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Bold Badger 2023 Glog

Hello again, I'm back with a new grow log. This year I'm growing much the same as last year. The main difference is I've added 200 Aji Guyannas and some Jalapenos to the mix. I've never grown any annuums before, so that's a first. The Aji sauce was one of my best sellers last year. It came out with a sort of sour tomato taste, kind of salsa verde-like.

Growing in the same 3 spots as before. I started my seeds on 02/22/2023, and reseeded a bunch on 03/03, mainly because the top shelf got too hot and zapped most of the yellow 7 pots. I potted them up from 1" pots to 3" the week of 04/03. Got them outside to harden off on 05/05. Overall I'd say the plants this year are a bit less healthy than last year, not sure why. I partly blame the latest batch of potting soil I got from Lowes. Sometimes the yellow bag just lets a guy down. I'm seriously thinking to switching to foxfarm or something more reputable just for what I hope will be better consistency. The ones in the yellow bags I had leftover from last year are doing much better. I mixed in some organic tomato and vegetable fertilizer and epsom salts with all of them when I potted them up.

Here's the breakdown:

Code:
id    count    variety
1.    1008    yellow 7 pots
2.    300    chocolate habs
3.    100    p. dreddies
4.    100    ghosts
5.    200    aji guyannas
6.    25    reapers
7.    100    jalapenos
8.    6    7 pot caramel
9.    6    evergreen fatali
10.    6    red spaceship
11.    6    caribbean red
12.    6    aji panca
13.    6    7 pot bubblegum
14.    6    pink tiger
15.    6    white bullet hab
16.    6    7 pot chaguana
17.    6    moruga scorpion
18.    6    yakki blue
19.    6    7 pot congo sr gigantic red

Those higher numbered ones are a wide variety of the old seeds I had from 8 or 9 years ago. They've been in the fridge the whole time. I got full germination except for #12, of which none sprouted. I'm thinking I'll grow one of each in buckets in my yard in the hopes of saving seeds from them all, just to keep the lines going. Really looking forward to the white bullet habs, I remember those being really good. They originally came from a hab mixed pack from Pepper Joe. The jalapenos came from some good pods I got from a friend at the farmers market. Hoping they have as much heat as the parents did.

Pics!

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Teaser pic for the front page.



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Nice Hobart continuous feed food processor I picked up from a surplus auction. Should save me some time. We had one of these when I worked at Long John Silvers back in the day to make the coleslaw. It had all kinds of warning stickers on it about how you could be permanently maimed if you weren't careful. We totally disregarded those, lol. I don't recall anyone ever losing a finger.


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Aji sprouts on 02/28.


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Aji sprouts on 03/06.


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Chocolate hab sprouts on 03/06.


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Taking up the row cover in the big field. We tilled it again this year so the soil will be much looser, should make it a lot easier to get the plants in. I still have to get it back down before I get the plants in. Planning to get started on that tomorrow night.


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Yellow 7 pot sprouts on 03/18. These were reseeded on 03/02 so they're a little behind.


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Shelf 1 on 03/23.


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Row cover up.


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Shelf on 03/28.


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Ajis and jalapenos 03/28.


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Yellow 7 pots 03/28.


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Ghosts and one of the trays of outliers. Notice the dead #12s.

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Sticking labels on some yellow 7 pots.


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I started using a price gun for the lot numbers this year. This way I can reuse the labels from year to year since they aren't printed directly on it.


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Plants 04/02.


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Chocolate habs potted up 04/09.


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Potted up yellow 7 pots.


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Yellow 7 pots in the bad soil 04/12. These were already the worst of the plants that went into this soil because I potted up the healthiest ones first into the old soil. By the time I got to the new bags I was on the less healthy plants. But even aside from that, I had a few healthy ones that went into it and are doing way worse than they should be. The good stuff had lots of fibrous bits in it and the new stuff was more uniform, like coir. Even if I don't go with a higher quality soil I'll definitely be buying a bag and checking it to make sure it's the good stuff before I load up on it.


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The sauce on the shelf at a local grocery store.


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Chocolate habs 04/16.


