Stickman's 2013 Glog - Time To Pull The Plug on 2013

WalkGood · Nov 5, 2013

Great job on da fermented sauce Rick, looks great! I always look for all kinds of bottles around our house and glass jars from products we use to fill with my sauces so I love your idea bottling into Grolsch beer bottles. Keep up da great work with your OWs and have a grand week mon!

PeriPeri · Nov 6, 2013

Looking great there Rick - loving the colour on that fermented sauce! I will be growing a plenty more Tabasco's this year as I just loved the sauce I got out of them last season!

stickman · Nov 8, 2013

ronniedeb said:
Great. Thanks for the advice!

Devv said:
Hmmm, I didn't like what you just posted about the grow bags.

Seems like I'll have my work cut out this spring...oh well..poop happens..

MisterNo said:
Good to know Rick!

I'll try to get some air pots just to try out this year.
My home made geotex pots have proved to be good - plants just loved them, but they can't last long. They were air pruning smoothly, roots didn't grow into the fabric, except in the bottom. Problem is resolved if you moved them on a some kind of grid so that they have air underneath.

The material is thin, and stretches a lot, so they can last only season or two max. If you move plants a lot during the season, they wear out before the season ends. But they are really cheap to make, under a dollar for a 5 gallon pot

In addition to the new varieties, my other major experiment was comparing hard (airpot) vs soft (Dirt Pot) air pruning pots, and again comparing the difference between plants grown in the ground and in the air pruning pots. I don't believe there's any difference in the air pruning abilities of the different pots... the major differences were in durability and ease of up-potting. Robert (MisterNo) also nailed it when he said that unless the pots were lifted off the ground, the roots of the plants inside would grow through the bottom of the pot into the ground. Using bricks or concrete blocks should work for that. All the varieties that I planted in-ground seemed to do much better than the ones in pots when it came to overall production. The plants in pots set pods sooner and could be moved at need, but the in-ground plants grew to a bigger size before setting pods and ended up having twice to three times the harvest by the end of the season.

WalkGood said:
Great job on da fermented sauce Rick, looks great! I always look for all kinds of bottles around our house and glass jars from products we use to fill with my sauces so I love your idea bottling into Grolsch beer bottles. Keep up da great work with your OWs and have a grand week mon!

PeriPeri said:
Looking great there Rick - loving the colour on that fermented sauce! I will be growing a plenty more Tabasco's this year as I just loved the sauce I got out of them last season!

Thanks for the love for the hot sauces guys! I've still got that last batch to cook up with the smoked windfall chiles, but too busy to stand in one place long enough to get the job done... lol!

Lourens, you've grown the piri piri chiles as well as the Tobascos haven't you? Is there any difference in taste? If so, which do you like better?

Things are still moving along slowly with the OW peppers. All show more new growth...

Manzano

Douglah

Butch T.

Yellow 7

I picked what I think was an Aphid off of a leaf stem this week... it made me really hunt for my old magnifying glass from my coin collecting days... it's a 14 power lens... think it's strong enough to pick out mites? It surely confirmed the presence of aphids! Not too many yet, but now I've got to research how to deal with the little bastiges... IIRC probably insecticidal soap and cotton swabs.

Edit: I was going through my gardening stuff downstairs and I found my mini sprayer and a bottle of "Captain Jack's Dead Bug Concentrate". I got it to deal with the squash bugs this season, but it's supposed to be good for aphids and fungus gnats too. The active ingredient is an organic derivative called Spinosad... WTH, I'll give it a shot... if that doesn't work I can always go with insecticidal soap or neem.
Have a great weekend all!

Devv · Nov 9, 2013

I read up on Spinosad a while back, it's supposed to be very effective.

I'm a fan of wettable sulfur, it's worked well for me with the mites. And for the first time ever I got to experience Aphids this year, really nasty little critters. It worked well for them too. I used the Bonide product.

