Stump Peppers

[DontPanic]

I have a stump where I was discarding all my over-ripe and damaged peppers last year.  I was curious to see what kind of volunteers would grow here.
 
I covered that area over with some mulch, and turned it over a few times.  Aside from one night of freeze protection, I didn't do much else.
 
No laborious saving of seeds.
 
No fancy soil mixtures.
 
No heat mat and humidity dome.
 
No grow lamp.
 
And *NO* idea which of the 15-20 varieties of peppers I discarded last year are coming back here.
 
Of course there's a few weeds mixed in.  But there's a crate-load of peppers also. 
 

 
They're often coming up in dense clumps.
 

 
These poor fellas have some serious helmet head issues.
 

 
I'm guessing this one is a PDN x BMJ.  It's one of the few distinctive varieties at this early age.
 

 
This is about a 4 foot by 2 foot strip of ground.  Is this too dense to grow a few dozen peppers? 

 

[Uncle Eckley]

Outstanding. Following.

 

[FITN]

That is awesome! You have definitely peaked my interest! I'll be following to see what you end up with.

 

[Sizzle Lips]

Just let them go and let nature take its course......you may be surprised at the results.....all I would do is hit them with water when needed.

 

[jodytek]

Definitely following, looking forward to this thread


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[FITN]

PDN x BMJ?

 

[DontPanic]

PDN x BMJ?

 
 
Pimenta de Neyde crossed with a Bond ma Jacques.
 
It's a really cool looking pepper plant with a strong purple coloration.
 
There's a whole glog thread dedicated just to this cross:
 
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/64065-pimenta-de-neyde-x-bonda-ma-jacques/

 

[DontPanic]

Just let them go and let nature take its course......you may be surprised at the results.....all I would do is hit them with water when needed.

 

I'm going to try to do a little bit of both.
 
I'm going to leave most of them to grow out where they are.  And I'm going to transplant a few of them.
 
The spot where they're germinating is very shady, and not very large.  It's also slowly collapsing since the tree root underneath is rotting away.
 
So, it's not an ideal spot, and there's so many growing in that one spot, transplanting a few of them won't even dent the population.

 

[DontPanic]

I've had a lot of nights with temperatures in the 40s.  Everything seems healthy enough, but very little progress until the night time temperatures began to warm up.
 
Here's a picture from a few days ago (4/5):
 

 
A few have really big leaves, leading me to speculate there are some Chinense or Baccutums in there.
 

 
I replanted a bunch of seedlings into starter pots.  Since I have 60-80 seedlings in this little spot, it really didn't even thin it out much.
 
In order to avoid disturbing the soil too much, I just plucked them out.  Some came out perfectly OK.
 

 
Some others suffered a bit.
 

 
Since I have so many seedlings, I wasn't too worried about mangling a few.  I still got enough seedlings from this plot, and I didn't have to disturb the soil hardly at all.

 

[DontPanic]

Things haven't been progressing as fast as I would have hoped.
 
It's been a month since my last post, and the progress has been hit and miss.
 
The plot of seedlings is coming along slow.  It's in a very shady spot, and the night-time temperatures have been somewhat cool.  They're also getting decimated by bugs.
 

 
Here's a close-up of some of the bug damage.
 

 
I'm more rigorous about keeping after the pests in my planned beds.  But in this spontaneous, in-ground spot, I'm reluctant to nuke the entire area with some sort of bug-killer.
 
Of the seedlings I transplanted out of the in-ground patch of stump peppers, the progress has been all over the place. A few quickly became big enough to transplant, and are doing pretty well:
 

 
A few more look healthy, and are just now getting big enough to transplant:
 

 
I've already thrown out a few, and many of the remaining transplants are coming along slow.  Perhaps my rough method of transplanting these seedlings caused more damage than I thought.
 

 
I'm still really enjoying playing around with these peppers, but I've been surprised with the attrition.  If I do this again, I may not worry as much about preserving the original bed, and I'll just dig in deep to get better transplants.
 
I'm a little perplexed by the wide difference in progress.  I think there's something causing some of these plants to grow so slowly, but I haven't nailed down any theory yet.
 

 

[Uncle Eckley]

This is one of my favorite threads.

 

[jodytek]

Nature has a way


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[windchicken]

Mitch, this could be my garden! Especially with Texas Pequin, I find that after a year or two of planting it in the same spot, it always comes back on its own...In fact, all my attempts to eradicate it from a certain bed in my big garden have met with failure, so this year I finally ceded that ground to the mighty Pequin, and officially christened it the "Pequin Bed...."
 
If I may ask, where on the Gulf Coast are you?

 

[dragonsfire]

I would throw some Oyster spores on the stump, enhances the nutrients and dissolves the stump over time.

 

[DontPanic]

If I may ask, where on the Gulf Coast are you?

 

I live in Mobile, AL.
 
 

I would throw some Oyster spores on the stump, enhances the nutrients and dissolves the stump over time.

 

There were two stumps in that location.  I had been using Sodium Nitrate as well as a commercial stump rot product.
 
One of the stumps disintegrated nicely.  That's where the peppers are popping up.  The other stump is being a little more stubborn, but it'll get there eventually.
 