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Yellow 7 pots 04/19.


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Chocolate habs 04/21.


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Shelf 1 04/22.


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Shelf 2 04/23.


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Yellow 7 pots 05/02.


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Plants outside on 05/05.


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Outside 05/10.


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I found this nest of baby rabbits in one of my community garden spots.


I'm shooting to start getting the plants in the ground on Monday. It's going to be a slog. Wish me luck.
 
Impressive! Whish I could taste those sauces!
 
Good selection of sauces BB - do you use fenugreek leaves for your Curry Leaf Sauce?
 
Back with a quick update. I just got the last of the plants in the ground yesterday. It would have gone faster but it's been very dry and hot lately so I've had to water a lot, which cut into my hole digging time.

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New growth on a topped plant.


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After tilling up the big spot and getting the plastic back down.


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Plants as of 05/17.


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A cool butterfly.


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Plants on 05/22.


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Getting plants in at the community garden.


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Getting plants in at the big spot. I made that poker thing in the hopes of using it to loosen up the soil without having to shovel it out. It didn't work very well in the heavy clay. The wheeled stool thing really saved my back this year, I wish I'd have gotten one sooner.


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My welding skills leave a lot to be desired. I think I'm going to try and flair out the tines a bit and see if that helps.


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Getting more plants in. These are yellow 7 pots.


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Plants left on 05/31.


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Chocolate habs here. This is where I had those impressively huge ghosts last year.


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All Aji Guyannas here. The damn groundhog got about 40 of them. Thankfully I had two more trays that wouldn't fit here so I just popped those into the empty spots. I'd rather keep them together anyway so that worked out ok. I sprinkled around a bunch of cinnamon in the hopes of deterring him from coming back.


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Chocolate habs at the community garden.


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This where I put all the outliers.


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I put a bunch of tomatoes in one of the community garden spots. I figured why not. I plan to can a bunch of them this year.


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Yellow 7 pots at the community garden. Most of these were kind of wimpy to begin with. I don't expect much from them.


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Curry trees as of a few days ago. They've been outside for maybe two weeks now.


It's supposed to cool off on Wednesday but I'll probably have to water them all again before we get rain. I have a feeling it's going to be a hot dry summer.
 
Update time.

A lot has happened in the last month. The plants have done a lot of growing, both as people, and as plants. At first they were disappointing, but their roots grew deep and they overcame their humble up-pottings to become healthy and productive citizens of the chili empire. Soon they will give their lives to the cause of spicy freedom, and to make all our tacos a little more tasty. It brings a tear to your eye. Especially if you accidentally rub your eye after chopping them.

On to the pics.

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Big spot on 06/06.


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Ajis 06/09.


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Chocolate habs 06/09.


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My ambitions of growing all the outliers in separate buckets fell by the wayside. Which is to say, laziness. Instead I just put a few plants in the raised bed. The chicken wire over the top is because there's one vicious squirrel that loves digging in there.


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Outliers on 06/12.


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Tomatoes 06/12.


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Chocolate habs 06/12.


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Yellow 7 pots 06/12.


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Big spot 06/15.


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Big spot 06/15.


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This plant broke in half was was just a naked stem when I put it in the ground.


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The aji spot doesn't have city water. When the cistern gets low I have to bring it in. I had about 1200 lbs in the bed and the old ranger handled it just fine. I love this little truck. I just finished putting new ball joints in it. That was a fun job.


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Back yard 06/21. These plants are doing great, except that stunted one. Peter pepper on the left, apocalypse in the middle, pepper b on the right. The other four are leftovers, I think 3 yellow 7 pots and a chocolate hab. I originally did this bed like a mini-hugelculture bed. The bottom was all logs, then like 10 bags of potting soil. After a few years it had shrunk to about 1/3rd its original size. This year I filled it up some more with dirt from the compost pile, which is mostly leaves, with the addition of corn cobs and watermelon rinds and the like.


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Tomatoes 06/26.


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Chocolate habs.


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Yellow 7 pots.


