Megamoo's 2012/2013 Glog

gasificada · Oct 20, 2012

megamoo said:
It's those white butterfly/moth things they land for a second and lay an egg.
They're everywhere, they like my basil and swiss chard too

And broccoli.... they love broccoli! They didn't touch my chillies at all when there was broccoli growing here.

DocNrock · Oct 20, 2012

Nice, Moo! Its so addicting to sow the seeds and see the little guys pop. I can totally relate to sowing more than you might have room for. But you'll make room, right?

Just looked over your grow list. I see you're growing the Beni Highland, too. Have you grown this one before? I bought some seeds from Aji Joe and asked him to give me few surprises. One of them was Beni Highland. I Googled it and seems like a cool variety. There are a couple of others in your list that I'd like to add: Big Jim and Paprika. If some of my varieties don't pop or die unsighly early deaths, I'll probably put these two in my list.

Great grow you have coming together there!

Alphaeon · Oct 20, 2012

Nice glog Megamoo!

PaulG · Oct 20, 2012

Hey, MM, great grow going there! The starts and seedlings
look just great - very healthy. I like the inquiry approach you
took with testing your soil mixes, etc; great science! Will look
forward to long winter nights browsing your glog, and the
others from down under!

Hope your weekend is a great one!

megamoo · Oct 20, 2012

gasificada said:
And broccoli.... they love broccoli! They didn't touch my chillies at all when there was broccoli growing here.

Isn't that a cold weather crop? I've thought about growing a crop they like just so they eat it and not my chillies but that might lure in more and make more.

DocNrock said:
Nice, Moo! Its so addicting to sow the seeds and see the little guys pop. I can totally relate to sowing more than you might have room for. But you'll make room, right?

Just looked over your grow list. I see you're growing the Beni Highland, too. Have you grown this one before? I bought some seeds from Aji Joe and asked him to give me few surprises. One of them was Beni Highland. I Googled it and seems like a cool variety. There are a couple of others in your list that I'd like to add: Big Jim and Paprika. If some of my varieties don't pop or die unsighly early deaths, I'll probably put these two in my list.

Great grow you have coming together there!

Thanks. I think my friends and relatives will be revceiving plants for Christmas.

First time growing Beni Highland. Grown Big Jim before though. Even half neglected in a small pot I got some nice big pods.

Alphaeon said:
Nice glog Megamoo!

Thanks Alphaeon.

PaulG said:
Hey, MM, great grow going there! The starts and seedlings
look just great - very healthy. I like the inquiry approach you
took with testing your soil mixes, etc; great science! Will look
forward to long winter nights browsing your glog, and the
others from down under!

Hope your weekend is a great one!

The starts are doing better than my previous seasons at this age so I'm happy with that.
My job for today is to pull all the experimental plants and reclaim the pots. Then got to pot up the good ones and mow the lawn and really can't be fuct right now. Going to have to force myself to do it.
I didn't hit on a winning soil mix with the experiment but I sure did learn what not to do! Was definitely worth it.

I'll try to get some good poddage to warm things up for ya.

PaulG · Oct 21, 2012

"I didn't hit on a winning soil mix with the experiment but I sure did learn what not to do!"

In the science of life, that is often the most important thing of all!

I noticed your starts in the smaller pots in some cases had more growth
above than the larger. I see that all the time as well. I'm sure that when
a plant is rootbound, it directs its energy to the vegetative growth since
there isn't room to grow more roots easily.

It will be fun watching your grow take off!

megamoo · Oct 21, 2012

PaulG said:
"I didn't hit on a winning soil mix with the experiment but I sure did learn what not to do!"

In the science of life, that is often the most important thing of all!

I noticed your starts in the smaller pots in some cases had more growth
above than the larger. I see that all the time as well. I'm sure that when
a plant is rootbound, it directs its energy to the vegetative growth since
there isn't room to grow more roots easily.

It will be fun watching your grow take off!

Yeah when you first pot them up they stall for a short time because they are spreading all their roots out. It's easy to get impatient and think there is something wrong. I've overfed them at that point before.

Just pulled and recycled the test jalapenos and red bhuts. I had stopped watering them a while ago and we've had a week of hot sun so they withered a lot.
Before

And after.

I learned that the coco coir produces really fluffy spread out root systems. Definitely more root mass in the mix that was 50% coco coir. I have to say that I am becoming a big fan of this stuff. It retains a lot of water but still allows air in. When it does dry out it dries out completely though, whereas regular potting mix keeps its water longer but doesn't let as much air in. For the coco to be effective you have to regularly water it. The ones that were mostly potting mix had long roots circling the pots and less overall root mass.

I can't say I noticed a big difference in the size or quality of the plants except that the very potting soil mix heavy ones were dropping a lot of leaves and looked overwatered. They weren't regularly watered at all so it wasn't a prefect test in the end.

