Pulpiteer 2013 Grow Log

WalkGood · Mar 21, 2013

Great sounding syrup! Did you eat the peppers after or reuse into something else?

RocketMan · Mar 21, 2013

Andy that might be just what I need to do before I make my Flaming Pumpkin Ale next year. Then it'll really be a Flaming Pumpkin :cool:

Pulpiteer · Mar 22, 2013

Chris - Yeah, I bet it would work well with honey. As I looked at the syrup that kind of crossed my mind.

I did not use the peppers. I'm ashamed to say I threw them out with the cheesecloth (which had been used a few times for various projects).

RocketMan, I'd love to see how it turns out for you!

Another observation from the syrup. As it settles through the day, the pepper oil seems to float to the top, so that the syrup on top, where you skim for a sample, gets incredibly hot as time passes. When I guessed this was happening, I simply stirred it up and it blended back together well.

MGOLD86 · Mar 23, 2013

Hey Andy, I just got your goodies, and they are AWESOME! We have an obsession with popcorn here (its weird, I never ate much of it at home, but over here it is like a 4 times a week thing..) and my buddy who is usually pretty good with heat dumped a few shakes of the 7 deadly powders in the bag and shook it up real good. I thought nothing of it, because this is typical. BUT...a minute or two later I heard a bit of sneezing and I looked over to a nose running, eye watering mess! He kept saying "Its soo good, but soo hot!". All of us were rolling.

I haven't broken open the strawberry brain jelly, but that will probably get tried tonight after dinner. I think a buddy has a box of crackers and that should mesh well. Also, we are gonna BBQ tomorrow and i will probably bust out those sauces to spice everything up a few notches!

I cant say thanks enough, we are almost out of here, and I can honestly say that we have not had a single day that there was no extra heat readily available. Sauces, powders, jams, and spreads were well stocked this whole deployment. I really appreciate it and the guys are getting their fill of the hot stuff!

Thanks,

Matt

Pulpiteer · Mar 23, 2013

MGOLD86 said:
Hey Andy, I just got your goodies, and they are AWESOME! We have an obsession with popcorn here (its weird, I never ate much of it at home, but over here it is like a 4 times a week thing..) and my buddy who is usually pretty good with heat dumped a few shakes of the 7 deadly powders in the bag and shook it up real good. I thought nothing of it, because this is typical. BUT...a minute or two later I heard a bit of sneezing and I looked over to a nose running, eye watering mess! He kept saying "Its soo good, but soo hot!". All of us were rolling.

I haven't broken open the strawberry brain jelly, but that will probably get tried tonight after dinner. I think a buddy has a box of crackers and that should mesh well. Also, we are gonna BBQ tomorrow and i will probably bust out those sauces to spice everything up a few notches!

I cant say thanks enough, we are almost out of here, and I can honestly say that we have not had a single day that there was no extra heat readily available. Sauces, powders, jams, and spreads were well stocked this whole deployment. I really appreciate it and the guys are getting their fill of the hot stuff!

Thanks,

Matt

Awesome! I'm so glad you're enjoying them. It was wonderful of Salsa Lady to send it out with her stuff, made it real easy for me, and I'm glad to do it, and love hearing the feedback! I think you'll enjoy that brain strain jelly too, good heat for a jelly, yet that strawberry sweetness... Anyway, glad it all got out there fine and that you guys are enjoying it. Thanks again for your service and stay safe over there!

Pulpiteer · Apr 2, 2013

It's been a little bit since an update, but not too much to show and it's my extremely busy time of year with Holy Week and Easter - tons of services and then an extra funeral thrown in, plus making maple syrup... busy.

But I do have a couple of pics I'll post real quick.

First a shot of all my peppers. I don't think I'll get any more germination now, and it's a bit late anyway, so here we are! A ton of them started - enough for me and several to give away at the second annual pepper draft - which was a topic of conversation amongst a few of my parishioners today!

Next up - a chinese 5 color (seeds from aji joe). These are pretty starting out.

And now a purple bhut (pepperlover) starting to get some leaves:

Carolina Reaper - I think there are actually 2 in this pot. I'll have to separate them later...

