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]

The yellow cardi group moved about 200' north and at least 200' from any other pepper plants. I used some of my usual tulle bags and some new ones of a different type. I'm not really pleased with any of them because of the pipes so I have some different stuff inbound.

The red cardi group took over the spot by the house. I need to find another drum or at least a garbage can that doesn't leak. I learned my 15 gallon bucket only holds 13 gallons when I fill it using a meter.

These eat and drink the same 1% Masterblend.

 

[Downriver]

Love what you've done with the place, DW . You could have monsters in the making.

 

[DWB]

July patch update

The winter squash section is doing great. Lots of butternut and candy roasters coming along. Something started eating the zucchini flowers a while back so we only got one fruit. I have five new gallon-size plants ready to rotate in soon.

The tomatoes and beans are growing well and flowering but not producing. Maybe they'll do something when it cools down a bit. I sure want to make some pots of marinara with the San Marzano tomatoes.


The peppers are doing well. They're the smallest plants I've ever had in July but that's fine with me and to be expected since I didn't plant out until June. I was going for simple and sane this year, not jungle. I avoided the digging critter by planting late but still had to replace four plants that some other critter ate. Probably a rabbit.

I'm gonna get rid of the hillbilly winter shelter this year and go with something completely different. The last two winters have been too severe and I'm tired of losing my mama plants. The new thing will triple the cubes and be much easier to manage and maintain. Plenty of room to automate everything when I close the roof and south wall for cold weather. I'll have room to dig up some of the best plants in the patch and add them to the overwinter crowd.

The chamberbitter is an awful weed. I think I brought it in with the load of decomposing sheepshit and rotting hay in 2018. The first weeds I remember seeing were the next year. I didn't know what it was and thought it was kinda cute when I pulled them. They look like baby mimosa trees. I didn't really start paying attention and learning until 2020.

The garden area is the epicenter of the infestation and over the years I've fought it but not seriously enough. Now there are spots of it everywhere so I've upped my game this year. The garden itself is okay but the surrounding areas are not. It laughed at the pre-emergent from Ace I put on it in 2022. You can't mow it away. It learns to grow close to the ground if you do. This year it's full-on war. This year I'm using 75% Isoxaben and using glyphosate as a marker where I can. This costs me around $3.50 a gallon to mix.

What makes this weed so bad is it grows little dingleball fruits all up and down underneath the leaf axils. These fruits explode and spew seeds everywhere as they mature or are molested.

It stinks but the best management practice without using atrazine or other very bad chemicals is pulling them before they can spew. I travel our property with a bucket now. This is the fifth feed sack ready to go to the landfill this month.

 

[DWB]

Here's some of the first pods from the Canadian Yellow CARDI Scorpions. Looking more like a sick joke. They have as much of the CARDI Scorpion form as my Red Wing boots. They don't even have that Butch T look of all the other Yellow CARDI fakes people are peddling.

We'll see after a while. I do have four plants but now I'm glad I only started four plants.

 

[DWB]

They're supposed to look like this. I'm not seeing it yet

 

[ahayastani]

They're supposed to look like this. I'm not seeing it yet

There are a few species of mushroom that may help you with the visual confirmation

 

[Voodoo 6]

I think the Trinidad Scorpion has to be my all time favorite pepper, I bought a box of AJ Drew's fresh super hots years ago and dried them in the oven, in my apartment, I think someone called the cops...

 

[DWB]

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

Here ya go DR. This time I'll show the end game. 19.8 pounds of pig smoked all day the Sunday before last.

Just out of the smoker 6:30 PM

Rested for an hour, time to pull some off for eating

8:20 PM I like to tear them down at 175°-ish

8:23 PM done with the basic deconstruction

 

[DWB]

I started eating these so-called Cardi Scorpions from the Canadian seed seller. What a joke. So disappointing. Obviously zero cardi scorpion form but that's not the worst. I started slicing pieces off the first one. Fruity and tasty but the heat isn't there. I'm being wildly generous if I say it's Fatalii level. Really, these are the mildest peppers I've ever grown. Not even habanero level.

After eating the first one, piece by piece, hoping for something to happen, I chopped another and put it into a soft taco size chorizo and bean burrito. That stuff is pretty wild thanks to all the YNBS and reapers I used when I cooked it. To be honest, I never sensed any additional heat from the yellow sweet pepper I added.

The really great scorpion news is the 2nd generation of the mutant that accidentally popped from the red cardi last year is growing true to form and is just as beastly hot as the original. A quarter inch of the tip end hurts. I still believe this yellow is at least as hot, if not hotter, than the red.

I also got some of the red cardi scorpion seeds from this Canadian seed seller. They're growing true to form but none are ripe for heat and taste comparisons yet.

 

[Downriver]

Here ya go DR. This time I'll show the end game. 19.8 pounds of pig smoked all day the Sunday before last.

Nice looking butt DW. Lotsa Mr. Brown to mix in, and juicy as hell. Great job! Now, I'm hungry. I might have to fire up the smoker, ha.

 

[growyourown]

sorry my recommendation to the canadian seeds was a bust for you.

i have only had 1 or 2 of the 30+ types i bought from there over 4 years not come out as expected.

 

[DWB]

sorry my recommendation to the canadian seeds was a bust for you.

i have only had 1 or 2 of the 30+ types i bought from there over 4 years not come out as expected.

It's not a big deal and I truly appreciate the recommendation. I brought Jason up to speed on this and he's trying to figure out what went wrong. It may take a while but he truly appreciates knowing what happened. His red cardi are looking pretty good and real. I'll be able to start tasting those soon.

Meanwhile, my second generation yellow cardi mutants are not disappointing at all. They're everything I was hoping they'd be. The ones I planted out in the patch are finally starting to grow and produce well now that the ridiculous heat has given us a break.

