• Blog your pepper progress. The first image in your first post will be used to represent your Glog.

OZZZ 2022

Hey everyone.

Recently we moved to Arizona and this is my first time trying to grow outdoors here so we will see how it goes. We got here last year in June and for experimental purposes I planted a cayenne, scotch bonnet and a morouga scorpion that overwintered naturally outdoors and are still going now, although they don’t look the best. I planted them late last year so the SB and the morouga didn’t produce anything at all, but the cayenne was productive. Now the SB from last year is loaded, while the morouga produced only a single pepper so far.

In January or February I started a bunch of others, another MOA, a fatalli, yellow 7 pot, Caribbean Red, and a red 7 pot.

I have them all in white ceramic pots and I tapped into my landscaping irrigation line and ran drip emitters to each pot. I’m hoping I have the water needs dialed in. Obviously it gets hot as hell here but yet I don’t want to overwater them either. Our tap water is very high PPM too… it’s about 1.0 EC straight from the tap, but the PH is 6.5 at least.

I think each pot is around 7-10 gallons in volume, and I have 2 - 1/2 GPH emitters in each pot running for 30 minutes every morning. I don’t have a ton of flexibility in this aspect because the landscaping is in the same line…. So if I need to adjust the water needs to each pot I need to swap out the emitters to a higher or lower flow rate but I am locked into a 30 minute run time every morning. So far they are doing ok but lately we are peaking 100 degrees and they are getting beat down by the afternoon sun, so I have ordered a 50% shade cloth and am waiting for the hardware to arrive to get it installed …. that should offer some relief.

From Back to front we have 7 pot yellow, Caribbean Red, MOA SB, 7 pot Red and in front a Fatalli. These were all planted this year around Jan/Feb:


85D7935D-EFD4-4929-8183-609C722FFE68.jpeg


The yellow 7 pot is producing pretty well, I probably have around 20 pods on it so far and more appearing by the day:

C5AFF83E-A962-4E52-90EA-F315A4C6EECE.jpeg


The second MOA SB is starting to push pods also, she seems like she just woke up and is just getting started:

6992B1EF-4197-44CE-A370-65A70F165E41.jpeg


1AB0D902-827F-46DA-9416-27621D661C21.jpeg


The Caribbean red is loading up also, while the 7 pot red and the fatalli are not pushing pods yet. They seem much slower either that or they just aren’t as happy.

Here’s the plants that are still alive from last year. First up the cayenne…. The foliage doesn’t look great but she has loaded herself up again with new peppers:

B9CAC26F-C1B3-42FC-A573-CCEB2BDEEEA6.jpeg


857F8606-8297-473D-8EBF-A57A83930A13.jpeg


….. and the MOA SB from last year…. Her foliage also doesn’t look the best but she is loaded up pretty well. Maybe 20-30 pods

2C440DE3-813B-4838-9690-65AFF90C95A3.jpeg


313A3827-4747-4C34-8005-432C719B883F.jpeg




…. And the morouga scorpion that isn’t doing much other than the one ripe pepper I got off of it already.


B3DCB806-52AF-48D3-B854-76959D33A157.jpeg
 
Last edited:
Some other plants.

An heirloom pineapple tomato:

8BD521A3-F281-4309-BE73-3E2E4B5002A6.jpeg


A Rosemary bush

581FFE55-0136-41CE-9274-C5A86AA3F93C.jpeg



….. and some basil. The patch on the left was the only sole survivor out of the entire pot from last year. All the basil died off last summer from the intense summer heat, so I just forgot about the pot and said screw it Ill just let it die off and pick up again this year.

I didn’t water this pot for three months. Then one day I was watering the morouga scorpion. And threw some left over fish/seaweed watering into this pot just to empty the jug. Much to my surprise a few days later this old, wooded “dead” basil stem popped out a new leaf. So I continued to water it and it has come back alive. So I let it go to seed and am now knocking the seeds off into the pot and they are now germinating with new sprouts coming up. I figure if it can retain life after being cooked for 3-4 months in the desert sun with no water, it is a hardy substrain for our environment so I’ll let it propagate. The basil patch on the right that is NOT in flower is just a new Home Depot transplant from a week ago. So I’ll have half the pot the “drought resistant” basil strain snd the other half just your regular run of the mill basil.

00F70F7D-FB41-4243-89F1-F10C169C854A.jpeg



….. and this sorry sight right here!!

