seanw first glog (2013) - Racing the End of the Season...

Hello and greetings My first post here, and I'm prepping for my first major season growing. I've done a few small pepper plants here or there, and two summers ago I tried for some variety of ghost chili or other (the pop top cans you can get from thinkgeek), which turned out to look like ghost chilis, but were super mild (may have also been the fact that they were getting almost no sun in the apartment we lived in at the time, and by the time we got the house, they got outdoors just in time for the frost to hit).

I've got a heat mat and a 50 hole rapid rooter en route, and I'll be grabbing some cheapo work lights to give me some light. I also need to rig some sort of container to keep in the heat, they'll be going in my insulated-but-unheated garage until I move them into the garden, thinking either a styrofoam cooler or just putting that silver bubblewrap insulation stuff on a box.

In addition to some herbs and other garden veggies, here's my pepper list for the year:

HP22B
Yatsufusa
Tabasco
Paprika
Firecracker
Early Jalapeno
Moruga Trinidad Scorpion
NuMex Suave Orange Habanero
Chiltepin
Orange Hab
Bhut Jolokia
Red Savina Hab
Hot Cherry Pepper
Butch T Trinidad
Scotch Bonnet

I may have gone a bit gonzo on ordering. We haven't built our garden yet. This will be the second garden, the first is dedicated to berries, and got mauled by rabbits and chipmunks, even with fencing. The vegetable garden is going to be 6'x30', in three sections. Gonna stick peppers and some tomatos in one of the 10x6 section, the other two will be for the other veggies. I'm gonna have to break out some pots for the rest of the peppers. We'll see what happens once we get the garden together, though My current plan is to build a frame around the garden and cover it with 1" or 2" fencing, big enough for the bugs, too small for the critters.

Here's hoping all goes well!

 

[SeanW]

Hey Sean, good on ya man! Glad to see you finally got your babies in the dirt. Nice mix o' veggies in the garden too, now we just need summer to pull the pin!

 
They're calling for high 80's around me, this week. That's more summer than I really want , I'm liking this mid-70's and sunny thing we've been doing on and off. Might get a bit of wind, tonight and tomorrow, luckily most of the plants in the dirt are short, and everything is fairly protected in the back. We've had some killer wind recently, up to 30mph at times...
 
Now, where are my pods!

 

[SeanW]

Hey Sean, good on ya man! Glad to see you finally got your babies in the dirt. Nice mix o' veggies in the garden too, now we just need summer to pull the pin!

 
I think we're getting summer, today! 90's here...hopefully the plants survive, they got tons of water this past week, so we should be good.

 

[JoynersHotPeppers]

Great looking garden Sean, best of luck with your grow.

 

[SeanW]

Great looking garden Sean, best of luck with your grow.

 
Thanks!
 
Made it through the heat just fine. Tomatos are going crazy, and a few of my tomatillo plants survived the culling, so they need to go in to the dirt shortly. Peppers are trucking along, but haven't gotten that big, yet.

 

[stickman]

Good on ya Sean, but we need to see pics!

 

[SeanW]

I have a few that I took, this morning. Gotta get them up.
 
Damn rabbits ate through my fence (it was just netting) and started munching on my lettuce. I wonder what a .50cal muzzleloader will do to a rabbit...

 

[stickman]

I have a few that I took, this morning. Gotta get them up.
 
Damn rabbits ate through my fence (it was just netting) and started munching on my lettuce. I wonder what a .50cal muzzleloader will do to a rabbit...

 
I think that depends on what you have it loaded with... is it a rifle or a smoothbore? A rifled bore limits you to a solid chunk of lead, but a smoothbore can be loaded with shot. Since you'll have an "open cylinder" on the end of the barrel your shot will spread a bit more than one with a choke, but the bigger the shot, the less it spreads anyway. In answer to your wonderings... probably "splash"!

 

[SeanW]

 
I think that depends on what you have it loaded with... is it a rifle or a smoothbore? A rifled bore limits you to a solid chunk of lead, but a smoothbore can be loaded with shot. Since you'll have an "open cylinder" on the end of the barrel your shot will spread a bit more than one with a choke, but the bigger the shot, the less it spreads anyway. In answer to your wonderings... probably "splash"!

Heh, rifled. Kinda hard to hide that from the neighbors, particularly with the smoke cloud it'll leave...

 

[stickman]

If it's stealth you're looking for... they have some very nice (relatively) high velocity air rifles out now that have built-in noise suppressors. I have an older model without the noise suppressor that does the job, but I have to look both ways twice before using it...

