Experiment: What happens if you do absolutely nothing at all

Powelly

Powelly

One mistake that nearly every beginner makes is that they don't leave the peppers alone enough. I see thread after thread here with people over-complicating thing massively, from what mix to use, what fertiliser to use, how to prune etc etc it is endless!
 
In my catnip pot the other day I found some volunteers chillies, I have no idea what they are and I mulch with bad or over ripe pods frequently, so they could be anything. Now they will be volunteers for a new experiment - what happens if you do absolutely nothing at all?
 
This experiment will have a few different controls built into it, to ensure it adheres to the "do nothing" spirit:
  • I chose a self watering pot, so that I can't manipulate water - I just keep it with water in at all time
  • The potting mix I chose was foraged from the side of the road under a hedgerow. It's high diversity wood chips from my local municipality that had been made from tree and hedge trimmings done by council workers, which are then shredded and used as mulch on the council property.
  • A lot of thought can be put into picking a potting mix, different brands contain different mixes, some have fertiliser etc, so in the "do nothing" spirit whatever was under a bush at the side of the road seemed best
  • The peppers were not germinated by myself, I did absolutely nothing other than transplant them into their final pot
  • There will be no fertilising whatsoever, no soil amendments - just plain water into the bottom of the pot
Here is the pot I chose:
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The photos of the foraged potting mix:
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The plant in it's new pot, which I then heavily mulched with pine bark. Note the "spares", also volunteers in case of tragedy:
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And that's it! I'll post updates each Sunday, or as important things happen. Lets see what doing absolutely nothing gets us!
 
So when it takes a turn for the worse and you know you can save it, you'll be able to ignore that impulse?
 
Pretty much my entire summer. I planted out and have only watered once all summer. My plants are smaller and have less to no pods compared to previous years. A few show signs of spider mite damage
 
Since it's a no upkeep kind of thing, one could easily save all their seeds for a while and then go around planting peppers all around town.
 
But should it be tons of varieties or visual promotion of a particular pepper?

I love the idea of Bahamian Goat peppers being all over town and getting more popularity.
 
Ruid said:
But should it be tons of varieties or visual promotion of a particular pepper?

I love the idea of Bahamian Goat peppers being all over town and getting more popularity.
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Definitely the same variety, and I love the idea of tasty goats taking over your town.
 
Brazillian starfish? Looks like flowers too.. People can just pick and munch on them..

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It would probably be best to do it with cayennes, as they seem to typically be really popular volunteers. I grew cayennes last year, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's what these are
 
Yeah BG would likely be considered too hot by the average Joe. People gotta build up and cayenne is a pepper I've had my fill of. It's the base for too many hot sauces.

Maybe an Aji...
 
Nice experiment, Powelly.
As for other ideas, colonizing city with peppers, yeah, i agree, that it should be not so hot, that majority of people could eat it. And again, if its unknown pepper, it would likely get more attention, but less eaters, so maybe cayenne isnt so bad idea after all.
 
When I started gardening this is what I did, planted the store bought plants in the bed, didn't touch them.  The result was small plants, low yield.  If you want to do a proper experiment, you want to have one plant growing without any interference and another with interference, in the same type of pot and same soil.  Document the growth and yield difference.
 
I noticed this year that the plants near potatoes did real well , guessing the nitrogen the potatoes produce and feeding the side plants. 
So next year im going to experiment and plant potatoes alternately with other plants/peppers and see what happens.
 
 
Doelman said:
When I started gardening this is what I did, planted the store bought plants in the bed, didn't touch them.  The result was small plants, low yield.  If you want to do a proper experiment, you want to have one plant growing without any interference and another with interference, in the same type of pot and same soil.  Document the growth and yield difference.
Click to expand...
I did something kind of along these lines this year... Started two plants indoors identically, but when I planted them out put one in a fabric pot with good media and the other straight in the ground... The one in the pot I've already harvested 20 ripe pods from and have another 40-50 on it with many almost ripe. The one in the ground is probably half the size and just started flowering a week or two ago. 
 
Lietuvis said:
Nice experiment, Powelly.
As for other ideas, colonizing city with peppers, yeah, i agree, that it should be not so hot, that majority of people could eat it. And again, if its unknown pepper, it would likely get more attention, but less eaters, so maybe cayenne isnt so bad idea after all.
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How about Bishop's Crowns? Delicious and not even cayenne heat!
 
Doelman said:
When I started gardening this is what I did, planted the store bought plants in the bed, didn't touch them.  The result was small plants, low yield.  If you want to do a proper experiment, you want to have one plant growing without any interference and another with interference, in the same type of pot and same soil.  Document the growth and yield difference.
Click to expand...
 
The spirit of the thread is more to demonstrate that a lot can still be done without pontificating about various things and not really to show it's effectiveness against other techniques
 
People put a lot of effort into trying to emulate nature, but if you get the compost / earthworm castings dialed in you've solved 99% of your issues. I didn't pick the growing medium just because it was a free resource - if you take a closer look you'll notice it's turned into a fungal compost far superior to anything you can buy in a store.
 
For maximum yield you should still prune the plant, control pests and start them under grow lights (probably the best thing you can do) - however it's definitely not necessary to do this
 
Powelly said:
 
People put a lot of effort into trying to emulate nature, but if you get the compost / earthworm castings dialed in you've solved 99% of your issues. I didn't pick the growing medium just because it was a free resource - if you take a closer look you'll notice it's turned into a fungal compost far superior to anything you can buy in a store.
Click to expand...
 
What you're going to ultimately prove, is that doing some degree of nothing works or doesn't work, to some degree, with what you've chosen, in your particular climate.  Unfortunately, it's a one-man show.  If more people, from other places were to join in, using similar parameters, this would be a much more significant topic.
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I'm not even disagreeing with you.  I'm one of the main proponents of "less is more", in most cases.  But "emulating nature" is a complete farce in container culture, up to the point of drawing upon *certain* parallels. (and even then, it has to be drawn carefully)  As a whole, we don't grow in containers, upon the anecdotal premise of "do as nature does", because if we did, we'd need to scale down our plants to a much smaller size, in order to accurately capture them as a microcosm of nature.  Afterall,  nature doesn't make a habit of growing fruit bearing plants with a biomass that is some significant fraction, volume wise, of their substrate. (air rooting plants like pineapples, being a notable exception)
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Doing nothing in your climate is different than doing nothing in mine.  I actually fear that your experiment may produce a negative result in the minds of those who may hinge upon this thread with optimism.  Nevertheless, I hope you see it through, and are prepared to qualify your results.  I tried this one, myself, albeit much less voluntarily.
 
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