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.
 
 

 

[DWB]

I've learned the in-ground overwintered plants are not so hardy. They've steadily given it up. I goofed up and killed one myself by careless placing of a pot on it for a temperature that reached 30.7° the morning of March 19. I broke off the single branch and nothing came back. Most of the rest slowly lost their green stems and shoots or could have had their shoots clipped off by a critter or bug.

There are three left that are doing well and one more that may do something. Down from the thirteen that initially showed signs of life.

 

[DWB]

The electric co-op did line cleaning recently. They brought me a nice pile of mulch from the chipper yesterday. Not sure how many loads they brought but it looks like 2 loads/12 yards. This stuff starts making some pretty decent compost in about 6 months.

Right on time too. Last time they cleared lines was in late 2020 when they dumped 6 yards for me. I have plenty of that left for this year but the pile is getting small.

Working dog is enjoying all the imported smells

 

[DWB]

They brought me more chipper mulch Friday. That's the good part. I know for a fact this new pile is two loads. This means the pile they hauled in the week before was a helluva lot more than 2 loads/12 yards. That pile is huge compared to the new pile.

The bad part is the new driver dumped the first load right on top of the remainder of my 2020 pile and all the compost I was gonna use this year. Now I have to improvise because I probably don't even have 10 gallons in my storage buckets. I suppose can get me a couple of wheelbarrow loads by pulling back the leaf cover in the woods to scrape up a bunch of humus and mix in some dried horse poop. Or maybe just go to town and buy some bags. That'll be a first.

 

[DWB]

The in-ground overwinter experiment wasn't a complete fail but close. In the end, it came down to two survivors. Now I know and never again. It could have worked with just a few quick, hard freezes but not the extended bad weather with temps below 15. Too damn much work to bother with. The two plants that lived aren't growing nearly as fast as I hoped for when it started but they are doing nicely and are prolific. This is the one I protected from the hole digger by using the tire.

The priority this year is making life easier and learning rather than producing mass quantities. I'm going with three single-wide rows of peppers rather than double-wide rows on a stagger. I'm trying to avoid a jungle this year in favor of something more manageable for learning purposes. I'm finally going with some technology rather than doofus sweat equity this year. Automatic irrigation with moisture sensors and a superlightweight 100' non-kinky stainless steel hose for manual patch watering and a 125' hose of the same type for pot watering. I'll have many groups of pots with wide separation. I've enjoyed absolutely all I can stand of dragging kinky, old style, 100' heavy as hell hoses in and out of rows and around the yard in mid-summer heat.


I'm very late getting things into operation but that's fine by me. I delayed planting because the digging critter came back earlier and stayed later. I also wanted to take extra time to hoe decimate the first flush of chamberbitter (aka gripeweed). The pre-emergent I used last year didn't work worth a hoot and I'm not really comfortable moving up on the aggression scale.

pests - Animal hole

I've never seen one quite like this. Our armadillos do more like a snowplow, the possums and skunks never go deep. This ~6" diameter hole is almost straight down with symmetrical sidewalls and 8" to the bottom. Like this critter pulled a plug out of the ground. It was done overnight Tuesday. It...

thehotpepper.com

Odd as it may seem, it appears the offender may be a canine. Specifically, a coyote. Chloe, our Red Heeler puppygirl digs the same "elevator shaft" straight down rectangular holes. It wasn't her though. She wasn't allowed out of our secure dog yard until a few weeks ago when I promoted her to "working dog".


I left the plants in their peat pellets and small hex cells for a long while but watered them with quarter strength masterblend to keep them healthy. A picture of some.

As usual, I paved the place with cardboard before mulching it in. This year I did the rows and periphery with chipper slash. The rows themselves are mulched in with decomposing yard waste. At the point this picture was taken, the only thing in the ground was the beans.

The pepper crop this year, both in ground and in pots for pure seed, are reaper, douglah, yellow naga brinstrain, my red cardi scorpion, my mutant yellow cardi scorpion, the canadian red cardi scorpion and their canadian yellow cardi scorpion mutant. Otherwise, I'm growing the usual suspects for us and the pups. Bush and pole beans, butternut and candy roaster winter squash, zucchini, Amish paste, San Marzano and Roma tomatoes.

 

[DWB]

Now it can be on autopilot for days at the time.

 

[CaneDog]

Your plants look in great shape and everything ship-shape and ready to go, DWB. Autopilot sounds fantastic. Wish I could set that up!

 

[DWB]

Pepper Chow for the hungry hound!
Thursday pickings. YNBS, some red cardi scorpions and a couple of reapers.

