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.
 
 

 

[CaneDog]

Looking sharp, DWB Seems like everyone's getting an upgrade around your place, peppers and people both.

 

[DWB]

Looking sharp, DWB Seems like everyone's getting an upgrade around your place, peppers and people both.

The new winter shelter has almost 2½ times more floor space plus a lot more potential shelf space than the old way. This best part is it's all so much more accessible. I'll finally have room to dig up some great plants from the patch to keep over the winter.

The new truck is a definite upgrade for Cody. He loves it. This truck has the electric sliding passthrough in the back window. He can safely hang his head out of that and enjoy the outside air.

 

[DWB]

The patch is doing well. Producing too much, still making babies and the bees are working hard on the flowers.

We had our first frost warning last night. I deployed some winter covers to protect my seed plants and some plants in the patch I want to dig up and keep for the winter. This is the only end of season heroics planned for the year. I didn't see any frost this morning but it did get down to 40.6° inside the cab of one of the trucks.

I love my yellow peppers but there's nothing prettier than a bunch of red and brown peppers. The ones on the right are the Canadian red cardi scorpions. I'm pleased with those. I put one plant out in the patch. It's a big, sturdy plant that's making a lot of correct but small pods. They have proper taste and heat.

Very much unlike their disaster of cardi yellow scorpions. I moved all of them out by the back fence all by themselves a long time ago. I did find a use for the rather large sweet and mild fruit they produce. I slice them up and add to my salads. Nice sweet peppers. Other than that, they're useless. I won't be collecting any seeds or keeping the plants over the winter.

This is the oddity of the year. I don't know what it is or what plant it came from. It looks like a red douglah, I haven't tasted it yet. I picked it two weeks ago.and it's still in the refrigerator. I'll try growing a few plants from the seeds and see what happens. Assuming it has seeds.

I thought I was doing a good thing for my carrot hot sauce by using the organic baby carrots this year. The problem is I got them from Sam. I recently learned these bunny luv organic baby carrots are the ecoli specials. I caught that just right (or actually, just wrong). They were removed from all stores on October 23. I bought mine October 22. Go figure. Good thing I cooked it all week at 190°F. Now I'm wondering how to safely sanitize the food processor. I don't know the melting point of the plastic body that may be contaminated.

I've already eaten a half quart of the sauce so it must be safe.

 

[ahayastani]

Now I'm wondering how to safely sanitize the food processor.

Chlorine should do the thrick.

 

[DWB]

Chlorine should do the thrick.

Thanks. That should work but I realized I can use the same Ensurinse I use for sterilizing my peppers. That's what it's for. It kills 99.9% of staph, salmonella, e-coli, listeria, etc during a 5 minute dip.. I'll just use the next batch of wash water and spin it up good in the food processor. No bleach stink.

 

[DWB]

I'm well pleased with the new winter shelter. Our first freeze was Friday night so I trimmed up 14 plants and loaded them in Friday afternoon. No downsizing of pots yet. It was supposed to get down to 31° so I added a 40W incandescent for heat. It actually got down to 29.2. The temperature in the shelter hit a low of 38.7. Today I added a small PTC heater with the intent of keeping it ~50°. I'm not sure how well this fancyass chinese electronic wonder with a remote control is gonna work out but will know soon enough. If not, I'll put in an old timey electric heater or a french fry light or a brooder light on a controller that will keep it between 40 and 50. It's supposed to be cold all week so I'll get it figured out.

The patch plants are covered and did well with the first freeze. After I make room for more plants by repotting, I'll dig up a few nice ones and move them in.

It sure is nice to open up the roof and doors and let the sun in. I fed them all some 1% Masterblend today. They haven't had any good food for a while. I hope they're happy.

 

[Downriver]

@DWB I like that new winter shelter! It'll be interesting to see how well it performs, compared to the original, one-of-a-kind, custom-built one.

 

[DWB]

I wish I did this years ago. It holds twice as many plants without any goofing around at all and it's dirt simple to feed, water and rearrange as desired.

Last night it went to 31.2°, The heater kept it between 48.7 and 50.5 at a cost of 1.56 kWh. Around 20¢. I opened it up for the sun around 9:30 AM.