Have a great weekend!

stickman · Nov 10, 2013

Thanks for the heads-up Scott! It looks like the spinosad did the trick. I'll keep the wettable sulfur treatment in mind if I ever have any problems with mites. Cheers!

Penny · Nov 10, 2013

Good thing you caught the little pests before they really did some damage, good luck with Captain Jacks, and hopefully it does the trick!

stickman · Nov 10, 2013

Hi and welcome to the zoo miz Penny!

Penny said:
Good thing you caught the little pests before they really did some damage, good luck with Captain Jacks, and hopefully it does the trick!

Thanks for the good vibes... and from your mouth to God's ear when it comes to the spinosad, eh?

Penny · Nov 10, 2013

Question for you....in your pics you have water bottles upside down, is it just straight water or do you add anything to it?

stickman · Nov 10, 2013

Penny said:
Question for you....in your pics you have water bottles upside down, is it just straight water or do you add anything to it?

It's just water for now Penny... I was given to understand (by those who've done overwintering longer than I have) that when trying to keep your plants partially dormant, you need to limit the amount of water and nutes you give them. I'll keep them that way until I begin to push them to grow sometime in February. Then I'll increase the light, water and nutes I give them, but I'll still go easy on the water to avoid root rot, and easier still on the nutes to avoid burning them with too much too soon. The temperatures down in the cellar will be in the 50s by then, so they'll grow slowly, but they'll get enough of a head start to make a huge difference at plant-out.

PeriPeri · Nov 12, 2013

Hey Rick, apologies for the late reply. Yes I have grown and tried both. Gosh... which is better PeriPeri or Tabsaco. That's like putting a chocoholic in a Chocolatier and saying choose one :drooling:

They are so similar and yet so unique. They look the same and can easily be mistaken apart from the fact that Tabascos are whiteish before they go red and PeriPeri go from green to red. Tabasco pods are distinctively mushy once ripe, whereas PeriPeri remain firm. Tabasco pods are fleshier and have lots of stringy flesh inside... whereas the PeriPeri has lots of seeds. I prefer the PeriPeri on this point as I find seeds better than the stringy pulp of the Tabasco - it is in my opinion quite off-putting and limiting as to what one can do with the pods. On that note I have to give it to McIIheny for utilising the humble Tabasco in the way they have as it is the perfect application for this chilli (imo). Its very stringy texture and flesh does not make it great for chilli sauce (I think). Taste wise they are very different. I enjoy the peppery burn of the PeriPeri, less dynamic than the Tabasco as it is quite one dimensional on the flavour side of things - peppery. But, it has many applications - it makes great chilli powder and sauces. The Tabasco on the other hand is much fruitier and much more dynamic on the flavour side. I have no experience of Tabasco powders or sauces other than the sauer mash hot sauce we have all come to know. And this is such a unique and perfect application - I am not sure the humble PeriPeri would apply itself as well as the Tabsaco to making Hot Sauce - it lacks that fruitiness. So cut a long story short lol they are both super chillies in their own right. Difficult question/answer. Purely taking versatility into consideration I would say the PeriPeri has one over. Great for marinades and sauces and the powder can be used anywhere. That having been said I am growing Tabascos on mass this season - I will be going into Tabasco sauce on a mass scale lol But yea, I would rate the PeriPeri one notch up

PS While your babies (plants) sleep, will you be playing them classical music or heavy metal?

stickman · Nov 12, 2013

Thanks for the assessment of those Frutacens peppers Lourens! I have the Piri Piri seeds you sent me this season, as well as some Bradley's Bahamian and Dilley Street Tamworth seeds from other trades... just wondering which one to grow when I start planting them in the future. As you know... I'm all about the flavor.

The OW plants listen to whatever I'm listening to at the time. I have eclectic tastes in music, so it could be nearly anything depending on my mood... mostly rock, jazz, folk, world music or alternative... even classical and country-western in small doses, but nothing religious, opera or including the whiny pedal steel like the fashion was for country music in the 70s. I particularly like bravura guitar played by people like Jesse Cook and Serbian brass band music by people like Boban Markovic and Ekrem Sajdic. This morning I was listening to Mark Knopfler's album Sailing to Philadelphia and Paul Simon's Graceland.