 

[stickman]

Hi Sean, how have things been going in your garden? It looks like we finally turned the corner into summer this weekend, and I hope all is well with you. Cheers!

 

[SeanW]

Hi Sean, how have things been going in your garden? It looks like we finally turned the corner into summer this weekend, and I hope all is well with you. Cheers!

Well, the rabbits ate the broccoli, fennel, dill, lettuce, chives, marigolds, onions...probably a few others, and the chipmunks ate all the strawberries.
 
I have some pictures...but I apparently fail at getting them up. I'll work on that. I found a baby zucchini, yesterday, which is cool. I harvested some peas, but apparently waited too long, so they are a bit bitter.
 
On the pepper front, I have a couple other things to plant outside, but it's either been 90 degrees or raining. I'm hoping this weekend will give me the time to get them in. Some of the outdoor guys have flowers, so I'm hoping for pods in the near future. I want a chipmunk to eat one, just to watch it explode. Jerks.

 

[stickman]

Well, the rabbits ate the broccoli, fennel, dill, lettuce, chives, marigolds, onions...probably a few others, and the chipmunks ate all the strawberries.

On the pepper front, I have a couple other things to plant outside, but it's either been 90 degrees or raining. I'm hoping this weekend will give me the time to get them in. Some of the outdoor guys have flowers, so I'm hoping for pods in the near future. I want a chipmunk to eat one, just to watch it explode. Jerks.

I hear ya on having to race the critters to the garden to get a harvest. One of our neighbors  was edging his strawberries to keep his patch to a consistent size, and gave the extras to my wife. She planted them a few feet from our back door, but as close to the house as they are, the resident Chipmunk isn't intimidated, and she's been getting less than half the berries on the plants. The cheeky sod even left a half-eaten strawberry on top of a fence post at eye level to taunt her... who says small animals don't have a sense of humor?
 
All the plants I got from you in our swap this spring have set pods, and I've been wondering... what can you tell me about the Scotch Bonnet and Cheiro? Bonnie (Highalt) says the pods look like the ones on her Cheiro Recife last year, but those turned an ivory color before ripening a pastel red. Yours are a light green. They're producers of lots of small, pointed pods too... I'm curious to see what they smell and taste like. Also, do you know which variety of Scotch Bonnet I have and what color the pods will be when ripe? Cheers!

 

[SeanW]

The cheiro recife are from pepper mania:
http://www.peppermania.com/chinense_7.html
Interesting that the coloring is different, I wonder if it's a slightly different strain or something.
 
 
The bonnets are from Pepper Joe, and are just listed as "Scotch Bonnet Hot Pepper." The picture has them as yellow, but I guess we'll see.
 
Some of the labels in my outdoor peppers have vanished. They were popsicle sticks, but I have no idea where they went. Don't know if the critters drug them off, or what.
 
I now have a groundhog, I thought it hadn't come back, this year, but the little bastard was eating my beans.
 
I got a few more plants outside. I might try and get the last of them out today. Anything that isn't out today is gonna die, because I'm gone for the week. It's mostly spares, at this point, so I'm not concerned. Just gotta get planting before the rain comes.
 

This is one of my prik's
 

I like this rose
 

and my other rose
 

and this is a zucchini plant being tamed by an inverted tomato cage. Seems to work pretty well, it's a lot more compact, now. A ton of flowers, and I had a small zucchini on one plant, but it got lost in the heat wave.
 
Edit: small zucchini...I'm not magically growing cucumbers on my zucchini plants

 

[SeanW]

So, went away on vacation for a week, and my sprinklers failed to turn on when we had no rain and triple digit temps. My lawn is dead,  a bunch of my herbs bit it, my zucchini and cukes are alive, but hurting...and my pepper plants EXPLODED. Apparently they like the heat. I need to snap pics, I've got pods on the almapaprika, cherry and yellow mini bells. Huzzah!

 

[stickman]

So, went away on vacation for a week, and my sprinklers failed to turn on when we had no rain and triple digit temps. My lawn is dead,  a bunch of my herbs bit it, my zucchini and cukes are alive, but hurting...and my pepper plants EXPLODED. Apparently they like the heat. I need to snap pics, I've got pods on the almapaprika, cherry and yellow mini bells. Huzzah!

Sorry to hear about the fryage at your place in the wake of the heat wave. But for that, I'd have liked your good news on the pepper plants. Please do snap some pics and post 'em...
 
