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My pepper journey

Hello everyone, I'd like to just post up my journey as a beginner.
 
I started a garden this previous year, all outdoors, and had more tomatoes and cucumbers than I could even use. My bell peppers did awful, I think I got two or three tiny mutated looking peppers. Jalepenos did good as well as my little red mexican chilis (pretty sure thats the exact name that was on the seed labels.) Perhaps my proudest was my ghost pepper plant, which produced probably 60 pods.
 
Unfortunately, I thought I could harvest them early as the first frost was fast approaching, and hopefully they would ripen well like green tomatoes in the windowsill. Eventually they just turned mushy and nasty. Only a few actually turned red and the rest were lost. I chalk this up to being a beginner, and hopefully this post will bring me some insight on what I could be doing better.
 
Anyways, before I get much further I have gotten a lot of inspiration from YouTube, Khang Starr and Jeb the Gardener on YouTube are awesome channels I highly recommend checking out. Khang is mainly pepper videos and he does really awesome crossbreeding, Jeb is more around general garden stuff and uses the Kratky method for just about everything which has gotten me into Hydroponics!
 
Here are a few of my plants I am growing,
 
 

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And just got home to find a wilted pepper.
I got too eager with my kratky method and put this plant in before the roots were long enough to reach the water, obviously.. let's see if it'll bounce back from this.. I hope

Pictures from last night, last post on previous page


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Moved my red bhut over to the bucket, because clearly my chocolate hab wasn't developed enough root system wise.

Hoping this will awaken it and send it into grow mode like these jalepeno plants that are exploding.

Will move my other pepper into a bucket once it's roots grow a little more
 

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Got home from work today, to find the second chocolate hab showing signs of underwatering!

This one has much longer more developed roots and was just under half of the roots were underwater. So, not sure if that's too little or not. I filled the water bucket back to full with plain water no nutes. planning on filling once every 2 weeks with fresh nures, topping off throughout the weeks with reg water, and rinsing/ cleaning the bucket before every refill just to make sure no algae is growing.

I'll check back later tonight to see if the strength comes back in the leaves
 
Update, sorry about bad photos I use my phone to upload all these. First flower on my tomato which is now 3ft tall.

Chocolate habs growing strong and happy.

OW Ghost most likely dead. I only see one green shoot, rest of the limbs are pretty woody but strong. I'm gonna leave it until it's obviously a lost cause, what do you guys think
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Any words of advice for the OW Ghost? I can get more pictures.
The roots seem to have activity still but not seeing much topside and I read once the stems turn woody and dark they're likely dead. As ive said I only see one little green shoot of growth with a single tiny leaf on it.

Would love to hear a bit of advice
 
ThatBlondGuy101 said:
Plants are looking good!
 
Looks a bit miserable outside though... you'd think it was winter over there... :rofl:
 
Keep up the good stuff!
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Thanks TBG! Pretty consistently in the 30s here. :tear: 
 
Itching for warmer weather, I've already been considering the different options for planting I have. Leaning towards Hugelkultur raised beds with about 30-40 peppers. Wanted to do a massive in ground garden, or even a standard raised bed, but the top soil I would need to buy would be the death of my wallet. Will post once I start construction, though, might be a January project.
 
Thanks again for stopping by
 
one thing I discovered in my research is how to handle leaves on plants.
 
This video is interesting: 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVdzqBAVfJk
 
It shows how to clip off the lower leaves to improve the health of the plants.
 
I guess they call it lollipop-ing,
 
I am focusing on mostly indoor tomatoes, but I have some peppers in the wings. 
 
I clipped off the lower leaves of some of my larger tomato plants.
 
-Key
 
Teaks said:
 
 
Thanks TBG! Pretty consistently in the 30s here. :tear:
 
Itching for warmer weather, I've already been considering the different options for planting I have. Leaning towards Hugelkultur raised beds with about 30-40 peppers. Wanted to do a massive in ground garden, or even a standard raised bed, but the top soil I would need to buy would be the death of my wallet. Will post once I start construction, though, might be a January project.
 
Thanks again for stopping by
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I built a Hugel bed 6x20x2 as in 2' deep last fall. I did it in a non raised bed; as I'm in dry land:
 
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It was worth the effort!
 
I filled it to 2' with wood and added RCW to fill the gaps. And added 2"s of RCW on top.
 
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Then added back the top soil. That put it at 32"s. I then added a mix of reground RCW/cow manure that had matured. It did REALLY good this season, better than the resat of the garden. It settled about 2"s, so I added an inch and a half of garden soil and a half inch of RCW at the end of the season.
 