Scotch Bonnet Belize (from Pic1) - I'm super excited about all my scotch bonnets, here is one that's doing well:

Finally, my orange manzanos didn't germinate for me. My only thought is maybe they are just "california" seeds and refuse to work outside of California. Or perhaps they somehow saw the snow on the ground out the window when I put them in the soil and said, "no way, I'm not going out there..." Whatever the case, no luck. However, I have had some luck with some Yellow Manzanos (Hooda). Why yellow not orange? I have no clue. But I'm excited to taste some of these.

Alright, that's all I have for tonight - thanks for stopping by!

3/5King · Apr 2, 2013

Everything look like it's going well Andy! Any day above ground is a good day..wahoo! Hope your services wen well and your family had a wonderful holiday....almost plant out time (ok ok another month and a half....lol)

3/5King · Apr 2, 2013

Everything look like it's going well Andy! Any day above ground is a good day..wahoo! Hope your services wen well and your family had a wonderful holiday....almost plant out time (ok ok another month and a half....lol)

Everything look like it's going well Andy! Any day above ground is a good day..wahoo! Hope your services wen well and your family had a wonderful holiday....almost plant out time (ok ok another month and a half....lol)

Ps. Can't beat the real deal....mmmmm maple syrup

PIC 1 · Apr 2, 2013

Andy,
The grow area looks well organized, nice idea keeping the flats off the cooler floor.
The Belize Bonnets look healthy along with the purple plants.

Hey is that a PA speaker next to the fan..... :shocked:

...........just kidding !

Probably another 5/6 wks before plantout here. No need to rush it though, A stunted pepper plant due to the early morning frost never fully recuperates. I can wait out the weather game.

Have fun deciding which plants to keep, they all you great !

RocketMan · Apr 2, 2013

Pulpiteer said:

Hummm, is that a speaker in there Andy? Might be interesting to see what a continous loop of motivational speaches and prayers intermixed with some Mercy Me, Third Day, Stephen Curtis Chapman and maybe just a touch of Michael W Smith would do for exciting those babies into becoming some monsterous plants.

On the serious side though I have heard that playing classical music does great thing for them.

Dshlogg · Apr 2, 2013

Your grow looks great so far Andy! Your maple syrup project made me want to go tap a few trees. Maybe I'll try it one of these days.

I'm glad you sent some goodies over to our deployed troops. I know that brightened their days. You the man!

Hope you had a good Easter. Good luck!

Devv · Apr 2, 2013

Looking good!

Springs just around the corner and you'll be ready!

Pulpiteer · Apr 4, 2013

3/5King said:
Everything look like it's going well Andy! Any day above ground is a good day..wahoo! Hope your services wen well and your family had a wonderful holiday....almost plant out time (ok ok another month and a half....lol)

Ps. Can't beat the real deal....mmmmm maple syrup

Thanks King! Still working on the Maple syrup here, but I think we're getting close to the end of the sap running. Then pepper draft. Then plant out!

PIC 1 said:
Andy,
The grow area looks well organized, nice idea keeping the flats off the cooler floor.
The Belize Bonnets look healthy along with the purple plants.

Hey is that a PA speaker next to the fan..... ...........just kidding !

Probably another 5/6 wks before plantout here. No need to rush it though, A stunted pepper plant due to the early morning frost never fully recuperates. I can wait out the weather game.

Have fun deciding which plants to keep, they all you great !

Thanks Greg! It's a space heater you are seeing. It's facing the opposite direction because when I had it on, for just about 5 minutes, it fried 4 of my plants when it blew directly on them. I'm furious with myself because I think I'm going to lose the 4 plants. Ugh...

Yeah, it'll be at least that until plant out here. My plants are smaller this year, so I can wait. To be honest, I'll probably do plant out after the baby is born sometime later in May.

RocketMan said:
Hummm, is that a speaker in there Andy? Might be interesting to see what a continous loop of motivational speaches and prayers intermixed with some Mercy Me, Third Day, Stephen Curtis Chapman and maybe just a touch of Michael W Smith would do for exciting those babies into becoming some monsterous plants.

On the serious side though I have heard that playing classical music does great thing for them.

Lol. yeah, it's just a heater. Or maybe I'm playing continuous loops of the Drill Sargent from full metal jacket to get them in shape....

Dshlogg said:
Your grow looks great so far Andy! Your maple syrup project made me want to go tap a few trees. Maybe I'll try it one of these days.

