Stickman's 2014 Glog- That's all folks!

stickman · Mar 9, 2014

Devv said:
You're growing under really tough conditions up there in the cold.

But...you're making it work!

Here's to warmer weather for you!

Keep it green bro!

PeriPeri said:
Hey Rick - that Manzano is looking great. And the Aji Lemon is looking quite furry too. I ahve some Aji Lemons on the go at the moment. Loads of pods and getting quite bushy... but taking its sweet time to change colour.

Thanks for the good vibes guys.

Yeah, it does seem that way sometimes Lourens, but the thing about the Baccatums is that when they do start to ripen, you'll get a flood. The other thing I like about them is that they can often take light freezes without dying, so they'll continue producing longer than other chile types.

Jeff H said:
Plants are all coming along nicely Rick. Glad you got the annuums free in time. Funny how we all continually learn new things each year no matter how long we have been doing this.

You bet Jeff... and it teaches you to smile in the face of adversity...

Here are the OW plants now...

Butch T

Douglah

and the best looking of the bunch... the Manzano

The Manzano is the only one to be producing new leaves... pale and sickly as they look right now. The other two have had their leaves turn crispy and the twig ends are dying back. The stems are still green though, so my hope is that if I can get them into the sun they'll perk up. I've hedged my bets though... I gave some seeds from the OW plants to a buddy of mine this winter, and he started them about 6 weeks ago. Yesterday I traded some of my extras for some of his, so whatever happens to the OW plants, I'll still have the 4 best varieties from last year represented this season.

On a side note... I saw a Red-Winged Blackbird in a tree by our bird feeders this morning, and a pair of Bluebirds are seriously eyeing our nesting box out back. The weather was so warm yesterday that when I got in about 12:30am after a contra dance, the snow was still melting from our roof and I could hear it dripping... Spring IS coming and I'm ready for it. Lol!

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Devv · Mar 9, 2014

Rick, I think the OW's are hanging just fine. The idea is to keep them in a suspended state. They're still green and I'm sure they will kick start just fine. LB asked me to OW a Jal she really liked, it looked like your Butch T. A week or two ago it started putting some new growth on.

Starts are looking healthy!

Glad to hear it's warming, I'm sure some more cold is coming, but nice to see a reprieve!

Hang in there, just a few more weeks!

HabaneroHead · Mar 9, 2014

Hi Rick,

OWs are pretty hard to kill. Even if yours don't have many leaves, they will be fine. The issue is that they require less water than you think. Small root system and only a few leaf means that water cannot evaporate that fast. My OWs have lots of leaves and they are in 6 liter pots (1.5 gallon), but I water them in every 2 or 3 weeks. My Mom managed to kill them with overwatering (another OW

. This is what my fiancee does with her plants during winter :-)
2 years ago I overwintered 2 red habs. I cut back the foliage and the roots. Somehow they survived, then I put them into 5 gallon pots. They started to pump out leaves..then I had the brilliant idea to put them into the polytunnel, where there was 45 Celsius...they lost all of their leaves. I gave them another chance, and put them into the soil. Those 2 plants produced at least 500 pods altogether in that season!
I was reading your issue with the Annuums. I am looking forward to see your side by side comparison for the growing media. Hopefully you will have a couple of plants from each variety.

Balázs

maximumcapsicum · Mar 10, 2014

Love the last shot of you favorite four from last year. Jamison sent me a powder from yellow 7 that was very nice. Hot but gentle... I think the yellow pods in general complement a huge range of foods, whereas the primo seems to work better with red meats and cheese etc. Hard to explain, the point is: yay 7 pot yellow!

stickman · Mar 10, 2014

Hi All,
It's been an eventful weekend... I've been trying to help Rocketman debug his new seedbank database with an aging Dell laptop, but got "nervous in the service" about some registry errors and imported something I shouldn't have that purported to take care of them. It was a self-inflicted wound, but the upshot is that I'm now accessing the web from an even older eMac that's about 20 years old. I'll be in and out as I try to work out how to re-connect my Email and do what I've been doing on the laptop up until now... don't be surprised if it's a long time between posts, but I'll try to stay current as well as possible. Cheers all!

Devv · Mar 10, 2014

Sorry about the 'puter issues, LB's died a horrible death a few weeks ago after 7+ years of service and we had to spend yet mo $$$ as she makes gambling $$$ off it. Gotta keep mama happy!

Pinoy83 · Mar 11, 2014

babies looking great brahh, for your OW, i have no idea since i never tried to OW before...

Jeff H · Mar 11, 2014

Rick, if you decide to get a computer from this decade, they make laptops really cheap now if you don't need something with a ton of computing power. For just browsing the net at home, I recently got a touch screen Windows 8 laptop for $400. I could have gone as cheap as $300 but I wanted the touch screen.

PeriPeri · Mar 11, 2014

Surfin' the internet on an ironing board hey? May the wind be in your sails my friend! I have a box full of old Mac stuff, cables, modems the lot... not sure why I hold onto these things. But in the movies you always see the apocalyptic hero find an old computer somewhere in an attic to save the human race from extinction with a Pentium 1... you just never know when these things will come in handy!

stickman · Mar 12, 2014

Devv said:
Sorry about the 'puter issues, LB's died a horrible death a few weeks ago after 7+ years of service and we had to spend yet mo $$$ as she makes gambling $$$ off it. Gotta keep mama happy!