 

[DWB]

I found these wormy bastards on my Mama YNBS . They moved in since late yesterday afternoon. As you can see, they enjoy superhots.

Now I need to find the most inhumane way to torture and off them. The stomp and twist is far too dignified.

 

[DWB]

Eight hours in the cooker and this 16 pounder is done.

Happy Brisket Day Y'all

 

[Downriver]

Woulda been nice to see it SLICED DW, lol. Good thing I don't live closer, you woulda had company. Looks delicious.

 

[DWB]

Sorry but I had a really hard time slicing it. I tried three different knives including a Nakiri I could shave with but the stuff was falling apart. I even waited until we recovered from the meat coma to finish all the slicing.

 

[DWB]

End of hornworm story.

I decided to quit making the BSF compost. They make nasty, stinky drek that takes years to make a completely finished fertilizer. It's great stuff but it's foul in every way until it's done. This year I started doing something different. I got me a couple of Geobins for composting. They should hold about 450 gallons. It's a longer walk to dump scraps but they're closer to the grass clippings and horse poop. Also good access to the chipper slash mountains for browns

So I finally got all the last two years of BSF stuff dried out in bins under metal roofing panels and made me a feed sack full of nice ferts. I still had one bucket of really wet drek where all the larvae appeared to be history so I just left it sit and see. I checked it the other day and the floaters were swimming again. I felt sorry for them so I gave them all the hornworm chewed pods, the hornworms themselves and a scoop of horse poop. Haha, I told my wife about it and she said I have a kind heart.

I figured that was a fitting end for those nasty bastard hornworms that stripped down my plant.

 

[DWB]

This is the yellow cardi scorpion project. Almost ready to roll. This first group is my mutants. Four plants and two smaller emergency backups.

The second group is the mutants from the place in Canada. Four plants. Plus many examples of both out in the pepper patch.

I'm feeding them with 1% Masterblend. (19.5-18-38) in my low pH untreated well water. I haven't bothered to check the pH, ppm, etc. yet. Maybe one of these days soon. I'm using a solar pump drip system to feed and water. The premixed feed water lives in the 35 gallon tank. Since I mix my nutrients in small batches that are really potent, I'm not worried about undissolved calcinit.

When the tank is low enough for me to move it without a lot of bother, everything will move out front. It needs to be soon but Cody and I had to go to Auburn this week for his quarterly follow-up scans and diagnostics (still cancer-free). These things need to be moved and bagged soon. I'm tired of plucking flowers. The two groups of plants will be far isolated from other plants and each group bagged as a group. I got some cool bags but the drawback will be the plants have to remain short and bushy. Not a big deal. Not going for quantity this year. Learning session.

I'll probably keep some of the plants in the bins just to monitor the flow. I have some wifi moisture meters to monitor the soil water percentage. I want to keep them at around 60% per the CARDI specs. The soil is my usual mix of recycled from last year, pine fines, peat, several composts, perlite, hardwood ash and this year for the first time, some coir. Plus whatever I forgot about since I mixed


I have another cardi scorpion project going too. The reds. It's very similar in nature with hydro feeding but with fewer plants. Two of my reds and three from the Canadian place. Also with more examples of both growing out in the patch. Just want to see how my cardi reds I've been growing since 2016 compare to the Canadian reds. Those plants are already bagged.

The rest of the potted plants this year are two reapers, two YNBS and two douglah. Mama Reaper is happy and starting to pump out the pretty pods.

 

[DWB]

I lost this before I got the plants properly tagged but was fortunate to find it. I had to look but I found it again today. I decided to scan it and put it here so I know where it is.

 

[Downriver]

Thank goodness for the legend on the right! lol

 

[DWB]

Thank goodness for the legend on the right! lol

Uh huh. I'm a little cryptic at times. In fact I often find important looking notes to myself and wonder what in the world I was trying to say.

 

[DWB]

I'm really liking the form of my yellow scorpions. All natural with no pinching. It's hard to capture in a picture but they're bush babies. Much different than the Canadian mutants. Even the two reserve plants, still in the tiny cups, are branching out down to the base.

 

[DWB]

I looked around some yesterday afternoon and was able to get pictures that better illustrate why I'm liking my yellow cardi mutant better than the canadian yellow cardi. This is gonna be interesting.

 

[CaneDog]

So, basically you prefer bigger, bushier, more vigorous plants that don't drop their leaves?

 

[DWB]

So, basically you prefer bigger, bushier, more vigorous plants that don't drop their leaves?

Indeed I do. Imagine that.

What I find interesting is I have ten copies of my yellow scorpion growing and all have the same form. All much different than the four canadian plants.