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.
 
 

 

[m1hagen]

Thanks!  I'll check them out for sure.

 

[Downriver]

...I also bought one of these by making a $15.00 offer. This 20' piece of cloth also came with a 12 pack of clips.
 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/113700192561?ViewItem=&item=113700192561
 
 

 
 Gawd, now you're light-years ahead of me. Things are looking fantastic.
 
So, does this 20' shade-cloth come with the frame (as pictured), or is it just the cloth and clips. I didn't see where the listing mentioned the frame at all.
 

 

[DWB]

Thank DR.
 
Naw man, the cloth doesn't come with a frame. I used my plant support posts to hang mine with poly rope and baling twine..

 

[DWB]

I've decided what I'm gonna do for fertilizing this year after considering fertigation and all. If we have a usual summer like we did last year, the bale plants won't need much of any irrigation once the roots are dug in well. I may not even put in drip. I'm sticking with the locally mixed Blueberry Special (18-7-11) with the k-mag. The fertilizer guy is selling me bulk k-mag (0-0-22) in my buckets at the ton price to bring up the K and I'm gonna use triple phosphate (0-45-0) to bring up the P. I'll tweak the nitrogen with 33-0-0 ammonium sulfate. Since all this is water soluble and quick acting, and I can mix single use batches, I'm free to make adjustments for every feeding.
 
These will be some of my pet plants. Two Juliets and two sweetie cherries in 16 gallon fabric pots. They'll live in the isolation area by the house and I'll train them to run the fence for support with one plant in each pot running east and west. I hope these will provide my grape and cherry tomato lunches all summer. Plenty of sun in this area with intermittent periods of shade throughout the day. I usually keep my pots of large mother peppers along this fence. There's enough hours of blazing direct sun the plants get a little wilty but spring back when the shade hits them. Cody says it's frackin hot today. I reckon. It was up to 87° a little while ago.
 

 
Many of my isolation peppers will go in here this year. Others will be here in fabric pots. Pictures of a douglah just about to go downhole yesterday and a few more peppers and tomatoes already planted.
 

 
 

 
I planted a full row of peppers yesterday and few more peppers and tomatoes in another row today. I pretty well have the tomatoes done except for some smaller spares. I still have a buttload of peppers but I have more than a half row still open plus the 4 fresh bale section in the garden plus more room in the iso area. I think for sure I'll plant peppers in the four fresh bales in the garden area as a control for the composted bale area.
 
Edit: I'm such a dumbass. Nowhere close to done with maters. I just found two bins with 12 hyooge plants beside the garage.
 
 
 

 
 
 

 

[PtMD989]

87 degrees, eh. It got up to 40 here today and the weather man says we got some snow coming.
Your plants are looking great [emoji106]


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[Ghost Pepper Revolution]

87 degrees, eh. It got up to 40 here today and the weather man says we got some snow coming.
Your plants are looking great [emoji106]


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Oh you poor poor people up there, thats just nuts

 

[DWB]

87 degrees, eh. It got up to 40 here today and the weather man says we got some snow coming.
Your plants are looking great [emoji106]


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Maybe I should have offered condolences for our northern brothers and sisters but you will surely have your revenge when we're suffering with weeks of 95/95 temps and humidity down here.
 
Or not. When I was in SW Michigan for two weeks last summer, it was hotter and more humid up there than it was down here.

 

[rickvm]

Hey DWB, are you removing the nursery bags before planting? I do,since they don’t breakdown hardly at all. I left a few seedlings in the bags last season and pulled them at the end of the season. The plants stayed small and not many roots outside the bag. Good luck this year, looking like your gonna kill it!


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[PtMD989]

 
Maybe I should have offered condolences for our northern brothers and sisters but you will surely have your revenge when we're suffering with weeks of 95/95 temps and humidity down here.
 
Or not. When I was in SW Michigan for two weeks last summer, it was hotter and more humid up there than it was down here.

Yeah, we get some humidity off from the Great Lakes , eh. [emoji16]


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[DWB]

Hey DWB, are you removing the nursery bags before planting? I do,since they don’t breakdown hardly at all. I left a few seedlings in the bags last season and pulled them at the end of the season. The plants stayed small and not many roots outside the bag. Good luck this year, looking like your gonna kill it!


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No, I'm not. This year I'm not even slicing them. I don't have all that much experience with these bags but I've not noticed a problem. I used a few of these small bags for seed babies last year. I slashed and planted directly into pots. Some are in the OW shelter now. When I hacked the plants and yanked the rootballs from their bigger pots to stuff them into smaller pots and put them away, I don't remember any of them having bad root systems. When I pull them out to replant this year, I'll have a closer look.
 
