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2019 Hay Bale Pepper Patch

I've been a member for a while but never posted a grow log. My usual garden is too boring for that. I use 20-30 pots and overwinter my mama plants in a hillbilly winter shelter. Our ground here isn't good for in soil gardening and I've not been enthused enough to undertake the work and expense to build raised beds.
 
Now I have my peppers working the way I want and have the need for a much larger grow to supply a project. The main peppers I'll grow will be reaper, douglah and fatalii. For a couple of years I'll do hay bale gardens and heap tons of organic trash into the area. I have monumental amounts of pine straw, oak leaves and bonfire ash every year to dump in the walkways. I think this will do a world of good to make this new garden area mo'betta for eventual in ground growing.
 
I closed off a 38x38 patch in the NE field that gets full sun. This is the area I chose. The big painted guy is my fertilizer supplier.
 
The little painted guy is my running buddy and load inspector.
 
 
 

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DWB said:
 
That's not much rain. Last year we got over 100". This year so far, 40"
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Shit. I meant 1.5" OVER the normal average, which peaks at 4+ inches in June. That's average, though, so we've been getting a lot more than that all season, loading the water table.
 
a hunnert inches we can't even compete with. Then again, this is NOT a Gulf region, so a lot of variables contribute.
 
DWB said:
 
I typically grow ±30 pots, cut the plants and pot size way back and store them in the hillbilly winter shelter until spring. Last year I kept them under frost covers until Jan 15 before doing the big hack job..
 
I haven't planted in the ground out here for nearly 20 years.
 
 
 
That's not much rain. Last year we got over 100". This year so far, 40"
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clearly your process is working flawlessly now.  must be heartbreaking trimming them down. im already dreading when mine die in the fall.
 
any pics of this fancy hillbilly winter shelter you speak of? lol
 
stettoman said:
 
Shit. I meant 1.5" OVER the normal average, which peaks at 4+ inches in June. That's average, though, so we've been getting a lot more than that all season, loading the water table.
 
a hunnert inches we can't even compete with. Then again, this is NOT a Gulf region, so a lot of variables contribute.
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You’ll get your hunnert plus inches this winter, except it’s white and fluffy [emoji2957]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I'll post up what happens when you plant in full hay bales rather than beat down composted bales. I'm not impressed. This is one of my bale annexes used for control purposes. It started out like this in April.
 
 
 
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Now it looks like this.
 
 
 
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Reaper base
 
 
 
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Reaper face
 
 
 
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Douglah base
 
 
 
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Douglah face. It flopped yesterday apparently due to due to pod weight.
 
 
 
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Hoisted again.
 
 
 
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First hornworm of the year. Found in the isolation garden near the house. I probably made a mistake squashing this one rather than putting him in a coffee can. Kinda looks like he's growing some wasp eggs. Oh well.
 
 
 
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Hey! I mean Hay! Not bad ;)  But I do understand the difference you're seeing..
 
If you want to be not impressed, come West. Plenty of that here...LOL
 
Around mid June here they just stop, I'm hoping to see an improvement in the next 2 weeks..
 
The walkway clearing job I did a month ago is gone. Even though I trim every time I pick, it ain't working. The new problem is all the tall growth is flopping into the clear areas. It's back to this and I can't trim my way out of it without ruining a huge amount of harvest.
 
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I don't know how much good I did myself but I did a rope rescue and hoisted everything up as far as I could. It still needs some work but I think I may have worsened the problem. Now the walls are even more impenetrable.
 
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.
 
 
 
 
 
CaneDog said:
You're fighting the good fight, but that's a whole lot of nature to butt heads with. At some point you may just have to bend to the will of the patch. 
 
It continues to be awesome, though.  :)
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I can't give up on it now. Over the next two months I'll get the gravy from tending this monster. The rough part will be finding and reaching the fruit to pick it out of this silly 1000 ft² multi-stemmed uniplant.
 
CaneDog said:
You're fighting the good fight, but that's a whole lot of nature to butt heads with. At some point you may just have to bend to the will of the patch. 
 
It continues to be awesome, though.  :)
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Bend to the will of the patch had me rolling and then made me think of this gem:



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The jungle is absolutely cray cray yet so awesome. So many pods that are so hard to find. It's so thick it's like looking through a keyhole searching for flashes of color. And when you see it, you have to figure out how to reach it, ideally without losing sight of it. My routine is crawl a few feet while peering upskirt and searching from every angle on both sides while trying to pick as many as I can with each grab. Then stand up to search the mid and upper levels in the same manner. And when at rows end, turn around and come back the other way. Every time you will find as many pods as you found on the first crawl. And you can come a bit back later when the light has changed and find even more in the same places that were just searched... twice. Cray cray.
 
And then there are the areas where everything got too tall and simply flopped over. Layers of loaded branches making thick mats of vegetation. I feel like some kind of letch because I can't help but laugh and think "come on baby, spread 'em so I can look up in there and get your pods" as I lift and probe and search though the mass. I cannot submit to the will of the patch so I have to laugh :party:
 
It was a beautiful day today. Best day in a long time. At least 15° cooler than any day in recent history with a nice thick deck of clouds. I did a nice leisurely picking today without sweating my fuzz off. I got a lot more poddage today than I got Monday. That nursery pot laying on it's side is the bug and rot pot. Not too many bads for all of those goods.
 
Don't know how many kilos I got today but I know my back is gonna hurt after I prep all those for the dehydrators tomorrow.
 
Edit: 5.4 kg made the cut.
 
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