I say do it!
 
keybrdkid said:
one thing I discovered in my research is how to handle leaves on plants.
 
This video is interesting: 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVdzqBAVfJk
 
It shows how to clip off the lower leaves to improve the health of the plants.
 
I guess they call it lollipop-ing,
 
I am focusing on mostly indoor tomatoes, but I have some peppers in the wings. 
 
I clipped off the lower leaves of some of my larger tomato plants.
 
-Key
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I thought of doing this, just not sure that I want to on my peppers yet since they're pretty small still.

That video will be helpful for when I do it though lol
 
Devv said:
 
I built a Hugel bed 6x20x2 as in 2' deep last fall. I did it in a non raised bed; as I'm in dry land:
 
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313.jpg

316.jpg

 
It was worth the effort!
 
I filled it to 2' with wood and added RCW to fill the gaps. And added 2"s of RCW on top.
 
314.jpg

 
Then added back the top soil. That put it at 32"s. I then added a mix of reground RCW/cow manure that had matured. It did REALLY good this season, better than the resat of the garden. It settled about 2"s, so I added an inch and a half of garden soil and a half inch of RCW at the end of the season.
 
I say do it!
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6x20 was exactly the size I was going to build myself. The only reason I was going to not bury them so much was in the event I get a week of rain I would hate for the bed to soak up too much water.

I planned on removing the grass, maybe 4 inches or so dub in the dirt to get an even layer on my first set of boards around the bed. Then putting wood the size you have, the grass upside down on top of it, some compost/ manure, then a few inches of soil on top.

May I ask about how much wood it took for that bed? I've got a family farm that's heavily wooded so sourcing lumber shouldn't be an issue.

Also, was your wood aged or was this cut within the same year you put it in your hugel bed? Also.. what's RCW? Lol


So many thanks on those photos, first hand personalized experience is so much nicer to learn from than an article on Wikipedia or similar
 
ALSO! Not digging too far down so I can still lay chicken wire underneath everything. I've had some mole issues I don't want to provide them a nice home to live in. I've read people having nightmares with this
 
Most of the wood was Mesquite, and Hackberry which is everywhere around here. It was all "not green" wood, but not old soft stuff either. As for the amount, probably 4-5 pickup truck loads. I tried to puzzle it in so as to fill all the spaces. RCW is basically wood chips via a chipper. I get them free from the county.
 
As for the soaking up water: I "charge" mine (flood the ditch) several times a year just so it soaks up the water. You're doing this for 2 reasons: cut down on watering, sequestering nutrients. The bed will get better every year.
 
It will settle: Mine dropped about 3"s this first year. I added more soil and amendments.
 
Varmints: I read the same, no moles or gophers on my place that I can see. I did have a pack rat try to set up house keeping, by digging in. A cheapo rat trap with some peanut butter sent it to its maker ;)
 
Good luck with your endeavors!
 
Gf got me an Aerogarden for Christmas, got the herb seed pod mix in it currently, though I was tempted to use it solely for 2 of the YBS for the 2018 challenge haha. I will have to come up with another system for those though.

Currently have "chlie aji", "aji dulce", and "Ft Lauderdale Bonnet", seeds germinating. All these are from Guru who so very kindly supplied some of his favorites along with the YBS.

I have 2 seeds per type in both rock wool and jiffy seed pods. Testing the difference between the grow mediums.
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And one of my mystery "choc hab/ bonnet" peppers has doubled in size compared to the other. The smaller being older as well by about a week..
 
Teaks said:
For some reason I couldn't edit my first post so forgive me for the double post.. the second comment from me has more context about the plants.
 
Also, does anyone know if this is an issue on my OW Ghost pepper?
 
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I don't see anything but normal dying back of the stump/stalk.
You can always make a nice, clean cut closer to the fork, that
may help it heal better.
 
Teaks said:
Could anyone help me with this? My ghost that im over wintering has very fragile leaves and I'm noticing a few dark spots on the stems.

The stems are very sturdy and hard. But, just not sure if I need to be worried
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Okay, that's more serious - looks like stem rot to me - only salvation
may be to cut the stem below the rot and see if it will push out some
new branches from a healthy stalk.  Also scrape a bit of skin off to see
if the inner layer is green or brown - green signals that that part of the
branch / stalk is still viable. My own philosophy is that by cutting back
to green growth, the plant has less dying stalk to maintain / wither and
the assets can be channeled into the new, healthy growth and healing
the cut/s. 
 
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