My grow log is stupid

Been growing peppers off and on -depending where I live for maybe like thirteen years. Did a bit of vocational horticulture school, but I screwed off more than anything so I really don't remember a lot of it. Right now I'm growing in closets and my garage under lights, in containers and in the ground outside, and getting ready to start up my various hydro systems.

I'm kind of an undisciplined grower. Kind of lazy sometimes. If I was more on it, I'm sure my production would be better. I spend a lot of $ and time amending soil, messing around with fertilizers and such but am easily sidetracked and I don't always do things the right way. Sometimes my gardening sessions rapidly deteriorate into drinking beer outside and killing the squirrels that like to mess around with my plants.

Anyway, I like checking these out and know others do and appreciate any future input on the bs I will later post. I think this sums up my garden-

This is a orange hab I planted last year. It was one of those "extra" plants you don't have room for. So I stuck it in the crappy unamended dirt outside my backdoor right next to a massive spanish dagger plant. Threw a bit of mulch around it, but no fertilizer. It ended up producing all winter and just picked some a couple days ago when I pruned it.

 

[patrick]

Make yourself some anti-mammal spray from a couple of peppers. Quart of water, couple of drops of liquid soap and soak some hot peppers in it or use powder/sauce what ever you can to heat it up. Spray liberally on your plants and no more mammal problem.

I did this last year and it is an absolute laugh riot watching a squirrel trying to get hab powder off of it's face/mouth. Surprising just how high they can jump.

 

[LGHT]

Make yourself some anti-mammal spray from a couple of peppers. Quart of water, couple of drops of liquid soap and soak some hot peppers in it or use powder/sauce what ever you can to heat it up. Spray liberally on your plants and no more mammal problem.

I did this last year and it is an absolute laugh riot watching a squirrel trying to get hab powder off of it's face/mouth. Surprising just how high they can jump.

hahaahha that's too funny. I don't have a lot of squirrels in my area, but I do have some and although I haven't even planted outside yet, I'm going to do this the first week just to be sure I don't get any unwanted pest eating my garden. I might even setup a wireless camera outside to see if I can get that reaction recorded.

 

[boutros]

Thanks Patrick- I'm always down to try anything new to deter pests. I'm going to try some out soon.

Speaking of tring- I have to see if I have the resizing of photos down before I post these cages. Here's the canyon in the back where all the squirells, skunks, coons, and whatever roll up out of.

 

[boutros]

Well, back to thumbnails I guess. Lol- these things are ugly as hell, look jive. But they work at keeping birds and squirrels out. One has a base of plastic hardware cloth sunk in the ground to deter digging and help keep the second slightly bigger cage made of metal lath/chicken wire.



The second one is bigger in diameter and has a base of black plastic lawn edging and a chicken wire cage. I fasten it on the edging with short screws and plastic washers. I fasten the cages together by bending the wire around and with zip ties. Then I pound in some wood stakes at 3-4 points and send a deck screw through the stake and edging if I want to keep it in one place. So lucky me- I get to carry around a screw gun and tin snips while I'm gardening, lol. They could dig under this one, but these are up closer towards the pad. I hope they don't want to take it to that level.


Maybe I'll get some big live traps. If I had $ to burn, a rodentator looks kind of fun. Don't really want to use poison. Where's the sport in that?

 

[Pepperfreak]

I think that they should work great. Have you tried going to a barber shop and picking up some human hair to lay around inside the cages? Plus it would add nutrients to the soil.

 

[TXCG]

For resizing, cropping, etc check out irfanview.

http://www.irfanview.com/main_download_engl.htm

Free and easy.

 

[LGHT]

I think that they should work great. Have you tried going to a barber shop and picking up some human hair to lay around inside the cages? Plus it would add nutrients to the soil.

Are you serious?

 

[boutros]

I think that they should work great. Have you tried going to a barber shop and picking up some human hair to lay around inside the cages? Plus it would add nutrients to the soil.

I got to admit, I haven't lol. But I know what you mean. The human scent. And I know some people compost it. I've kind of thought about- well... urine. Might as well just say it. Maybe because I sometimes drink a bit while gardening. Pretty foul, but scent means a lot to animals.

That's nice. I'm talking about taking a leak in my garden.

 

[byebye]

Make yourself some anti-mammal spray from a couple of peppers. Quart of water, couple of drops of liquid soap and soak some hot peppers in it or use powder/sauce what ever you can to heat it up. Spray liberally on your plants and no more mammal problem.

I did this last year and it is an absolute laugh riot watching a squirrel trying to get hab powder off of it's face/mouth. Surprising just how high they can jump.

Someone has got to do this and video the results

 

[bigt]

I got to admit, I haven't lol. But I know what you mean. The human scent. And I know some people compost it. I've kind of thought about- well... urine. Might as well just say it. Maybe because I sometimes drink a bit while gardening. Pretty foul, but scent means a lot to animals.

That's nice. I'm talking about taking a leak in my garden.

Been there, done that. The animals don't care. They just say "It sure stinks around here, but at least these plants taste good". Pour a couple of drops of any extract type sauce (i.e. Daves Insanity) into a quart spray bottle with water and spray the plants with that. Make sure you're upwind when spraying to avoid unnecessary profanity. The animals won't touch them after that, but you need to reapply every time after it rains - at least until decent size pods start showing up.