Well, exploring the capabilities of my current setup, I find I can read your posts and see your pics... I can post comments, but can't import pictures from photobucket since I can't log in to the website with my current plugins. My Emac has a PowerPC CPU instead of one by Intel, so I won't be able to upgrade either. Money is very tight, so I won't be able to post pics for now unless I can borrow the use of a newer computer that can scan the SD card my camera stores pics on. At least the broadband connection to the internet still works...

Pinoy83 said:
babies looking great brahh, for your OW, i have no idea since i never tried to OW before...

Understood... living in Hawaii, you don't have winter.

Thanks for the good vibe though...

Jeff H said:
Rick, if you decide to get a computer from this decade, they make laptops really cheap now if you don't need something with a ton of computing power. For just browsing the net at home, I recently got a touch screen Windows 8 laptop for $400. I could have gone as cheap as $300 but I wanted the touch screen.

I hear ya Jeff, but money is tight enough that we can't spare 3 C-notes ATM, and probably not for some time to come... so xin loi manoy...

PeriPeri said:
Surfin' the internet on an ironing board hey? May the wind be in your sails my friend! I have a box full of old Mac stuff, cables, modems the lot... not sure why I hold onto these things. But in the movies you always see the apocalyptic hero find an old computer somewhere in an attic to save the human race from extinction with a Pentium 1... you just never know when these things will come in handy!

Well, it means I don't just drop off the face of the earth here, lol! It saves my sanity, but saving humanity might be a bit of a stretch...

stc3248 · Mar 12, 2014

That sucks about the puter...I am having similar issues with my wife's computer. I can usually work my way through the issues even when it throws the auto-reboot loop at me, but this last time I couldn't get it to come back up even with a boot disc. I have a hacker type that works for me and he was able to get it to boot, but is having to scrub the hard drive. He is saving the photos and stuff, but everything else will be a total loss.

I don't get issues too often on my computer, I use Avira Antivir free version antivirus and spybot another free program and they work very well.

Penny · Mar 12, 2014

Sucks on the computer issues Rick....great updates too.

stickman · Mar 13, 2014

stc3248 said:
That sucks about the puter...I am having similar issues with my wife's computer. I can usually work my way through the issues even when it throws the auto-reboot loop at me, but this last time I couldn't get it to come back up even with a boot disc. I have a hacker type that works for me and he was able to get it to boot, but is having to scrub the hard drive. He is saving the photos and stuff, but everything else will be a total loss.

I don't get issues too often on my computer, I use Avira Antivir free version antivirus and spybot another free program and they work very well.

Yeah... When I tried to boot in safe mode it still froze and crashed, so the laptop is definitely toast. My wife has a thumb drive and did a backup a few weeks ago, so we still have the most important data saved. We'll transfer it when we get a new machine. My Mom is sending us enough to get a Dell Inspiron laptop, so hopefully by the end of next week we'll be up to scratch. Thanks for the input on Avira and Spybot... how would you say the combination compares to Microsoft Security Essentials? For the rest, I think my tendency to gullibility has been corrected... this is another one of those F---ing growth experiences! :banghead:

Penny said:
Sucks on the computer issues Rick....great updates too.

Thanks Miz Penny, things are looking much better now that I've pried the Annuum seedlings out of their Horticube straitjackets. The most immediate winners are Shane's Texas Pequins... within days of freeing up their roots they popped out primary leaves and are growing fairly quickly. It's interesting that the primaries are looking oval-shaped ATM instead of pointed like most other Annuums.

Happy Friday Eve all!

stc3248 · Mar 13, 2014

Never used Microsoft Security Essentials...but I imagine it would work fine. More and more of the anti-virus software is also starting to target spyware which would eliminate the need to download spybot. Actually the pay version of Avira does a fine job on spyware...but it costs like $60 and I am a free kinda guy. Every now and then a virus will slip by before they update the free definitions but the ones that get by are usually the minor ones and Avira catches up then finds it. There will always be new and different viruses which find their way through our defenses. :doh:

Jeff H · Mar 13, 2014

I'm a guy who likes free anti-virus too. AVG is what I use. You can get it here. Also, remember that Windows comes built with Windows Defender that does a decent job with Spyware.

stc3248 · Mar 13, 2014

Jeff H said:
I'm a guy who likes free anti-virus too. AVG is what I use. You can get it here. Also, remember that Windows comes built with Windows Defender that does a decent job with Spyware.

I've used AVG in the past, another good option. They got a bit wonky with one of their updates once upon a time which turned me off...but it was very effective.

Devv · Mar 13, 2014

AVG works for me, one thing I want to point out, be careful where you download from. I see more and more of the free stuff with adware embedded. Even my latest download of Firefox put crap on I had to go back and clean up. Cnet.com is a bad site for that stuff.

stickman · Mar 16, 2014

Thanks for the tech tips guys... We ordered a new Dell laptop today and it should be here by friday. Once it's configured and running I'll be posting catchup material on my glog. Things are moving along and all the Annuums are putting out at least one set of primary leaves. The Manzano seedling has gotten so big that I up-potted it in the 1-liter Airpot. Have a great weekend all!

Devv · Mar 16, 2014

Congrats on the new laptop Rick.

Glad to hear the plants are doing well!

meatfreak · Mar 16, 2014

Good to hear you got your pc problems fixed, you need it in time so you can post your dawn patrols reports again