San Diego Inland Grow Tips

[richphitzwell]

olah,
Anyways, looking for any tips. I started growing my peppers in the summer and I started with
1-Jalapeno from seedling
1-Habanero from seedling. I have about 10 habanero seeds im about to grow
1-serrano from seedling. about 20 seedlings in a pot by the current plant.
The above are gifts from friends and really I dont care about too much
I currently have 4 ghost peppers grown from seeds. I have about 40 seeds I will be starting soon

Anyways, in my climate I noticed the habanero likes full sun, the serrano like almost full sun...a couple of hours of shade in the morning or afternoon and its fine, the jalapeno and ghost seem to like either morning sun or afternoon sun aka up to noon or noon on.

We have been getting freezing temps at night but for the most part all the plants are looking good. The serrano is doing excellent and I even have a pot of seedlings that have just popped up that has about 20 or so little fuckers and surprisingly they dont look stressed at all.

A nursery gave me about 40 or so seedlings, a mix of unknowns that were on there death bed that I really dont care about but meh, 5 acres is 5 acres. Some have died but most are surprisingly starting to grow.

Anyways the soil is sandy loam mostly sandy though.

So the main questions I have is, what will my butch t's like as they just popped up in my indoor pot, will they be more like the ghost pepper or habanero in light needs?
--I have about 60 or so seeds, 20 are just starting to popup

I have been fertilizing with just bone meal every couple of months, is there a better option mainly just to get through the winter and promote a healthy plant that will produce the best peppers?

Will store bought peppers from a grocery store produce? Or are my serranos, and eventually habaneros going to be duds?

Any suggestions other suggestions for outdoor growing in this area?

Eventually I may build a greenhouse and all but right now its just going to be indoor until seedling and then outdoor after...in the ground.

Pic is from the nursery plants, about 15 or so bell peppers and the others are unknowns but are supposed to have some heat to them. Like I said I dont care about these guys, its the butch t's and ghost peppers i really care about as I cant get those fresh anyplace.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2552372125210&l=24ff780f46

Thanks for any tips

 

[PIC 1]

Your Butch T's will appreciate the strong sunlight. I assume your summer temps average in the mid 80's for the high temp. If so thats also a good sign. You'll need to amend your soil with compost. That will benefit the the plants with water retention and micro-nutrients. I give back to my garden aged compost at the beginning and a top dressing throughout the season. You might want to pick-up some 10-10-10 granular fertilizer. That's the all around stuff that I use........hmmm.....my mom ......and my grandfather...used it to. It does seem to do the trick and it's cheap too!
Store bought peppers work fine, they'll germinate pretty fast, just let them dry out first. If they're Hybrids, they may not grow out true.....sometimes deformed. But a good chance you'll be producing a pepper just like the one you bought.

Good luck with your grow.

Greg

 

[richphitzwell]

hi thanks for responce. san diego is difficult as it is a big county but also has something like 18 micro climates ranging fro near tropical to whatever. with thats said where im at the typical summer daytime average is 100 plus although the last two years were odd with very little temps over 80. heck two years ago we had one week of heat when usually we would have temps around 100 for months straight. anyways thats why i asked if the plant was more like h vs ghost in its tolarance of direct sunlight

btw ill continue with the trying to grow the seeds, like i said i have like 20 seedlings from the peppers i bought from the grocery store that i stored. i would just hate for them to be modified and not produce or irradiated and not produce. thanks though

 

[mushroombob]

I am in san diego too. although it sounds like I am closer to the coast. We have much milder temps than inland, but even here right now my outdoor peppers loook pretty trashed. They are alive, and some are actually still flowering occasionally, but the fruit that is hanging on them is green adn staying green for a loooong time.

as for your seedlings from the grocery stores, if they germinated, they will grow something. You really have no way of knowing what... it depends completey on the parents.

Could be something great.

keep us updated. I would wait until springtime to plant anything outdoors unless you have some cover.