Cheers!

PaulG · Nov 12, 2013

stickman said:
Yeah, I've used both... I have some plants in fabric "Dirt Pots", and they seem to work about the same as the airpots. The chief difference I think is that the fabric will eventually wear out due to the stitching thread rotting in the sun, and the plant roots actually grow into the fabric before being air pruned. Up-potting is a little more difficult because of that... you have to take the back of a hacksaw blade or something similar, and cut the roots all around the inside of the fabric before peeling down the sides, and then cutting the root ball free from the bottom of the fabric so you don't mess it up.

Hey, Rick, your OW project is rollin' right along. Would be nice to have an
indoor space for the OW's, but I'll have to let them struggle out in the greenhouse
for the winter. I like your bottle trick.

I haven't had any problem with roots growing into the Root Pouch containers, either on
the sides or the bottom*. But I'm pretty stingy with the water, so the pouches don't get
real wet. The main problem is moss growing on the lower sides during the winter on the
pots I have to leave outside. Even though they are mostly out of the rain, the humidity
still causes the moss or whatever it is y grow in the cloth. I'm going into my third season
with the seven gallon pouches, and it looks like I should be good to go. The ones i the green-
house that dry out more will last longer, I think. I am hoping for four seasons or five. They
rate them for 3 years. The stitching looks pretty good still. The one gallon root pouches I
used last year then stored after potting up were just as good as new when I put the grow
shelf plants in them a few weeks ago.

*I put the root pouches on a plastic hardware cloth, dishwasher racks, or on 12 inch patio blocks
to avoid contact with the dirt. I have set a couple on gravel, and they didn't root at the bottom, either.

stickman · Nov 13, 2013

Thanks for the input Paul! It's all grist for the mill... I don't think I was over-watering my potted chiles this past summer, but I was fertilizing with liquid ferts and a bit of molasses every other week. Though I had the air pruning pots placed on crushed stone, I found when I moved them that they all put roots through the bottoms of the pots and the stone, and into the soil under that.

Have a good hump day all!

PIC 1 · Nov 13, 2013

The PiriPiri is a great sauce making chili. I had folks asking for those plants this season. I don't know what I was thinking about, I only had a dozen plants to part with. I'm refining my grow list on what I want to grow and what other folks have requested. It's not always the super hots folks want. It's coming down to flavor, especially with tomato varieties.
I cut back the Tabasco down to only a plant or two. I've been growing a similar variety out of Hawaii, very early production and tasty, especially when pickled.

Sawyer · Nov 13, 2013

stickman said:
The plants in pots set pods sooner and could be moved at need, but the in-ground plants grew to a bigger size before setting pods and ended up having twice to three times the harvest by the end of the season.

That's been my experience, too, though the biggest pot I used was a 5 gallon grow bag and I haven't used air pots (yet). Many of the plants in my regular nursery pots also sent roots down into the ground. I kind of wish more of them had done so, because it helped anchor them against blowing over in the wind.

PIC 1 said:
I don't know what I was thinking about, I only had a dozen plants to part with. I'm refining my grow list on what I want to grow and what other folks have requested. It's not always the super hots folks want. It's coming down to flavor, especially with tomato varieties.

Yep, it seems pretty rare that "regular" folks want to buy what I want to grow. It's all a compromise. Guess I need to look into adding some PiriPiri to my grow list. Lourens' description does them proud.

stickman · Nov 13, 2013

PIC 1 said:
The PiriPiri is a great sauce making chili. I had folks asking for those plants this season. I don't know what I was thinking about, I only had a dozen plants to part with. I'm refining my grow list on what I want to grow and what other folks have requested. It's not always the super hots folks want. It's coming down to flavor, especially with tomato varieties.
I cut back the Tabasco down to only a plant or two. I've been growing a similar variety out of Hawaii, very early production and tasty, especially when pickled.

