming early on.

The seeds I grew out from various vendors this year, were kind of surprisingly "not stable." Judy's seeds, while we struggled with poor germination rates, grew remarkably true, she must be using some form of isolation.

I just wish I could see what's gonna be true before I pick some for isolation grow next year.

But then again, sometimes surprises are good.

TrentL · Sep 30, 2018

Also as far as Biker Billy growing true; the seeds we planted this year were open pollinated from a previous crop of biker billy . We did have some (maybe 10-15% or so) grow funky; short stubby round pods was the usual odd pheno we saw, although there were some which also didn't crackle at all (stayed smooth thru color change, like Burpee's do, which aren't right at all). That smooth pheno didn't put on nearly as much heat. When harvesting for sales, was easy enough to skip over those; none of those got pulled for seed stock. The ones which grew "true" were very hot.

Learned this year I don't mind growing out OP - sure, some varieties were ~30% crossed up with "something" but that lead to some interesting things - like penis shaped turkish cayenne.

I can't imagine that all the folks selling Biker Billy seeds out there are taking the time to intentionally cross up two other varieties of Jalapenos to get them. Sure, a few of the vendors I found on a search sell them as F1, F2, etc, but most do not.

We're gonna grow them out in isolation next year, see where it leads.

Some of the hybrids I'm going to play with next year;

"Giants"
Tekne Dolmasi x Poblano
Tekne Dolmasi x Giant Aconcagua
Tekne Dolmasi x Elephant Trunk

"Personal Flavor - Yellows" (my favorite tasting ones)
Aji Limo x Yellow Fatalli
Aji Limo x MOA scotch bonnet
Aji Limo x TFM scotch bonnet
Aji Limo x Big Sun Habanero
Aji Limo x Yellow Trinidad Scorpion

(Some of our Aji Limo grew .. tails. Like a moruga scorpion. But didn't pack the insane heat, maybe Habanero level of heat, just tasted frigging amazing. So they were crossed up with something before.)

Then for my own personal amusement...

Brown Bhut Jolokia x (Moruga Scorpion x Reaper)

ONE of the brown bhut jolokia plants grew pods so damn hot that 1/2 of a pod made me vomit involuntarily, and blistered my gums. So it's definitely a candidate for a cross with another heavy hitter.

It was also prodigious; this is nearly a 1/2 bushel we picked from one plant.

TrentL · Sep 30, 2018

In this case I pulled pods a little earlier than I usually would - most are softening but the stems weren't yet drying out - they had been sheltered by tomato plants hidden in the back of the tomato field, and once we pulled the tomato plants out the pods started getting sun scalded. So the seeds will get pulled, then the pod scraps go in to the dehydrator.

ShowMeDaSauce · Sep 30, 2018

Man im diggin that giant Brown Bhut

I grew Tekne Dolmasi this year for the first time. They are really good eating. No, actually its the best tasting sweet red bell ive ever tasted. I can see how they would be super popular at a market. Mine didnt produce huge pods in a pot so next year i will try in ground. Nice sized pods just not as big as pepperlovers pic. I also had some germination problems but the one i got grew fine. I did save seeds but there is chance it could have crossed with Bell of Lebanon. That plant was right next to it.

TrentL · Oct 1, 2018

ShowMeDaSauce said:
Man im diggin that giant Brown Bhut

I grew Tekne Dolmasi this year for the first time. They are really good eating. No, actually its the best tasting sweet red bell ive ever tasted. I can see how they would be super popular at a market. Mine didnt produce huge pods in a pot so next year i will try in ground. Nice sized pods just not as big as pepperlovers pic. I also had some germination problems but the one i got grew fine. I did save seeds but there is chance it could have crossed with Bell of Lebanon. That plant was right next to it.

Heh some of my Tekne I saved seeds from were right next to reapers and moruga reapers.. so "we will see..."

If I get 1 lb Tekne Reapers which are ultrahot ... Man would that ruin the price / lb of ultrahots for the whole industry...

Those brown bhuts were from my original seed stock - the seeds I used were 5 years old. I couldn't get any browns that I ordered from buckeye to sprout, 6 trays with zero germination rate. So I seeded some that I'd had set aside from a pepperlover order in 2013, and lo and behold.. the few I had left all sprouted.

They are STUPID hot. I don't know what the hell she crossed them with but MAN those are nasty. I'm going to try to get a giant brown jolokia reaper cross out of them next year.