There's already a variety of mushrooms growing out of the decaying wood (the Sodium Nitrate certainly helped).  If the spot was more sunny, it would be fantastic for peppers.  As it stands now, it's great for making pepper seedlings, but not so great for actually growing peppers.

 

[DontPanic]

The rest of my pepper garden is doing good.  Unfortunately, my stump peppers have been hitting several obstacles.
 
The stump plot itself just isn't making much headway.  It's just too shady, and the pepper plants are having trouble getting big enough to shrug off the pests.
 

 
All those leaves and mulch that were so beneficial for starting the seedlings are now turning into a haven for pests and weeds.
 
For right now, I'm just going to let it go (other than trying to keep the weeds down to a low roar).
 
I got 17 transplants out of the stump plot, but those have been languishing.  I switched potting soil brands (to Penningtons) right before I started transplanting stump peppers.  The rest of my pepper crop did OK (using my first brand of potting soil), but just about everything I potted up in Penningtons is not growing at all.  Most of my stump pepper transplants stayed exactly the same size as when I posted on May 10th.
 
I'm not sure it's the Penningtons, but as soon as I potted a few of these up into regular mulch, they started doing much better.  Unfortunately, they are all so small, they're still really susceptible to pests.
 
I have a few that are doing pretty good:
 

 
One of these looks like some kind of annuum, and the other looks like a chinense.  But I'll have to wait until they start putting out some pods to say for sure.  They'd be much further along if I hadn't had so many problems with my potting soil this year.
 
I have two more that are just beginning to get up a head of steam.
 

 
This slow growth is totally uncharacteristic of the rest of the peppers I sowed from seed this year.
 
I just potted up the rest, but they are still almost the same size they were on May 10th.  I didn't even bother getting picture of those.
 
All in all, things could be worse.  The rest of my pepper crop is coming along fine.  And I'm re-learning a valuable lesson about the importance of having a reliable potting soil solution.

 

[DontPanic]

I'm still having fun playing around with my "stump" peppers.  But, truth be told, I'm not sure I'm going to repeat this again next year.
 
The original stump plot isn't making much progress.  Sure, it's shady.  But it should be further along.  I only did a minimal amount of preparation of the soil for the stump peppers.  The results are showing this lack of attention.
 

 
The peppers have thinned themselves out considerably.  There's only a few plants left.  But none of them are doing very well.
 
I'm getting better results out of the "stump" peppers I transplanted to containers.
 
Most of them are turning out to be a Cayenne.  I'm pretty sure this Cayenne variety has given me some volunteers in the past.  So, it's not a surprise that a Cayenne variety would end up being one of the hardiest varieties with respect to throwing off volunteers.
 

 
I have a few "stump" peppers that look much more like some kind of Chinense, but they haven't put out any peppers yet.
 
One of my potted "stump" peppers has distinctive purple branches.
 
I'm curious to see how this one turns out.
 

 
 
This has been an interesting experiment, and I've learned a few lessons from this endeavor.  Although my season is far from over, I'm drifting towards that conclusion that, next year, I'd rather concentrate my efforts more specifically on the varieties that are interesting to me, rather than the random varieties that pop up from my discards (and end up being predominately Cayennes ).

 

[DontPanic]

Time to wrap this thread up for the year.
 
To coin an obvious pun, I'm stumped as to why these plants were struggling so much.
 
After a full season of growth, the largest pepper plant in the stump pepper plot is only 9 inches high.
 

 
Most are under 6 inches.
 

 
There has been adequate moisture, and there should have been enough natural nutrients to grow more than this.
 
Sure, the spot is shady.  But I grow plenty of peppers in shady areas.  They usually grow fine, but just don't produce as many peppers.
 
Several of the one's I transplanted did fine.  Here's one of my favorites from the stump plot.  It's some kind of seasoning pepper with purple-ish foliage.  The peppers start out green, then go to purple before turning red when fully ripe (with an occasional yellow/orange phase).
 

 
As I mentioned earlier, even though many of my transplanted stump peppers grew into healthy plants, they were way behind the peppers I started earlier in the year.
 
I'm not repeating this experiment again this year.  I had trouble with pepper borers this year, and I think all the peppers I discarded on the ground in my stump plot last year fostered this pest problem.  And, I'd rather apply my efforts to the specific varieties that interest me, instead of ending up with so many mystery peppers (many of which turned out to be cayennes).
 
However, there's a remote possibility that these peppers will survive the winter.  They already survived a night that got down to 28F.

 

[DontPanic]

I thought this thread was wrapped up, but it turns out a few of them survived the winter.
 
My plan was to start treating them better this year, amending the soil and fertilizing them along with my other peppers, and I'd update the post when I had some progress.
 
But these plants continue to stymie me.  They won't die, but they won't exactly grow either.
 
So, here's the three survivors, with one and a half years worth of growth, in absolutely horrible condition:
 

 

 
 
I've officially given up on trying to get them to grow in the spot they germinated.  I've dug them up, and transplanted them to containers.  I'm curious to see how they do once I get them away from that original spot.
 
I'll put any further updates in my Glog:
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/73722-dont-panic-2020-the-year-of-the-covid/