Four days ago this was a huge pot filled with beautiful mint. Three days ago I noticed something chewing on the leaves. This morning to my surprise whatever it was has completely eaten every single mint leaf there was 🤦‍♂️👀

I guess I’ll start over with a different type of mint and see if I can find one more pest resistant. This was sweet mint. Maybe I’ll try peppermint next. I did find a green caterpillar in the pot that couldn’t get out. Bastards

68EFE3A7-092E-4180-822A-20C4793389E9.jpeg




And finally a brandywine tomato just getting started, I hear they love hot environments so figured I’d give one a shot.

Hoping to have the shade cloth up in the next few days

6F7D7A50-1F2E-4E95-80BB-4C7FA050B15F.jpeg
 
Last edited:
Looks good Ozzz. Winging it don't sound right. Seems like you know what you are doing!

I guess the proof is in the pepper aye?

We will see how it goes!

Also I’m in the middle of setting up another outdoor rig, except this time it will be an autopot system with six plants, 4 gallon pots of coco and perilite fed off of a 25 gallon reservoir with general hydroponic nutrients. Waiting for the rest of the pots to come in as we speak and I’ve been dropping new seeds also. Will be fun to see how Chili’s do outside in our heat with a continuous supply of water and nutrients. My cannabis plants love it so I’m hoping for some explosive growth on these Chilis 🌶

Here’s the 25 gallon reservoir… was testing to see how hot the water temps get…. Spoiler alert, it gets hot. 😂😂😂

I don’t think it will matter with a bottom feed, Non-recirculating system like the autopots however. It shouldn’t be any different than a SIP type planter sitting out in the sun. Like the earth boxes or similar. Same situation here though we will see and time will tell.

I filled the res half way full with tap water only and left it set in the sun a few days to see how it would fare.

3626F5E2-F04B-44D6-9776-1FFBB6935ADD.jpeg



Here’s one of the white pots I’ll be using to attempt to keep the root zone as cool as possible, autopot messed up and sent me only one. So I’m waiting for the other 5 to arrive now. 3.9 gallon pots.

00574602-255E-4F7E-BAB2-F1E403550B25.jpeg
 
Last edited:
You have some nice pepper pllants growing. That cayenne looks like a big plant!

Yeah she’s a beast! Last year she gave me nearly a 5 gallon bucket full of peppers throughout the whole season. But now this year her new foilage is weird. It looks different. All the leaves are small in size and she doesn’t look that full. I’m guessing she just needs more nitrogen or food in general but every time I feed her I don’t see her push out new foilage or beef up her existing foilage…. She just doesn’t seem to really respond to More food, admittedly though I’ve fed her very sparingly so maybe I’m just under feeding her in general. Hasn’t slowed her production down though she’s very prolific.
 
Plants look great @OZZZ! Looking forward to the autopot setup as well. I see a kick-ass season in your future!
 
Plants look great @OZZZ! Looking forward to the autopot setup as well. I see a kick-ass season in your future!

Thanks man I’m hoping so!!

I’m extremely excited about seeing how the Autopots do with Chili’s outdoors. I got the hardware for the shade cloth in today, tomorrow I’ll make a run to Home Depot and get the masonry stuff I’ll need then it’s go time. It’s going to require drilling and anchoring into a block wall. I’ve never done it before but doesn’t seem too complicated.
 
Last edited:
Here’s a few more pics I snapped of the individual plants, I’m open to suggestions. I’m getting some leaf curl on a few and a few are pushing out a yellow leaf or two here or there.

I cannot tell if I’m overwatering them or under watering them, or if the stress is simply from sun stress. As mentioned, each pot is around 7-10 gallons of soil, ceramic with a single drain hole in the center and each pot is receiving about a half a gallon of water a day once in the morning around 6 am.

Fatalli

As mentioned she’s been flowering but not setting pods yet. Although I’m not noticing any sort of significant flower drop either, so maybe she’s just slow…. OR…. Maybe fatalli is like bhut jolokia where they don’t set pods very well above 95 degrees?? We blasted from 80 degrees straight to 100 degrees so ghost peppers don’t seem to do well here because of that, are Fatalli the same? I’m not sure.

3E79494B-C354-4C24-9E88-ADF550F0E1EE.jpeg


Next up the 7 pot red. No pods on this one either, and it has significant leaf curl…

1D7A35D3-6FD7-4CA7-8C7A-54A9239D796E.jpeg



…. Next the MOA SB that I planted fresh this year


B34B90FE-4A9B-4ED5-A322-7EE1512E172F.jpeg



…. The the Caribbean Red, best you from the dun I believe but is setting pods like mad. Probs my 30 or so all little at this time but all are appearing in unison.