But mainly what I'm after is the taste of 7-pot. The heat of Reapers is insane but the 7-pot aroma and flavor, is just.. well, I think I'm mildly addicted to it.

The largest tekne pods I got were the earliest. They started off ENORMOUS with the first pods, and as the season went on, and the plants became heavier loaded, the plants must have had to divide up their energy more, because pods turned out smaller as the pod density increased. Like 1/2 size of the original pods.

As the season progressed and plants started carrying 6-8 pods each (or more) the size got progressively smaller.

TrentL · Oct 1, 2018

Which is also the problem; you don't *get* that many pods off of each plant. Once they start setting fruit the plant pretty much stops all growth other than pods.

So if you want a big harvest you have to plant a metric shitload of them. I also think that even though every other plant in the field grew well without fertilizer, these guys would benefit hugely from a big shot of nitrogen early on to get them to bush out more, before setting fruit. Next year I'll be doing several experiments on Tekne, trying to get an optimized harvest.

With the observation that more pods = smaller pods, and the plants being so damn short and bushy, I think if they are hit with a bunch of nitrogen to get the plant bulked up before they start setting fruit (not just to bulk up the plant but to delay fruit set) then maybe they'll be able to support bigger/more pods? Of course it's a race against roots vs. leaves on this one, if you fertilize to encourage root growth early on, you sacrifice some bushiness and leaves, so you'll hurt sugar production and they won't be as sweet.

Tough question to answer on how to get them optimized. I'm not content with 6-8 decent pods per plant. There's so much more potential there, if the plants could beef out before setting fruit.

Might try topping some next year. That'll slow them down, prevent fruit set, but promote bushing out more.

Genetikx · Oct 1, 2018

I threw out all my biker billy pods. Cut them in half, hundreds of them so it took a good hour just to cut in half. Didn't even bother to de-seed. Anyhow at the end of cutting I noticed all of them (placenta AND seeds) were turning brown like avocados do when exposed to oxygen. Never saw this with a pepper so I'm blaming the laboratory hybrid of it all and will never grow it again. Damn shame cuz they are hot.

saiias · Oct 1, 2018

TrentL said:
Forum member Sai Ias, from North Carolina, was passing through our area and stopped by the farm for a tour yesterday with his wife. Very nice folks, I wanted to send them off with a trunk load of goodies, but they were heading up further north for training then flying back, so didn't have any way to transport. Damn shame, first forum member to visit the farm, during harvest, and they didn't get loaded down with goodies! Sigh.

It was our pleasure meeting you at your Farm Trent. It was an awesome experience standing between all those 6 foot ultra hots. We had a great time. We just came back and we will sure visit you again. Don't worry about not filling our call with all your goodies. I will take a rain-check on that

TrentL · Oct 2, 2018

Genetikx said:
I threw out all my biker billy pods. Cut them in half, hundreds of them so it took a good hour just to cut in half. Didn't even bother to de-seed. Anyhow at the end of cutting I noticed all of them (placenta AND seeds) were turning brown like avocados do when exposed to oxygen. Never saw this with a pepper so I'm blaming the laboratory hybrid of it all and will never grow it again. Damn shame cuz they are hot.

That's odd. Have had our seeds air-drying for 4 days now and they just look like regular seeds.

Where'd you get your BB's from?

We had quite a few of our BB's not grow true this year (a few odd phenos), but the ones that did were tasty and sold well at market. We only pulled seeds from those.

We had leaf spot bacterial outbreak hit our numex patch this week. (At least I noticed it this week, it had to have been 'cooking" for some time to infect some 200+ plants).

Was limited to ONLY the numex rows, too. Not sure why it favored those plants.

They have been culled. Took 3 hours to rip out plants and haul them away from the field; 6 pickup truck bed loads of plants.

Numex didn't sell well and we didn't harvest some plants at all this year. There were probably 50 bushels of pods on the 200+ plants that we tore out.

Bacterial leaf spot is bad news in a pepper patch. If it was unchecked, would end pepper farming at the farm. Can't grow in this spot for at least a couple years and have to destroy everything that the plants came in contact with (e.g. ground cover) as it will remain resident and overwinter.

Orekoc · Oct 2, 2018

Ouch, that sucks about the Bacterial leaf spot. Hope it didn't spread anywhere.

Oh, not that it lessens your pain on the Reapers being stolen, but there are whole vineyards being robbed in Europe. This has been going on for several years. Tons of grapes stolen. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-45720218