Hi everyone! I followed ghosty over here after he got me all hot about peppers again. I've grown them before (not in anywhere close to amount folks here do) but gave up for a few years for a few reasons. The main one is I've been struggling just to get anything to grow in the yard of the house I've lived in only three years. I think I finally got a good garden spot conditioned and growing last year, before my second reason trampled it...deer! My first year here, I had beautiful jalapenos and hot banana peppers growing in a flower bed, and just when I was close to harvesting, the deer raided it. I hope they got indigestion! But, last year was my fault. I forgot to stretch the deer/bird netting over the top of the garden as I did the year before...stretched across lots of pointy sticks that double as tomato stakes...to discourage them jumping over the sides. Probably wouldn't have mattered last year, since everything left drowned in the nonstop rain the second half of summer...nobody I knew even had extra zucchini to share last year, and there's always extra zucchini!
Anyway, this year I'm going to try a combination of raised bed gardening (my natural "soil" here is clay and rock, hence three years to even work a spot to even get a raised bed going) and container gardening on a deck up and away from deer (and hopefully from the turkeys too...the least they could do is sacrifice one of the flock at Thanksgiving time to thank me for the abundance of food they steal).
So, I've invested in a semi-cat-proof rack for starting my seeds (the cheap fixture hung over a table doesn't work when the cat thinks the starter tray is just the right size to sleep on...critters are cursing me left and right here!) and am up and running. I've never been successful with seeds before, and usually default to buying plants, but I've been gathering lots of tips here while lurking and so far am off to a good start.
The peppers I'm starting with are just mucho nacho jalapenos and a kung pao hybrid I found at Lowe's (I hope it's a Thai type chili, but I'm not sure, so trying it on a lark). Otherwise, everything else is standard garden-variety variety. Some bell peppers, tomatoes, herbs, etc.
Anyway, this year I'm going to try a combination of raised bed gardening (my natural "soil" here is clay and rock, hence three years to even work a spot to even get a raised bed going) and container gardening on a deck up and away from deer (and hopefully from the turkeys too...the least they could do is sacrifice one of the flock at Thanksgiving time to thank me for the abundance of food they steal).
So, I've invested in a semi-cat-proof rack for starting my seeds (the cheap fixture hung over a table doesn't work when the cat thinks the starter tray is just the right size to sleep on...critters are cursing me left and right here!) and am up and running. I've never been successful with seeds before, and usually default to buying plants, but I've been gathering lots of tips here while lurking and so far am off to a good start.
The peppers I'm starting with are just mucho nacho jalapenos and a kung pao hybrid I found at Lowe's (I hope it's a Thai type chili, but I'm not sure, so trying it on a lark). Otherwise, everything else is standard garden-variety variety. Some bell peppers, tomatoes, herbs, etc.
from Ohio!