The Scotch Bonnet, and especially the Butch T. are doing well here. The Cheiro Recife is just insane! There must be 60-80 pods at least on a plant that's only a foot tall by twice that wide. It was encroaching on the Yellow Bhut to such an extent that I had to pinch it back.
   Cheers!

 

[SeanW]

You're a little ahead of me on pods, my cheiros are exploding, but no pods, yet.
 
Here's the in ground peppers and my tomato "patch." My two cheiros are the big guys in the center, there. Numex suave orange, mini yellow bell and almapaprika surround them.

 
My potted peppers, with some beans on the right hand side

 
Mini yellow bell pods

 
Almapaprika pods

 
My thai mouse crap peppers are podding up like CRAZY

 
Rick, here's the Jamaican Hot Chocolate I got off of you, podding up nicely

 
This guy lost his ID tag...

 
I have a few others, but nothing too exciting. Some midget plants, and a few crispy ones.
 
Got a nesco dehydrator the other day, so I'm looking forward to drying some peppers.

 

[SeanW]

I've been slacking...harvest pictures!
 
My first harvest, mini yellow bells:

 
a week or so later...some almapaprika

 
Then some real harvests:
 
from top left, unknown (fresno? the tags rotted on a lot of my plants...), datil, orange hab, cheiro recife, san marzano tomato, prik kee noo suan, almapaprika, yellow mini bell, chocolate hab (still red, I may have picked these early)
 

 
Then a yellow bell, yatsufusa, cherokee trail of tears beans, san marzano toms, and more prik peppers

 
And today, another datil and more priks

 
I have more priks out there, but you can only pick so many of those at one time...

 

[stickman]

Nice pull Sean, glad to see you got peppers enough to make some sauce or powder for the winter. Did the Urfa Biber do anything for you? I got 3 pods each on 2 plants... they were shaded by the nearby Tomatillos, but at least I have enough seed now to have some for me and some to share as well. That Cheiro Recife I got from you was a huge producers for me this year! I've been picking about a quart of pods a week from it for the last month. I used them in 3 batches of sauce and 1 batch of smoked powder, and they're only a little over half gone.
 
It was kind of a crazy growing season this year wasn't it... too cold and wet until mid-July and then hot and dry after that.   Cheers!

 

[SeanW]

Nice pull Sean, glad to see you got peppers enough to make some sauce or powder for the winter. Did the Urfa Biber do anything for you? I got 3 pods each on 2 plants... they were shaded by the nearby Tomatillos, but at least I have enough seed now to have some for me and some to share as well. That Cheiro Recife I got from you was a huge producers for me this year! I've been picking about a quart of pods a week from it for the last month. I used them in 3 batches of sauce and 1 batch of smoked powder, and they're only a little over half gone.
 
It was kind of a crazy growing season this year wasn't it... too cold and wet until mid-July and then hot and dry after that.   Cheers!

 
The urfa biber was one of the plants that I lost the tags on, I think an animal was stealing them, though that would be weird. I THINK I know where they are, we'll see if I get anything from them. My plants are running really late. I'm hoping to get some aleppo before the cold hits, we'll see if it happens. If I get some, and can't figure out which ones are the urfa, I'd be interested in trading some for some urfa biber seeds from you.
 
I've got a million cheiro recife pods coming up, green ones everywhere. They were hotter than I thought they were going to be, I heard they were mild, mine were probably serrano levels of heat. I chopped a couple up on a quesadilla tonight
 
I'm going to dry most of the stuff I get, I'll also make some fresh salsa at some point.
 
I got a little overzealous this year, I need to cut back some for next year. I'll probably still have a ton of peppers, but most of the other stuff will probably wait. Also for next year - better tagging.
 
Funny story. I gave a friend some of my overflow plants, but forgot what I gave her. She messaged me a week or two ago, saying that the almapaprikas tasted great, but those red ones were HOT. I couldn't figure out what red one she had, and after a couple failed guesses, she replied "b..t something?" Turns out, she chomped down part of a bhut jolokia, not expecting anything at that level. Oops! She was on fire for a while afterwards
 
Between the wet ick and the late start that I got, I'm hoping

 

[stickman]

Sure thing Sean! I'll set aside some seeds for you when I finish drying them out. I have them in a dish on a south-facing windowsill right now. 
 
The Cheiros were one of the first pods to ripen for me, so if you can get a couple more weeks of warm weather you should get a decent amount of pods from your plant. I love the smell and flavor of them... they make great powder and sauces, it's just a PITA to de-seed them, so I don't bother... I have a food mill that takes out the seeds when I make sauces, and when I dry them for powder I just grind 'em up seeds and all.