solid7 said:
I don't know. The thing is, when you just let them do their thing, once they start doing it, it just happens, and you don't even notice how long it's taking, anymore. The first ones take forever, after that, the novelty seems to wear off, and the floodgates open.
.
I'm sure that at least one other person will vouch for me on this one.
This is pretty much exactly how it has happened for me, all three years that I've grown. In my climate, with my planting schedule and growing techniques, basically i spend June and early July stalking my plants, hoping for a glimmer of route colors, waiting and obsessing everyday for the slow trickle of early pods. For like one of two weeks in July, I get a steady, manageable flow of ripe stuff... I'm not obsessing, not an i drowning. Then, after that, picking ripe pods becomes almost a chore. I have not chiles than I, so I start making huge batches of sauce, smoking, preferring, donating to local eateries, friends, and family.
You get to the point where you don't nice how long it's taking of, in many cases, you cannot believe that you gotta harvest from the same plants so quickly between picking...
willard3 said:
In the Bajío of México, chiles are grown with hardly any human intervention (fertilization) at all.
The campesinos plant them and forget them til they pick the fruit for market. Seem to do pretty well.
IMG_2107 by
Willard Bridgham, on Flickr
Willard, awesome pics and an inspiring yet brief description of growing techniques in El Bajío...
Derelict said:
While I don't doubt you, why therefore do I have so much trouble with low yield, scraggly plants and hornworms? I fertilize, spray for pests, protect from the wildlife, and more, yet I still have plants that hardly get to 12" in height.
This is more a rhetorical question than anything else, by the way.
In regards to the hornworms, they are fucking with you bc they are evil, and they sense weakness in you and your garden. You gotta treat it like you're the new fish in prison. The first Hornworms that steps to your, you need to beat so brutally, si gruesomely, just to make an example of him so the other hornworms don't even dream about eating your plants.
Dead serious, and I know I'm jinxing it, but after I was bullied by multiple hornworms year one, I went full on dim mak on a big hornworms early in year two.... Next one i saw that year had the wasp cocoons on him. And this year, year three? Haven't seen any yet...I guess they done learned.
As for your other gardening ailments, all due respect, I bet you're doing too much. Trust your plants. Do not help them anymore than you have to, unless it becomes clear that they NEED it.
