Tay's Glog 2013: Electric Boogaloo

Love the site and glogs here! bout time I created my own. Guess I'm starting this blog out on the left foot, since I'm kicking off with pics of my plants yet to meet real terra firma. Only 4 peppers, 2 maters, and a gaggle of cucs in the ground anyways. This will change in the next couple days.

Here's my potted hab I plan on OW. Putting out massive amounts of buds and branches, despite losing almost half it's stem and foliage to my inexperience and wind.

Base and stems:

First fruit I've seen, on a cherry mater plant:

Rest of the plants that need transplanting:

Pablanos putting out flowers despite stature. Just going with it.

 

[PIC 1]

Good luck with your growout. Lots of buds on that hab. Is that a cherry or a grape  tomato ?

 

[Jamison]

Good start you got man!

 

[stickman]

Good luck with your grow Tay! Once they get their feet under them you're in a good place for warmth.

 

[WalkGood]

Great start Taylor and don’t worry, they’ll love tierra firma ^_^
 
 

 

[Peptacular]

Good luck with your growout. Lots of buds on that hab. Is that a cherry or a grape  tomato ?

Thanks! Cherry.

Good start you got man!

Thanks bro!

Good luck with your grow Tay! Once they get their feet under them you're in a good place for warmth.

Thanks man! Actually, a recent a cold snap was a blessing! Stopped all spotting that was effecting my plants in the ground. The humidity here really worries me when I'm having spotting this early. Once temps hit 100ish with less rain it'll be a lot better I figure. But fungus seems to love this 95% humidity at 80f night and day.

Great start Taylor and dont worry, theyll love tierra firma ^_^
 
 

Flattery will get you no where haha jk man. I hope so! Less are going in than originally planned though. Some are going to be bucket babies. Stay lofty!

Friendly or nasty? I'm hoping its a variety of lacewing.

 

[Spicegeist]

Nice and green, good luck with the grow.

 

[Peptacular]

Nice and green, good luck with the grow.

Green is probably my favorite color. Purple is a close second maybe lol. Same to you! Pods a plenty for everyone I hope.

Here's a couple of my poor bedraggled peppers that went in too early. Nothing but cold rain followed by hot rain since they went in late April. I think I'll still see some production despite multiple hair cuts and copper sprays for spotting. Hence my decision for more container plants I can move out if the rain!

 

[stickman]

Friendly or nasty? I'm hoping its a variety of lacewing.

Just a Mayfly, nothing to worry about. At this stage it doesn't even have mouthparts. It lives on stored fat long enough to mate, lay eggs in the water and die. Any fresh water fly fisherman would recognize it.

 

[Peptacular]

I occasionally do lake pond and lake fishing, which I suck at, so I haven't bothered to try fly fishing.

I'm depressed because despite no rain and nights dipping into the 50s the possibly bacterial spot still managed to spread from my peppers to cucs in less than a week. Even with a preventitive copper spray down.

Id take a picture but looking at it makes me want to spit. Don't think ill be planting much of anything in the ground in the future, which is too bad since I just dropped 200 plus on an electric fence.

Sorry, not so much an update as it is pointless whinging.

Edit: I guess I can't complain on Memorial Day. Friends, family, brats, burgers and beer will cheer me up I'm sure.

 

[Peptacular]

Well good news is the spotting has stopped spreading and started dying off (aside from my habanero, aggravatingly enough since its the hottest pepper i have atm and potted and out of the rain). Bad news is I sprained my wrist badly about a week back. So transplanting has slowed way down.

Managed to dig holes for the remaining plants today with just my left hand. Talk about a workout, especially since I dig way down to compensate for clay compaction.

Ill get some pics up tomorrow due to rain and cloud induced darkness atm.

My next season will be much more interesting I assure you now that I have some super hot seeds.

 

[Peptacular]

So I've decided my blog had been too pessimistic. No more bitching, I promise.

Here's a bell pepper that's been growing quite rapidly.

Ornamental thai bird pepper putting out some fruit n flowers

Annuums doing pretty well

More to come in a short bit. Internet upload is running slowly and this bourbon won't drink itself.
as you can see by the last pic I'm horrible at weeding, hence the plastic ground cover.
Oh you can also see a volunteer cucumber I'm debating pulling or moving to the cucurbit trellis.