 

[stc3248]

You doing anything to protect them at night? I live in Poway and I have several that are wintering over outside, but the cold streak we had a couple weeks ago knocked some leaves off a few plants. Since then I have strung up some xmas lights on them and was plugging them in when it was "SUPPOSED" to frost. A couple nights it was only supposed to get down to 40, but I woke up to a frozen over birdbath! I just bought a thermocube and hooked it up yesterday and it worked for me last night. Wasn't supposed to frost again, but ice on the cars this morning! Lights came on around 2am...it comes on at 35 deg and shuts off at 45. I like your pepper forest...random through the rocks. Should be cool once they leaf out and start producing.

Most of the time store bought peppers grow true. Especially popular varieties. More than likely they were grown in large fields full of nothing but that pepper variety, so the likelihood of them being a cross is minimal. I like the mutated varieties too though. They beg you to taste them to see what is up.

 

[nitwit]

"looking for any tips"

welcome to the pepper growing community
please set up a few of your 'growing stations'
as "organic" the best way to find out what will work out
how and what will work
best is for you to try it and
learn things the 'hard' way

soil amendments for your "five acres" sounds like a "big job"

IMHO would be best started on a small scale
with a few different strategy plans done on a couple small areas first

basic things are:

"enough light"

"well draining soil"

"not too cold"

please hold the new seedlings indoor until no more threat of frost
be careful to harden off before full sun

after some size is attained a light feeding strategy may increase yield

most important is to learn what they like and keep giving it to them

 

[spongey600]

i am right by mission bay so i dont get the temp fluctuations like other parts of SD county! but follow what all these guys said, make sure to not over water them, dont over fertelize them, the less you get envolved the better the plants will do! i learned the hard way! killed like 10 plant by over caring for them!

 

[richphitzwell]

Seedlings are grown inside until they have some maturity and then go outside, so far although a little stressed most of the plants that I planted last summer are doing fine and even growing. I think the most stressed out plant is due to it deciding to fruit a lot right at the time it started to frost. I really dont care about that one though. My ghost peppers dropped all their flowers the second the temp dropped. As for the 5 acres, I have 5 acres to play with, mostly filled with avocados but Im not planting 5 acres of peppers, right now im using about a 50sq/ft area. I water about once a week, fertilize rarely and have been using bone meal...so far just when I transplant.

As im currently growing butch t's indoors and will probably transplant in a couple of months I'm really curious if it needs noon shade like my ghost peppers during the summer or are they more hardy like the habanero plant. Im hoping its the later as I have far more available full sun areas.

Am I doing anything to protect them, nope and so far they have managed. Maybe in the future I should make little plastic sheeting for them but as of right now only four of the plants I really care about.

 

[stc3248]

I am testing some stuff out on my overwinter Jalapenos...like you I won't be heartbroken if I kill them. I built a little ghetto greenhouse today:

I have 4 jalapeno plants that I had to cut back to dig them out of a topsy turvy and 2 newly spouted seedlings in there (1 Cayenne and 1 Chile de Arbol) I have many more still inside the house. I am just trying to see how they do before I trust it to some Bhut's, Fatali's or Trinidad's...if you look closely you will see the string of Christmas lights in there. I have them hooked up to the thermo cube I was talking about in the earlier post. Its up on the roof of my porch so it reaches the 35 degree cut on temp way before it will be that cold under the plastic. I had to open each end a little because it shot up to 110 degrees in there today. I think I might have to put some posts in on the corners to keep it from blowing off if it gets windy. I guess we'll see! Like you I care very little about the plants in there, but I am trying to learn my lessons on them instead of the "fancy" peppers.

 

[richphitzwell]

Your from poway, ya even though we are pretty close to each other we have almost completely different climates. I have noticed that your summers are more mild than mine, your winters are more mild than mine but this last week coming down into the valleys you guys have been a good 20 degrees cooler at night which I found odd.

Maybe this weekend Ill take a pic of the established ghost plants and not the ones the nursery gave me. the only one hurting is the jalapeno. Unfortunately, as I just started, I have plants that are spread out in places they seem to like the best in summer. Habanero in 100% sun, serrano in mid morning through evening sun, ghost in afternoon sun, and jalapeno in basically full sun.