 

[DWB]

It's bizarre but I just started picking beans yesterday. I suppose I better find a better variety to grow in the blistering heat we have anymore. The plant in the background is a red cardi scorpion from the Canada seller. I have four of those and still don't have a ripe pepper to compare taste, etc. with the ones I've been growing for 8 years or so.

I've also recently stated getting some tomatoes. Five San Marzano but no Amish Paste. I'm learning something from this and saving the seeds.

I did okay with the winter squash considering some critter ruined about half of the squashes. About 30 pounds have survived so far.

Zucchini was a total bust. The first round of plants were chewed down quickly. The second round of gallon size starts were also chewed down before I could get a thing. Only one fruit all year but It was good.

Peppers are doing well. I was hoping the plants would stay small so I wouldn't have to pound in all the posts again put up the fences around the rows. I decided to go for it but I may regret it before it's all done. Stringing them up to the wires isn't going too well. Time to pick peppers again in the morning.

 

[PaulG]

That last pic is a real money shot, bro!

Beautifully tended garden, DWB!

 

[DWB]

That last pic is a real money shot, bro!

Beautifully tended garden, DWB!

Thanks Paul. It's odd to see so much floor at this time of the year.

This is what we picked yesterday. Mostly YNBS and my yellow cardi scorpion mutants. Some reaper and douglah in there too.

It so was stinkin' hot the working dogs supervised me from a shady spot.

I need to start picking twice a week. Initial culls made a gallon for the black soldier flies. They have a good colony going in the far geobin where I dump all the veggie trash. The last two colonies I had by the pumphouse moved a while back. .I dumped those two remaining BSF scuzzbuckets in there. I imagine they're happier with a ton pile to live in rather than swimming in a bucket forever.

A neighbor brought me his two rolling bins in July. 55 gallon drums. He moved to town and didn't need them anymore. I needed two feed sacks to hold the very nice finished compost that came in them. More than 100 pounds. A smokin' deal. I refilled them with layers of horsey fertilizer, grass clippings and chipper slash. I'm not much in favor of turning over compost piles but I can handle rolling these around once in a while to do the same thing. We'll see if it makes compost any quicker. Regardless, I'll have plenty for next season.

 

[CaneDog]

Good stuff, DWB! Looks like things are going well.

 

[DWB]

Yum. Good peppers.

I just hauled the cannibal pot back in the house after 20 hours of simmering at 190° F in the 5th wheel. 5.5 kg of YNBS, red and yellow cardi scorpions and some reapers. I was too lazy to slice and remove the seeds so I just decimated the pods in the food processor with vinegar. Amendments are 4 ounces of local honey, 2 Tbsp brown sugar, 10 tsp pink salt and about ¾ gallon of white vinegar used in the teardown. Gotta be really careful licking that spoon. This stuff inflicts some really painful hot spots in the throat.

Besides a large contribution reserved for the upcoming batch of my carrot sauce, I think I'll thinly flat pack most of it in quart bags in the freezer for adding to batches of my burrito chile throughout the year. I may whiz it again in the ninja to knock the seeds down a little more.

 

[PaulG]

That looks awesome!

 

[DWB]

Here's the carrot sauce. So far it has 2.98 kg organic baby carrots,1.4 kg vidalia onion, 1.5 kg pepper puree, 2 bulbs of crushed garlic, 3 cups vinegar, 3 cups lime and 3 Tbsp salt. I put 3 cups of water in after this picture. That brought it up to an inch from the rivets. It needs more. A tablespoon still stands up straight in it.. I'll do some fine tuning and drop later another 750 grams of pepper puree in there in the morning. Cooking at 190°.

 

[DWB]

The cannibal pot of carrot sauce made some good sauce. I added another quart of the pepper puree, more lime juice and some sugar. After I cooked it down nicely, it made 8½ quarts. It turned out tasting exactly like last year. I guess that's a good thing.

The hillbilly winter shelter is history.

overwintering - Hillbilly winter shelter

It's attached to the south side of our pumphouse. It doesn't get morning sun because of a huge old eastern red cedar but beginning about 10 AM and throughout the day it gets pretty good direct sun that will get better as the oaks and pecans finish dropping their leaves This one's a little better...

thehotpepper.com

It served me and my mama plants well from 2016 until the winters of 2022 and 2023 when we experienced long periods of brutally cold weather. Previously, all I ever had to do was runs a couple of 40 watt bulbs and add a good blanket wrap. The last two winters my system failed me even with lights and a 1500W heater set to keep it above 50. These two winters killed too many of my plants and this last winter really pissed me off.

Here's the new winter shelter. It's the same kind of Suncast shed I used when I redid our house generator system in 2021. That's a great shed so that's why I chose the same one for the new way. Nice thing is I can open the roof and doors most days and let in the sun and fresh air. It will get good sun once the leaves fall and I do some tree trimming.

If and when the weather starts acting like there's nothing between us and the North Pole but a barbed wire fence, I'll close it up tight, run more precise heat and grow lights. This year I'm gonna run automatic fertigation too. I think lack of water with all the heat I added last year took a toll. It was so cold for so long I couldn't even open it for more than a week.

The saddest thing about last year is the mutant yellow cardi scorpion that popped didn't make it. The poor girl languished through June and even with the best nursing care I could give, she didn't make it.

I definitely dodged a bullet because her seedlings grow into big strong plants that are producing the identical fruit.

Second generation.

More new stuff too. My wife is retiring after the first of the year. She despises my old K3500 Silverado. She gave me orders to find a more suitable truck a few months ago and get a new 5th wheel trailer so we can travel some. Yes Ma'am. Good trucks are hard to find but me and service dog finally found one last week. My wife is very pleased with it.