 

[lee]

btw love that view

 

[Omri]

Now THAT'S cool.

 

[boutros]

Been there, done that. The animals don't care. They just say "It sure stinks around here, but at least these plants taste good".

That's funny. And that's exactly how it works.

Lee and Omri thanks, it's a cool place, wish I owned it!


Have a couple plants going in some water farms. One is from a seed mystery mix from a grower up in LA. The plant germinated quickly and strong, so I figured might as well see what it is. Kind of looks like some kind of C.Annuum. It should be doing well in about three weeks.



Photo of the same plant before hydro.

 

[Hinky]

I think that they should work great. Have you tried going to a barber shop and picking up some human hair to lay around inside the cages? Plus it would add nutrients to the soil.

Are you serious?

Yup, it works. Well, it works to keep moose out of my garden, I'm guessing it'll work for other critters too. It's been an old homesteader's trick up here for ages.

 

[boutros]

Yup, it works. Well, it works to keep moose out of my garden, I'm guessing it'll work for other critters too. It's been an old homesteader's trick up here for ages.

Thanks Hinky. I am going to try it on a lower part of the yard where the kids don't get to. Just seems foul to have the kids rollin thru a bunch of random folks hair. Maybe if I get my uncle to go shave his back in the garden, then I'd have mulch and squirrel repellent lol.

I'm taking a few days off to hang out and do some stuff in the garden. Days have been hot and had nights have been colder than usual. Been transplanting small seedlings larger 1 gal. containers and the backyard is thrashed.

Yeah, Sanford and Son called, and they want their side yard back-

Been having a lot of problems with sun scald when I bring plants outside from the inside/grow lights. And I think I've been over fertilizing some plants. It's bad and I don't want to post pics ofit cause it's just too ugly. Hopefully stuff'll be better around here in a couple weeks.

I built this shelf out of random crap and wood I had to repot and to havea place to set my beer at and stuff. Has a high shelf for max sun exposure and a low one for shade for different transplants. Have a plastic owl chillin up there to hopefully keep the birds away.

No killer plant pics yet, but I'm going to go look for some this afternoon. Going toget a new hydro drip system up tonight. Still tring to get the photo resizing thing down too.

 

[boutros]

So I did this 'lil set up. Got a 5 gallon bucket reservoir. It's a food safe yellow color that emits a bit of light thru, so I have this ghetto piece of card board temporarily wrapped around it. Right now I'm just running two bato buckets off the res, fed and drained respectively by some 1/4" and 3/8" polyethylene irrigation tubing. PVC would be tidy-er, but it always seems to get really jacked in the sun, and I had the tubing. Maybe it's just in my head, or maybe I just like doing things the hard way.

Feeding one bucket with two drip stakes and one with three. Not sure what's ideal yet for outdoor in full sun. Any suggestions?

The plants are two sorta experiments. They're little stunted plants (a Aji Dulce and a supposed Scotch Bonnet) I had that weren't happy in the soil I had them in. I'm sure the right nutrient schedule will completely turn them around.

Had to do a little net-pot drain guard on the siphon elbows to keep the hydroton pebbles out and stop any potential overflowum's.

And another little dwc experiment. Had random net pot and air pump and stone kickin around, so why not?

We'll see. DIY hydro is kinda cool. And I'm "saving" money! Allegedly.

 

[Pepper Ridge Farm]

A waterfarm in the direct sun should produce an Alaskan size pepper plant. Like the idea of the DWC in the Igloo water cooler. Your gonna have some great plants in that California sun and outside hydro, good job.

 

[boutros]

Also planted a run of some late start peppers. Figure I have plenty of time, I planted a Orange Fatalii last late September,and it overwintered and looks like it will be doing well this year. The upcoming ones I'm excited about are some Madame Jeanette, Bonda Ma Jacques, Yellow Fatalii, and 7 Pod Jonahs.

One photo pretty much covers it. That's a 7. -oops- bad pic. I got a crappy camera.

A buddy gave me one of these GH Power Growers, just a bit bigger and with a couple of improvements over their Waterfarms. I put a baby Bhut in it.

Can't wait for the weather to get better. It'll be a bit before stuff hits its stride for me here, because May and June are pretty gray here on the coast.

 

[boutros]

A waterfarm in the direct sun should produce an Alaskan size pepper plant. Like the idea of the DWC in the Igloo water cooler. Your gonna have some great plants in that California sun and outside hydro, good job.

Thanks. Hopefully they'll be pickin' up in a bit. They've done very well in years past. Excited to have more every year.

 

[boutros]

Got some decent stuff goin'. Still trying a bunch of ways to see what I like/works best. In the ground, raised bed, various hydro set ups, and containers. Most of my established container plantings are Happy Frog Mix from Humboldt. Have some other containers and grow bags w/ newer plantings in coir and usin' Botanicare nutes.

Have a decent Orange Rocoto gettin goin

Orange Thai

Aji Limon

The upper hydro shelf is kinda laggin'. And on top of it. frickin earwigs been rollin up on em late at night so I got to do some night patrol now and then.