Sawyer said:
That's been my experience, too, though the biggest pot I used was a 5 gallon grow bag and I haven't used air pots (yet). Many of the plants in my regular nursery pots also sent roots down into the ground. I kind of wish more of them had done so, because it helped anchor them against blowing over in the wind.

Yep, it seems pretty rare that "regular" folks want to buy what I want to grow. It's all a compromise. Guess I need to look into adding some PiriPiri to my grow list. Lourens' description does them proud.

Thanks for weighing in on the discussion about Frutascens varieties guys...I really don't know much of anything about that kind of chiles, so the info is greatly appreciated. Out of curiousity Greg, which Hawaiian variety are you talking about?

PeriPeri · Nov 14, 2013

I will be growing Birdseye Chillies from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique this season. It will be interesting for me to see how different they really are. The PeriPeri was brought to Mozambique (A Portuguese colony) from South America by the Portuguese... some say its origins are from the Malaguetta. The internet is a flush with people selling Zimbabwean PeriPeri... and I am not sure why as the true blue is the Mozambique PeriPeri. Coincidentally the Birdseye is PeriPeri In Mozambique & South Africa and is called BileBile (Ndebele - South Zimbabwe) & MiriPiri (Shona - North Zimbabwe) and further up North in Angola & Kenya it is called PiliPili... it comes by different names throughout Southern Africa... but I need to see if like the Fatalii - there is any difference in all these Birdseye's having been grown in different regions

But yea... I love its versatility and it makes a cracking every day kinda sauce!

ronniedeb · Nov 14, 2013

PeriPeri said:
I will be growing Birdseye Chillies from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique this season. It will be interesting for me to see how different they really are. The PeriPeri was brought to Mozambique (A Portuguese colony) from South America by the Portuguese... some say its origins are from the Malaguetta. The internet is a flush with people selling Zimbabwean PeriPeri... and I am not sure why as the true blue is the Mozambique PeriPeri. Coincidentally the Birdseye is PeriPeri In Mozambique & South Africa and is called BileBile (Ndebele - South Zimbabwe) & MiriPiri (Shona - North Zimbabwe) and further up North in Angola & Kenya it is called PiliPili... it comes by different names throughout Southern Africa... but I need to see if like the Fatalii - there is any difference in all these Birdseye's having been grown in different regions But yea... I love its versatility and it makes a cracking every day kinda sauce!

Very interesting. On this subject, the trade in chilli peppers from Brazil to Africa would most likely have occurred first to Angola. I grew an Angolan frutescens last year called Jindungo. I liked it, though I have little experience of other African frutescens to compare it to. I also read somewhere that it's origin is the Brazilian Malaguetinha, the smaller version of the Malagueta. I'll have to see if I still have seeds.
http://www.rainbowchiliseeds.com/catalog/i513.html

PIC 1 · Nov 14, 2013

stickman said:
Thanks for weighing in on the discussion about Frutascens varieties guys...I really don't know much of anything about that kind of chiles, so the info is greatly appreciated. Out of curiousity Greg, which Hawaiian variety are you talking about?

Rick,
The variety I'm growing was from a local grower living north of the small town of Paia..Maui.
The dude grew all kinds of stuff at his home. I stopped at his roadside stand and inquired if he had any type of chili's. His wife went out to the backyard and brought back 2 types. One was a very skinny Thai variety and the other was a tabasco looking chili that he called the "Pele". I've been growing both varieties for a few years now.

stickman · Nov 14, 2013

Now you guys got me wondering about growing a Frutascens variety for sauce-making, but It'll have to wait 'til 2015... I'm fully extended for 2014... lots of time to research and ask around before settling on which varieties to grow.

Greg... did the Pele chile look anything like this? http://hawaiianchilipeppers.com/index.html