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Ajis 06/26. These are actually doing a lot better. They took a long time to get going. At first they all seemed to be plastered to the ground. I went over there with a trunk full of tobacco sticks to stake them up after not seeing them for a week or so and they were doing much better, so I left them alone. The times I've grown ajis I've noticed they aren't like normal peppers. They're more like a vine, they tend to grow into a big continuous thicket. I'm curious to see how these do.


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Big spot 06/28. These are probably doing the best of all.


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After weeding. It only took me a few hours to do the whole field. Thank you, row cover, for your awesome time savings.


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Back yard 06/29.



My prediction of a hot and dry summer has so far been completely wrong. It's currently raining cats and dogs outside, for the 3rd time today. The ground is so saturated it's just forming little streams and ponds everywhere. Hopefully this will be good for the plants in the long run.
 
Update time.

So the plants at the big spot still aren't as big as I'd like, but we have another couple of months so I guess they can still put on some height. I was hoping between tilling the soil and getting them in the ground earlier they would just go nuts. Maybe I should have topped them. All the plants are pretty well loaded except the outliers at the community garden. Those are looking pretty terrible overall.

pics:

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Chocolate habs 08/06.


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Chocolate habs 08/06.


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Ajis 08/06.


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Ajis 08/06.


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Outliers 08/02.


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I forget what variety these are, but they look cool as hell. I'm going to try and save seeds from them because I think a purple sauce would be awesome. They don't taste very good but who knows what they'll taste like after fermentation.


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Tomatoes. I really should have staked these up. I've picked like 2 so far. Most of them are rotting before they get ripe. I gave them a bunch of epsom salts the other day, hoping that'll help.


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Chocolate habs at the community garden 08/02.


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Yellow 7 pots at 08/02.


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The big spot 07/28. I let the weeds get out of control here, took a couple of days to deal with them.


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Before weeding.


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The curry trees 07/30.


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I finally got a banner. I'm pretty happy with it. Although I have a friend working on a new logo so I'll probably redo it once she's done with it.


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The new logo.


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A mockup of one of the custom labels with the new logo.
 
Last edited:
I figured I'd take a few minutes out of my busy schedule of chopping peppers to post an update. Seriously, I've been doing nothing but chop peppers for about a month. The plants all wound up producing pretty well. I think I'm up to 24 carboys now and I still have a ton of peppers on the vine. I'm thinking I'll pick more next week and finish those up, then wait for the frost to pick the rest. The more I pick now the less I'll have to deal with all at once then.

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A few peppers from last weekend.


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Chocolate habs 10/03.


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A closer view.


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Ajis 10/03. These produced very well.


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Closer view.


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Ran into this little stinker there.


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A load of free horse manure, one of two I've gotten so far.



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Found this cardinal at the aji spot. Not sure if it was hurt or what.


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Super happy with my new sprayer. This thing is awesome.


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I'm pretty sure this is an annuum/chinense hybrid. It tastes just like a cross of the two. Not sure about its parentage, but it's a pretty great pepper. I saved a bunch of seeds from them.


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The big spot. I wound up letting the weeds take over a couple of rows where the plants were doing terrible anyway, but for the most part they produced well.


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A few yellow 7 pots.


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Chopping peppers. I went through a few paring knives and I've decided these old hickorys are the best for my purposes.


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Chocolate habs and jalapenos.


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The outliers.


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A reaper.


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I finally got approval to sell my pickled peppers, only locally so far. I still haven't done the FDA acidified food filing to sell them online. They're wicked tasty.


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After giving the curry trees the chop.


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After vacuum sealing.
 
The seeds you mean? The fleshy parts taste pretty much just like the leaves only a bit stronger. I usually only get a few dozen seeds from my plants every year but I make a sauce with the leaves.
Yeah the seeds take up most of the berry. I always eat the fleshy part before sticking the seeds in the soil. I detect a slight bing cherry flavor along with the curry leaf flavor.
 
Yes I've grown them for years. I keep one in a grow tent so that we have fresh leaves year round. My wife (she's of Indian descent) and I eat mainly traditional Indian fare, and we use it in many dishes. It definitely goes great in egg preparations (fried, scrambled, omlet, bhurji) with a few other spices.
 
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