Here are some of the test ones that made it into the ground.

Despite my earlier post you can tell from its size that this is actually my first pod of the season.

I will be reusing the soil and mixing in some blood n bone for potting up basil because it likes a nice rich mix.

gasificada · Oct 21, 2012

Nice little planties, moo!

I don't want to alarm you, but that little fly thing in the bottom right of this pic......

megamoo said:

Kinda looks like a fruit fly or cucumber fly or something. :scared:

It's blurry though and very hard to tell.

megamoo · Oct 21, 2012

different photo cropped

There are tons of bugs in the garden, I try not to let it bother me. Of course now I'm ALARMED :shocked:

gasificada · Oct 21, 2012

I dunno... I could be wrong!

The markings are more of that of a Queensland fruit fly than the Mediterranean fruit flies you guys have. Could be a cucumber fly though? Do you know if you guys get them there?

(Or of course, it could just be a completely harmless fly of some sort!

)

Show it to pablo, he might be able to tell you. He's had experience with fruit flies there.

PaulG · Oct 21, 2012

Megamoo, your in-ground test plants look absolutely mahvelous, dahling!
Very green and bushy. If the rest of your grow gets off to that good of a start,
you will be crawling through a forest of pepper trees!

As for the fly did you do a google image search? Regular fruit flies are not
much of a problem, they lay their eggs on rotting fruit. But I've heard the
Med Fruit Fly can be very damaging. Do you have pepper maggot flies down
there? We have them in the Southern U.S. Very destructive. Lay their eggs
so the larvae grow up inside the pepper, eating and excreting in it :sick:

Disgusting.

DocNrock · Oct 21, 2012

I'll second what Paul said, above. Those look awesome for "test subjects!"

gasificada · Oct 21, 2012

PaulG said:
As for the fly did you do a google image search? Regular fruit flies are not
much of a problem, they lay their eggs on rotting fruit. But I've heard the
Med Fruit Fly can be very damaging. Do you have pepper maggot flies down
there? We have them in the Southern U.S. Very destructive. Lay their eggs
so the larvae grow up inside the pepper, eating and excreting in it Disgusting.

QLD and Med fruit flies and cucumber flies do the same thing. Nasty business! Lost roughly 3/4 of my pods last season to QLD fruit fly.

megamoo · Oct 22, 2012

gasificada said:
I dunno... I could be wrong!

The markings are more of that of a Queensland fruit fly than the Mediterranean fruit flies you guys have. Could be a cucumber fly though? Do you know if you guys get them there?

(Or of course, it could just be a completely harmless fly of some sort! )

Show it to pablo, he might be able to tell you. He's had experience with fruit flies there.

I'm going to hope its completely harmless fly. I got in big trouble last time I showed my fly to people, I'd better not.

PaulG said:
Megamoo, your in-ground test plants look absolutely mahvelous, dahling!
Very green and bushy. If the rest of your grow gets off to that good of a start,
you will be crawling through a forest of pepper trees!

As for the fly did you do a google image search? Regular fruit flies are not
much of a problem, they lay their eggs on rotting fruit. But I've heard the
Med Fruit Fly can be very damaging. Do you have pepper maggot flies down
there? We have them in the Southern U.S. Very destructive. Lay their eggs
so the larvae grow up inside the pepper, eating and excreting in it Disgusting.

They do look good. I hadn't noticed how much they've grown. (I sound like a proud parent

)

My first and only bhut jolokia pod was from a small plant late in the season and it had a maggot in it.

I didn't really consider pest control in my initial plan for this season, except for the traditional Australian "Ahhhh.... she'll be right"

If things get out of hand I will probably get some good bugs in before I spray anything.

DocNrock said:
I'll second what Paul said, above. Those look awesome for "test subjects!"

Thanks I'd like to say its from everything I did but really they have done exceptionally well considering I just stuck them in the regular sandy dirt and have watered them every other day.

gasificada said:
QLD and Med fruit flies and cucumber flies do the same thing. Nasty business! Lost roughly 3/4 of my pods last season to QLD fruit fly.

Earlier in the year in Autumn the Mandarin tree in the front yard was overloaded with fruit and there was a whole lot on the ground rotting but there were no flies around at all. I spent some time picking them off the tree and off the ground but didn't see anything. Good sign!

The last pictures were the good.

These are the bad.

Overwintered numex twilight I think is infested with mites.

The newest leaves looked a bit deformed so I pruned it back and since then the growth has stopped dead, with the ends going all scrunched up.

Sitiing next to it are a few others with have the narrow messed up leaves. You can see the dodgy leaves on the right one here.

If its mites I'm quite happy to toss these plants. Really not worth battling it with all my other plants going to come in soon.

Now for some ugly pictures.