Root growth isn't inhibited in these bags. I gave most of my plants some breathing roon by cutting them down from 24 to the bin to 12 to the bin. My last two bins I left at 24 to the bin due to space reasons thanks to the light mover that crapped out on me. I just planted a bunch of those crowded plants and they were like a uniplant. I had tyo tear them apart because they were all grown together in a mass. I guess there's no air pruning when they're so tightly packed.
 
Another thing I noticed this year is I had to plant some of the bags into larger pots because the plants simply got out of control. One Fatalii in particular flopped over bigtime in late February  so I had to plant it as deep as I could in a gallon pot. I stuck that in a Folgers can with nutrient solution and just left it go. (http://thehotpepper.com/topic/69987-2019-hay-bale-pepper-patch/page-10). I dumped it out a few days ago to plant it outside and the roots had pretty much filled the gallon nursery pot and were coming out the bottom holes. This is what it looks like now.
 
I hope I haven't screwed the pooch by planting in the bags but I'm not too concerned right now. I have some other bag plants that were put into larger pots. When I move those to the ground or bigger pots I'll look closely at to learn more. Thanks for the info.
 

 

[Devv]

Garden is looking great!
 
I'll trade that 87° for the 95° plus we had yesterday. And it must rain there (what's that?), I saw the mention that you may not even have to water.
 
Got any room there for me? Oh wait, you said humidity...never mind
 
Keep it green buddy!

 

[DWB]

All that walking the rows all hunched over under the shade cover and losing my hat when the button on top got hung in the twine got old real quick.
 

 
So I vaulted my ceiling. The Monday before last we stopped at a discount store in Robertsdale to get a dirt cheap box of nitrile gloves but they were closed. I took note of quite a few T-posts standing against a rack outside. When we went to town for supplies yesterday we stopped to shop and check on the posts. They sold the big bunch of 5-footers but they still had all 10 of the 8-footers. When the guy said I could have them all for $40, I said oh hell yeah. That's a smokin' deal. With a a little rope, they work just right for raising the shade roof above my head.
 

 
 

 

[CDNmatt]

LULZ look at that hat hanging there
 
 
I'm having an extremely hard time looking at theses last few weeks of updates Dee, I am most certainly driving down too 'Jelly Town'....It all looks so damn F g fantastic dude.
 
And dammit Cody get back to work ffs

 

[Devv]

Been there done that with the hat thang..LOL
 
Plants are looking great
 
So as time goes by, are you going to turn the material under or just keep adding on top? My first garden back in '82 was in similar soil and after 4 years it was perfection. Much easier than working in sandy soil in my experiences.
 
Keep it going!

 

[DWB]

I'll definitely keep loading organic material on top. I have a never ending supply on hand here. I dumped more in there yesterday. At this point I don't see a reason to till it for next year but we'll see how it all rots down.

 

[DWB]

Finally getting done with planting. Good thing I went and got the 10 new bales last month.
 
The last row and the four bale annex are mostly done. I have 7 more pepper plants to put out plus 20-somerthing overwinters to deal with. The tomatoes are finally finished (dang maters). I have 119 plants in the main garden with 8 more planting spots available. Maybe more because one Fatalii seems determined to die. I may put some of my overwinters out there or maybe go get some sweet pepper plants. 
 
I have 24 plants in the 6 bale isolation area with 8 open planting spots. 13 plants are in pots so they can be moved to a protected area if need be. Like tonight when we're supposed to have a massive bad storm with high winds and hail. I pulled the row covers back over plants in the garden area and I'll protect all the other plants I can with the 40 buckets and pots I have on standby for stuff like this.
 

 
 

 

[DWB]

The bean ditch is coming along. The more ambitious of the beanstalks I planted a week and a half ago are already to the 4' level. 18 of the 24 seeds I planted the next day are plants now.
 

 

 

[DWB]

After average April high of 75 and average low of 57, it's back on with the row covers. No realistic danger of a frost but lows in the low and mid 40's for a few days.
 
Dang cold again. Early this morning it wasn't bad at all. 70-something. Since then I had to give up my usual shorts and  tank top for jeans, a hoodie and a coat. It feels like the wind is coming straight down from Matty's frozen wonderland in Canada with nothing but a barbed wire fence to block it.

 

[PaulG]

The hay bale garden is shaping up well, DW.
 
Kudos for the massive amount of effort you
have put into your space. It looks great, and
will just get better and better every season.
 
Now, bring on the pods!

 

[CDNmatt]

After average April high of 75 and average low of 57, it's back on with the row covers. No realistic danger of a frost but lows in the low and mid 40's for a few days.
 
Dang cold again. Early this morning it wasn't bad at all. 70-something. Since then I had to give up my usual shorts and  tank top for jeans, a hoodie and a coat. It feels like the wind is coming straight down from Matty's frozen wonderland in Canada with nothing but a barbed wire fence to block it.

 

I can neither confirm nor deny that I had any part of that....The only thing I have found to combat said problem is to bitch aboot it till the warmer weather eventually comes.