I may transplant one ghost to full sun to see if now that its matured abit if it will handle it in the summer as that space is a bit small for the number of plants I want.

personally im shocked at how well they have been (not as great looking as some of the pics I have seen on here though, jealous) during the frost though, like I said ill take a pic this weekend. The reason I grow outdoors is room, not much inside and alot outside!

BTW, what is the cut off for super hot? Habanero?

 

[stc3248]

Yeah I'd say a Chocolate Hab is a super...and maybe even some of the reds. They are 2-3 times the heat of an orange hab...I think most people only consider the Fatali's and above as supers??? I think some of the chocolate habs are hotter than a fatali though. Anything on the far side of 100000 SHU's is too hot for me to eat without taming them a little. This will be my first year attempting supers...I'm going to sauce them and send them to my "not so great" friends for Christmas next year....lol

http://www.scottrobertsweb.com/Super-Hot-Chiles-The-New-Scoville-Numbers here are the one's Scott Roberts calls supers...

 

[richphitzwell]

It would be nice to know where mild ends, hot begins and ends and super hots begin though. Can I be one of your not so great friends?

 

[stc3248]

It would be nice to know where mild ends, hot begins and ends and super hots begin though. Can I be one of your not so great friends?

HAHAHA Lol, sure! I'll keep you posted, and if all goes well I'll send some sauce once I have a harvest...I may even through in some fairly tame stuff!

 

[richphitzwell]

Although not going to win any awards, so far this winter most all my peppers look good.

One of the free almost dead peppers I got from the nursery a month or so ago

Eventually this will be filled

My Hab

One of my ghost

My 5 ghost

My serrano with about 18 seedlings next to it

and the jal that looks the worst, but after I cut off the 15 or so peppers its growing again

So all in all with no winter proofing, I think I may have a good spring. Just waiting for my butch t's, ghost peppers, scorpians, habs, and serranos to either pop or mature alittle!

 

[richphitzwell]

Man what a little bit of heat has done since the last post. I dont have any pics but my plants have all almost doubled in size and I had to transplant my Serrano seadlings into the ground. 18 were in one little 2.5g pot and they just took off. If they die they die lol.

Anywho, my ghost pepper seeds have started to pop, about 8 of the about 20 or so seeds have popped. Planted these around jan 1st.

My Butch T's are odd, out of 20 seeds initially only 4 popped, now about 3 weeks later I have another 4 that popped, odd. The pot closest to me is half habanero and half viper. I think its the viper that has popped, but we will see as it grows.

I cant wait for spring to come to transplant these guys outdoors. We are actually thinking of starting a small farmers market company just for shits and giggles if i can get enough production beyond my needs.

Well, my friends wife and I are going to start a little company called ixii produce

Shes going to grow her normal bell peppers, corn, etc while I will grow super hots hence the 911 and produce name lol
Oh god, now I have to build another website but soon www.ixiiproduce.com will be up...<<<mods, not selling anything or competing. For the most part this is just for fun and for our local farmers market

Any suggestions on what to grow, keeping with just odd ball super hots that cant be found locally.

We have a large hispanic and asian base in the county so I'm thinking of non orange habs as we can find those anywhere.
Right now I have
-ghost
-butch t's
-serranos and orange hab, but wont be growing those to sell, too common.

 

[S.S.Tupperware]

Good luck ... I will be happy just to sell off my extra starts I ain't gonna use.

 

[richphitzwell]

SS we have a farmers market every week and another weekly event during the summers every week and I know someone that already operates in both. Additionally we have a tone of small fruit and vegi vendors between home and work that I'm sure if I grow south american-mexico varieties that cant be found here they would sell easily. Again, its more or less just excess and only for the fun of it and heck if I can make a buck or two so be it. My big thing though is my frustration in not being able to find fresh peppers that I like so i have to assume that immigrants also have that frustration.

Right now i'm trying to figure out what people miss from mexico and south for the most part and since I love asian peppers...well I would be curious of that too.