 

[Peptacular]

These cherry tomatoes have been growing like viney weeds. Viny? Fucked if I know how to spell it. The picture doesn't even do them justice.

Here's my hab plant. Despite infection it seems to be growing ok. It looks pretty healthy from this pic, no spotting had penetrated to the leaf tops so maybe I'm being a hypochondriac. But 80% of the leaves have lesions on the underside, and all 20+ buds were dropped.

 

[stickman]

Actually, your plants look pretty good Tay. One thing we've all got to master is the hands-off approach... most of us kill our plants by loving them to death. Yours look like they've been slowed down a bit by a combination of clay soil and cool temperatures. They look plenty green... Once they get enough warmth and a large enough root system punched through the clay they'll take off! The only improvement I'd suggest is a s#!*load of compost added to your soil when you clean up your garden plot in the fall. Spade it in lightly when prepping your beds before planting in the spring. Do that every year and it'll lighten your soil to make it easier for the plants to put out roots, and it'll improve drainage as well so the water and nutes have an easier time of getting down to the roots as well. Cheers!

 

[Peptacular]

Thanks for the advice and kind words man! And I can trust them after seeing your results in your glog! Is there an easy way to sterilize compost? I think the compost I added this year (in spring like a dumbass admittedly) is responsible for some of the early season infections I had. Although I doubt massive amounts of spring showers and high humidity helped. Even the wild oak trees had spotting lol.

Here's a nice little surprise I found today.

Prolly have more cherry tomoatoes than ill know what to do with, all four plants are putting em out like crazy.

This thing was supposed to be a shrubby determinant or I wouldn't have potted it. I did have to trim most the lower leaves early on due to septoria which may explain it. No spotting since then so I don't mind.

You can also see some photo bombing thai basil in that last pic.
A post with no peppers, oops. Those are coming up in a sec. Boonie net sucks so give me a bit here

 

[stickman]

Is there an easy way to sterilize compost? I think the compost I added this year (in spring like a dumbass admittedly) is responsible for some of the early season infections I had. Although I doubt massive amounts of spring showers and high humidity helped. Even the wild oak trees had spotting lol.

 
One of the cardinal rules of composting is "Don't put anything in your compost pile that's diseased"! It's much harder to get it out once it's in your compost than it is to keep it out in the first place. If you think something is diseased, burn it.
 
I always add compost in spring and have never had a problem. It must be the conditions this spring.

 

[Peptacular]

Homemade jalapeño poppers with homemade bacon bits inside. friends told me their the best they've ever had, so made me feel good. Unfortunately store bought peppers.

Got a pretty nice cucumber yesterday, and a similar sized one today. They seem to be loving this rain.

These guys have grown at least 5 inches in height over the past week. A little over two feet tall right now I'd guess.

Overview shot. Young gals on the right have a lot if catching up to do.

 

[Peptacular]

I guess I'll give myself an undeserved and heavily sauced bump to try and keep up with the established blogarchy.

Hennessy black for straight spirit shots and Bloody Mary for the cocktail. Anyone else a late night imbiber? Whatcha sampling?

Also, here's an old picture I meant to post a few days back. Keets getting their first wing pin feathers.

 

[Peptacular]

Here's my frustrating habanero plant which finally has put out a flower. I squish aphids and spray with neem oil regularly and they always seem to be back in the same numbers or more the next day, despite all my other pepper plants being devoid of the a-holes. Im talking minimum of twenty per leaf. in one effing day.I think its part of the reason it's the only plant still dealing with spotting on any worrying scale. I've been sorely tempted to use poison but held out so far. It budded before and in greater numbers than any other pepper but managed to drop the lot twice due to the pestilence. So I hit it with setting hormone, since I'd like to see at least one hab by the season end. Rant over.

Here's my ornamental thai birds eye pepper. Hoping it will be closer to 100k scovilles than 50k. But it's podding like crazy, this is maybe a third of them, small and hard to see may they be.

Could I get a bump-bump? I'd like to know I have a good reason for delaying my inebriation.

 

[Jamison]

Bumparoo man.    Lets see some more!