I might have mentioned in this thread or another the rose bushes in the front garden have a small aphid problem.

I had pruned these back a few weeks ago because they were out of control and this is all new growth. The evil things really like it!

As I'm not looking to grow roses for any reason they are coming out. The last owner/tenant of this house obviously spent a lot of time working on this garden. There is retic and gravel mulch and vines trained to grow along the fence. There was a pond / water feature, a big hedge of rosemary and the roses were obviously the centre point of the garden and designed to be seen from the road. I'm sure it was really perdy.

Well... the bitch is mine now and most of that crap is coming out to make way for Chilli World

megamoo · Oct 25, 2012

Put a new fence up and created some garden space in the last two days.

Old crappy leaning fence

Took it down.

Feeling a bit exposed.

New fence

They go up so fast and easy it's like playing with lego

Significant increase in space along the top of the wall.

I was going to have a row of pots along here but now I'll dig in some manure and compost and plant straight into it. It gets sun all day so pots would have heated up too much.
Also I'll be able to get a full load of dirt in the ute and then just unscrew a few panels of the fence and shovel it straight into the bed. Otherwise I'd have to fill a wheelbarrow, push it to under the wall and then have to lift it up!

gasificada · Oct 25, 2012

Geez Louise... look at them aphids! :eek:

Are the aphids actually making it to your chillies or are they happy to just infest the roses? If they're just hanging on the roses, I would leave the roses in the ground and use 'em as a trap plant and just bomb the crap outta 'em every week or so. Getting rid of the aphids favourite host might just cause 'em to seek another.

If there was something broad mite preferred to chillies, I would certainly be planting it for that reason. Apparently capsicum might just be their uber favourite though. :banghead:

I am going to look into whitefly's favourite host though.... :think:

megamoo said:
Sitiing next to it are a few others with have the narrow messed up leaves. You can see the dodgy leaves on the right one here.

If its mites I'm quite happy to toss these plants. Really not worth battling it with all my other plants going to come in soon.

Does look like mite damage. Own a gas torch or something....? :flamethrower:

DocNrock · Oct 26, 2012

The new fence looks awesome. Built like a boss! Good thinking leaving a few feet of exposed dirt along that retaining wall. I'm agreeing with Gassy about possibly leaving the aphids a distraction, keeping them off your chile plants?

megamoo · Oct 26, 2012

gasificada said:
Geez Louise... look at them aphids!

Are the aphids actually making it to your chillies or are they happy to just infest the roses? If they're just hanging on the roses, I would leave the roses in the ground and use 'em as a trap plant and just bomb the crap outta 'em every week or so. Getting rid of the aphids favourite host might just cause 'em to seek another.

If there was something broad mite preferred to chillies, I would certainly be planting it for that reason. Apparently capsicum might just be their uber favourite though.

I am going to look into whitefly's favourite host though....

Does look like mite damage. Own a gas torch or something....?

On the complete opposite side of the house from the aphid rose party is the table with my eldest seedlings. Its actually much closer to my neighbour's garden. When I was scouting for the &*%#*^$ catepillars eating holes in my leaves I found the odd aphid. Always just one on its own, naturally I squished them. But last time I looked I only found one aphid and a few zombie aphids. So the natural predators are patrolling well.

I'm torn between nuking the crap out of the roses to cull the aphid numbers and get some satisfaction or leaving them alone until I rip out the bushes. If I use posion on them I might kill the good bugs and leave my chillies open to attack. From what I have seen aphids can bounce back and multiply much quicker from a spraying than the good bugs. You're right that if I get rid of the roses the aphids my seek another home.

I'm fairly confident that the roses are the largest and main aphid population in my garden. If I get rid of them when I pull the roses I might deal them a big death blow which they won't be able to easily recover from, (crossing my fingers!) So I'm going to leave it all until next week when I'll cut the infested branches off and seal them in bags in the bin before pulling out all the bushes.

I'll do the same with mite plants.

DocNrock said:
The new fence looks awesome. Built like a boss! Good thinking leaving a few feet of exposed dirt along that retaining wall. I'm agreeing with Gassy about possibly leaving the aphids a distraction, keeping them off your chile plants?

I'm well chuffed with the fence

We set up the line from the council plans and realised the old fence was put down slightly off, or it had subsided as well as leant right over. So the new fence has reclaimed a bit of useless verge land

Its not much but it allows me to now do a double row of chillies!

...and that's what I did today.
Got some manure and compost and dug it in then transplanted 33 chillies.

The late afternoon sun made taking a good photo hard but you get the idea.
Here's a wide shot and my little one hiding under his hat being camera shy

Jeff H · Oct 26, 2012

Very cool retaining wall garden. That should be enough plants to keep your mouth on fire all year long once they mature.

PaulG · Oct 26, 2012

Great reclamation project, MM!