I'm glad you sent some goodies over to our deployed troops. I know that brightened their days. You the man!

Hope you had a good Easter. Good luck!

Thanks! Easter went very well, although I'm still waiting for it to slow down around the church. We've had a few things going on so I haven't had a day off in awhile.

Devv said:
Looking good!

Springs just around the corner and you'll be ready!

Thank you! Yeah, spring is coming. I've even seen the sun more lately!

stc3248 · Apr 4, 2013

Andy,
Looking good! Can't wait to see your plant out/landscaping once it is in again! Your jungle pics last year were some of my favorites.

STEVE954 · Apr 13, 2013

Great set up Andy! Juvi's look happy and healthy! Here's to a spicy summer!

Pulpiteer · Apr 13, 2013

Past due for an update, so here we go.

First, with the ugly, just to get it out of the way.
As I think I mentioned earlier, I used a space heater to try to warm up my grow area. Last year I grew in my home office, which is upstairs and the warmest room in the house. The drawback was I ran out of room and simply could not manage it. So this year I set up a pretty decent grow area in the basement. Drawback being that it was in the basement, which is consistently cool. I am finding that the temp difference between last year and this year makes a huge difference in growth speed. My peppers were not only started later, but they are growing slower. I think I will still be fine, once they get outside, but this is giving me something to worry about...
Anyway, one solution is a space heater. However, it turns out that hot air blowing directly on seedlings sucks. It just took a couple of minutes, like less than 5, for this to happen:

Ugly. I lost, I think 5-6 plants that way. Terrible.

Ok, last Friday it was warm enough to be outside a bit, so I dug up some horseradish. I've had it for about 3 years, so it was finally time to harvest. It's my first time doing horseradish, so this was fun.

First, I found AJ's little tutorial helpful - here it is.

I dug up the roots:

peeled them with a veggie peeler (also saved a bunch to replant).

Once they were peeled, chopped them up into smaller sections:

Into the food processor. Once that's done, wait at least 3 minutes before adding vinegar. I'm not sure why, but apparently you have to wait a bit for the heat to settle in. So I did.

And the final product - I gave some to a couple of different folks around here, and gave a couple of root cuttings to some people in the congregation to spread the love. One of the jars of horseradish went to our next door neighbor. You know, the ones who tolerate my garden growing right next to their driveway. Good neighbors are a thing of beauty.

The other night I spent some much needed time addressing my neglected plants. I moved the lights up higher (involves unscrewing then reattaching the vanities on a higher board), sorted out what I had, repotted some doubles and culled others. I tried to fill my needs for this year's garden, while also having enough left overs to host an awesome, second annual pepper draft (two weeks from today). It went well, and took forever. I was up until 3am. There were a couple varieties I did not get - orange manzano and giant mexican rocoto just didn't germinate for me. But the rest (aside from heater damage) will be good.

Here is a shot of a set two that I carefully separated and repotted. You get a little sense of the roots - they're coming along nicely, which is a good sign.

Here's a beautiful specimen - a Yellow CARDI scorp from Romy:

Finally, a couple of shots to show where I'm at and the results of resorting and raising the lights and repotting and all...

Alright, that's what I've got, thanks for stopping by!

highalt · Apr 13, 2013

On the bright side, you're not likely to run out of room before your plant out date.

Other than the ones lost to the space heater, they're all looking nice and healthy, even if they are smaller than this time last year. I'd say you're doing pretty good, Sir!

KiNGDeNNiZ · Apr 13, 2013

Looking good there. Sending you some warmer weather.

Pulpiteer · Apr 15, 2013

highalt said:
On the bright side, you're not likely to run out of room before your plant out date.

Other than the ones lost to the space heater, they're all looking nice and healthy, even if they are smaller than this time last year. I'd say you're doing pretty good, Sir!

You're right Bonnie - and they are coming along so I'm pretty pleased. Of course with the weather we're having here I might not get to plant out until mid June...

KiNGDeNNiZ said:
Looking good there. Sending you some warmer weather.

Thanks Denniz - it'll get here at some point. I think.

gnslngr · Apr 15, 2013

Dude.....you have "Minions"!
Lookin good, thats gone be some wicked baby food though..... :rofl:

I'm on a roll here ...maybe I can hit up "the pink one" next!