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Ethansm - 2018 Glog

Hello all!

I'm a long time forum lurker, first time poster! 
I started growing peppers last year in a small 4' x 6' raised box, and cheap store bought seeds. Grew cayenne, orange habs, jalapenos, and serrano last year, and really enjoyed it! Smoked the peppers on the smoker for 12 hours on nothing but hickory logs and made powder, and I put that on everything now. 
 
Anyway, this year:
I'm graduating from the raised box! I've bought a house with a back yard and I have about 1000-1500sq ft that I can plant in. 
 
The list ascending in spicy, all from Pepper Joe's website:
Pepperoncini
Ancho/Poblano
Pepper Joe's Giant jalapenos
Pepper Joe's serrano
Charleston
Paper lantern
Golden Habanero
Jamaican pepper
Giant Ghost
Morguana Trinidad Scorpion
 
 
 
A few notes / questions:
My spicy tolerance is still pretty nooby, habs are about as spicy as I can go and they're still incredibly painful. I originally only bought giant ghost peppers, but one of my free random packs was the scorpion. Although I am still fairly apprehensive to grow the super hots, I'm going for it anyway!
 
I started germinating last year the second week of February and had a hard time keeping the plants in sizable containers before putting them in the ground, I'm thinking of starting the first week of March this year. I know the super hots can take a long time to germinate, should I go ahead and start those now? For context I'm in central Missouri.
 
I've also heard of people around here using pellitized gypsum in their grows to help break up the clay in the soil around here, and the sulfur content of the gypsum helps the peppers, has anyone had experience with this?
 
I know I have more questions but can't think of any right now. Anyway wanted to get this started so I have somewhere to document.
 
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Been working on the yard in preparation for planting. I've got about 30 more trees to pull, then going to amend the soil with 2 cubic yards of compost, 80lbs of pelletized gypsum, and 4 cubic feet of perlite. With any luck I'll be planting outside next Saturday.
 
Peppers have been hardening off the last couple days, and picked up compost today. Turns out the city I live in has a program that accepts food scraps from the restaurants and mixes it with wood chips made from yard waste drop off sites around town. Pretty neat, and it's $20 for a cubic yard, and either I've been getting ripped off on cubic yards of mulch, or this is the biggest damn cubic yard I've ever seen.

On another note my back yard is infested with poison ivy, one of the vines is 2" thick and about 25 feet tall in a tree. The vine on the right of the tree in the picture is the poison ivy. I'm not allergic, but my fiance already has it all over her arms. I don't want to spray, but she wants me to. We'll see what happens. Probably need to take care of that before I put peppers in the ground.
 

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One lucky pepper grower, that is good looking compost.
My experience is just to do as much of the preparation as possible before you put those plants in the ground.

Sent from my HUAWEI VNS-L31 using Tapatalk
 
Lesson learned, never buy a house in the winter. All of this is poison ivy, and there's more to go. I'll be delayed at least another week getting the peppers in the ground as I found poison ivy in a 15ft x 20ft area next to the garden plot.

I've got all the compost, perlite, and gypsum mixed into the garden. I'm ready to get the peppers in, and they're ready to go in, but if I'm going to be spraying the ivy I don't want to risk killing the peppers.
 

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Got the peppers planted about a week ago, checked on them today and they've got flea beetles real bad. Tried spraying with a mixture of rubbing alcohol, water, and dish soap. We'll see if it does the trick.
 

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Peppers are growing, there are a few flower buds that have formed so shouldn't be too long now. Surprisingly the rubbing alcohol/water/soap mixture worked pretty well on the flea beetles. The plants had some leaves yellow, now sure is it's from the beetles or the treatment though. I am facing another issue now, something keeps digging up the base of the plants, nothing too severe but they've gotten to the root ball on a couple of them. I think it might be squirrels? Has anyone had this happen to them?
 

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Genetikx said:
Hey Ethan, that was a heck of a score on the compost. Good luck on finding out what kind of critter is digging at your roots.

Nice selection of peppers you got there too
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Thanks! I was super happy to hear about the city's compost program. It's a lot cheaper than anywhere else in town, between half and 1/4 the price, and it's not the best compost ever but for the price it can't be beat.
 
It's squirrels, I caught them in the act. Also had a rabbit eat all the leaves off one of the plants.

Put chicken wire around the garden, hopefully this helps. Plants seem super slow to grow, they're 3 1/2 months old and most are less than a foot tall. My fertilizing routine hasn't been great but there's 10 wheel barrels of compost in the garden. I'm starting to wonder if it's PH related. My tomatoes on the other hand have been growing like crazy.
 
Maybe try feeding them. Is all the wood chip from the compost? The raised bed I put city compost in isn't doing as good as I would like. Next year it will probably do better when the rest of the wood is broken down. Ive read that wood robs nitrogen from the soil
 
Yeah all the wood chips are from the compost, now that you mention them stealing nitrogen I think I've heard that. Fed the plants a couple days ago and they've started to look better. Gave them a lot of blood meal today to help nitrogen, fertilized, and did a foliar spray of calmag+Epsom salt. Hopefully that helps out. I heard blood meal will deter animals too, hopefully that's the case because the squirrels don't care about my chicken wire at all
 
Feeding the plants has really turned them around. Who'd a thought that needed food? My famers market jalapeno is the first to set pods, but most of the annums are blooming now.

I have had two plants now, just die really suddenly. No idea what's going on, the base looks really woody and brown, and it dies in a day or two. See picture attached
 

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Harvested my first peppers, 6 pepperoncinis. Little disappointing since it's almost August, but it let's me know I need to amend the soil more for next year.
 
Ethansm said:
Harvested my first peppers, 6 pepperoncinis. Little disappointing since it's almost August, but it let's me know I need to amend the soil more for next year.
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I usually do not start harvesting any real quantities until mid-August.
 
I harvest pods well into October, sometimes early November, and I am basically on the the same latitude as you, a little north, actually.
 
Let us see some pics of your entire grow.
 
Here's a picture of the garden, most of the plants are about a foot tall. The one in the far left row second in is about 4 feet tall. I need to weed it bad right now, and that grape vine growing on the fence isn't doing me any favors
 
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