98A46D85-9630-49E1-923B-9770636CDADC.jpeg



…. The 7 pot yellow

009020EC-67EA-40D9-ADD2-6F23AF93E63E.jpeg



….. and the overwintered MOA SB

This one is a little yellowed out on me I think…. Can’t tell if it’s overwatered or underfed lol. With cannabis i can tell with one look but it’ll take me a second to get my bearings straight with these guys I think

AAC343A1-9C66-43FF-B52A-D3A10766A798.jpeg



…. And the overwintered cayenne…. She’s probably about 3’ across, but as mentioned she doesn’t look right either. At one point she lost nearly all of her leaves and now that I started feeding her she has regrown them but they are all tiny little leaves, unlike the first year. Maybe she needs more food? She’s throwing plenty of peppers though. Since she is so large I swapped out one of her emitters for a higher flow rate one. She is the only pepper plant getting around 3/4 of a gallon a water once per day in the morning, whereas the others are getting about a half gallon.

5FD57111-57A4-4078-9F98-EF56010B88C0.jpeg
 
Last edited:
I should mention the shade cloth will be installed tomorrow, so I’ll probably give them a week to see how they respond before changing anything further. That should eliminate sun stress as a variable, then I’ll go from there.

The more I think about it I really don’t get hardly any runoff at all out of the bottom if the pots, just a very small amount, so maybe they are light on water… but i hate to increase it and end up with them water logged in those ceramic pots that obviously don’t breath very well.

So like I say, I’ll get the shade cloth up tomorrow, give them a week and see what things look like at that time. Regardless they should perk up quite a bit simply from getting relief from our strong sun.

If there’s any other Arizona growers around I’d love to hear your thoughts on how I have things set up, and also how you do things. Don’t be shy! Lol
 
Last edited:
Shade cloth is UP!!

Turned out pretty nice I must say, we will see how they do now. It isn’t big enough to cover the entire area for the entire day, but during the hottest part of the day from noon to 5pm or so with the way the sun moves different plants get shaded at different times. So it should give them all around 5 hours of relief at various times throughout the day depending on where that particular pot is positioned.

Hoping it works out well the wife isn’t very happy with how it looks but I mean if you have to have a shade cloth mounted I think I did as good a job as could be done for the most part. I don’t think she would be happy with anything up there really lol. It’s only for 3-4 months out of the year anyway then I can take it down.

Just wait until I setup the autopot system out there though, she’s really gonna love that 😂😂🤷‍♂️

0F7B64C9-DFCC-49C6-BAFC-3B364CD58E99.jpeg


DD68756F-591D-445A-B0B8-6912691AFBD1.jpeg


A5070C9B-5FF6-479C-863A-225833B39D38.jpeg


B02E812B-D416-4498-8A3A-D3AAF6805589.jpeg
 
Last edited:
Well done :clap::thumbsup:


Thanks Paul!

After watching the sun move over the grow area all day I’ve readjusted the pots and irrigation lines to try to maximize coverage. As it sets there’s two plants in the back that get around 2 hours if harsh sun from noon to 2pm and there’s two plants in the front that get harsh sun from 2pm to 4pm. All the rest in the middle have full coverage from the sun shade. That’s about as good as it’s going to get without getting a larger shade cloth. Thus one was pricey so I’m going to just have to roll with it and see how they do.

Regardless, It’s a huge improvement from downswing the entire day baking in our desert sun. 😎
 
Awesome setup! I'm really looking forward to seeing all them pods (and tomatoes) later on. Great job. I know who to come to when I need advice from now on. 😁
 
Last edited:
Awesome setup! I'm really looking forward to seeing all them pods (and tomatoes) later on. Great job. I know who to come to when I need advice from now on. 😁

HA! Doubtful. All my experience lies with cannabis, I think I’ve grown maybe 3-4 pepper plants my whole life, same with tomatoes…. But they seem to be similar.

Thanks for the kind words!
 
That looks like a very professional setup! 👍

Thanks Marc…. We will see how they do.

Here’s in Phoenix we have essentially 2 growing seasons. Feb-May and Sept-Nov.

Im told that between Now and September It’s too hot and the plants won’t really do much but then in September when it cools down they will take off. So I’m expecting that the plants will ripen the existing pods but not set anymore until fall, as always though we will see what the plants decide to do. Lol
 
Looks great! Hopefully the shade cloth will reduce the temp to 90F or less, then you should produce all summer long. Fingers crossed for ya.
 
Back
Top