Turbo 2014 Pepper Growing: An Anecdotal Methodology

bpwilly · May 13, 2014

turbo said:
Tons of humming birds and bumble bees! Love them.

Quick question: all my hots are spitting out buds like crazy. 3-5 per joint. But the plants won't go in the ground for another 2-4 weeks. Do you clip the buds or leave them on while they are still inside? I've read from many sources the arguments both for and against clipping early buds. But its all anecdotal as far as I can tell. I'm interested, as a fellow Seattle grower, what do you do? What results have you seen?

Turbo,

Sorry for the delay in getting back with you, been slacking off on looking at my computer. As for the buds, I did pick a few of the plants that were real small (like 6 leaves) but other than that, I have left them on. Not sure which way is better, although I am sure there are goobs of opinions. I have to admit, I have not done any real scientific recording of the results, so it is more of a gut feel for me this year. Good luck getting them in the ground , looks like you are getting a real nice set-up for this year.

turbo · May 14, 2014

It is with deep regret that I announce the death of all 4 of my fatalii pepper plants (and one cayenne). They just withered up and died on me. I'm not sure what went wrong, everyone else seems to be happy. I think they just out grew their solo cup. Oddly enough my chocolate fatalii are doing just fine. Looks like I'm ending up with a few less plants this year

Runescape · May 15, 2014

turbo said:
It is with deep regret that I announce the death of all 4 of my fatalii pepper plants (and one cayenne). They just withered up and died on me. I'm not sure what went wrong, everyone else seems to be happy. I think they just out grew their solo cup. Oddly enough my chocolate fatalii are doing just fine. Looks like I'm ending up with a few less plants this year

Damn, that sucks. Were they rootbound?

thirdcoasttx · May 15, 2014

Dude thats lame I wonder what happened

turbo · May 15, 2014

I don't think they were rootbound. They had a really dense root ball, but the ends of the roots didnt extend out to the edges of the container and no swirling. Just guessing here, but the root ball seemed to be blocking the flow of water. When I would water, I'd pour enough from the top that it would drain through the bottom of the container. All the fataliis were very saturated. I think its as simple as I just over watered them. I think next year I'm going to try bottom watering instead

juanitos · May 15, 2014

turbo said:
I don't think they were rootbound. They had a really dense root ball, but the ends of the roots didnt extend out to the edges of the container and no swirling. Just guessing here, but the root ball seemed to be blocking the flow of water. When I would water, I'd pour enough from the top that it would drain through the bottom of the container. All the fataliis were very saturated. I think its as simple as I just over watered them. I think next year I'm going to try bottom watering instead

that sucks. Yeah i just bottom watered the whole 1020 tray (pour like 1 inch of water) and the plants soak it up themselves / evaporates.

turbo · May 15, 2014

Well that sucked about as much as I thought it would, but got the bed filled

I used:
5 cubic feet of local compost
5 cubic feet of Oly Mountain Fish Compost
10 cubit feet top soil
6 cubic feet coco coir
3 cubic feet vermiculite

The thought if mixing all that up well was a bit daunting but I ended up using a tarp to mix batches, which made things WAY easier. Next up is to put some black plastic mulch film down and let the sun heat up the soil for a few days. Hopefully I'll be planting next week!

I've had some pepper losses lately, so I want have enough to fill out the new bed. I hope the local nurseries will have some good pepper starts.

juanitos · May 15, 2014

may want to add some lime for calcium / mag.. seems with the coir / other stuff it's pretty inert so shouldn't have to worry about the ph right?

turbo · May 15, 2014

OKGrowin said:
may want to add some lime for calcium / mag.. seems with the coir / other stuff it's pretty inert so shouldn't have to worry about the ph right?

Thanks for the tip! The ph should be ok. The only thing I'm slightly worried about is that some sources of coir have a fairly high salt content. I've used this brand before and haven't had problems, but we'll see.

bpwilly · May 16, 2014

Turbo, PM me, as I am sure I have a few plants I can give you. I always over plant each year, and then wonder what the heck I am going to do with all of them.

I am sure I can spare a Yellow Fatalli, and I know I have a spare MOA, or a reaper or a Bahamian Goat, or one of each. Let me know, as I am getting ready to plant out.

turbo · May 16, 2014

bpwilly said:
Turbo, PM me, as I am sure I have a few plants I can give you. I always over plant each year, and then wonder what the heck I am going to do with all of them.

I am sure I can spare a Yellow Fatalli, and I know I have a spare MOA, or a reaper or a Bahamian Goat, or one of each. Let me know, as I am getting ready to plant out.

Wow, thanks! That's such an awesome offer. I'll PM you to follow up. Thank you so much again. Seattle peppers rule!
Pepper Update:
Well, I think I messed up my germination timing this year. I started all my hots in January, and all my cayennes in March. Now my hots are all getting pretty big for their solo cups and I'm afraid they will get root bound, and all my cayennes are still pretty small. Next year I'll probably start everyone in February.

I examined my 4 fataliis that died and yea, I now think they were root bound. The roots were not swirling around the edge of the cup, but the root ball took up the entire cup. My biggest problem is that I don't have any room to plant them in bigger pots. I was hoping to go straight from solo cups to the ground.

I was hoping to wait another two weeks before plant out, but I don't think I should. We're supposed to get rain over the next 3 days, and then I'll most likely be planting early next week.

turbo · May 19, 2014

Pepper People are Awesome:
I know that phrase is kicked around here often, but its just true. I recently mentioned in my glog that I lost all of my Fatalii plants. Not a day later I got a very generous offer from bpwilly to help me out in replenishing some of my lost plants. We met up yesterday and he surprised me with an amazing collection of 7 different varieties (shown below):

Big Sun Habanero
Reaper (yes...I'm scared!)
7 Pot Jonah
MOA Scotch Bonnet
Trinidad Scotch Bonnet
Lemon Drop
Yellow Fatalii

Yes, pepper people are indeed awesome.

Hardening Off:
I've been getting my plants ready for planting day. They are still looking pretty good, though I'm sure their roots are pretty cramped in those tiny solo cups! My two lemon drops are crazy tall, and their stems are super thick. I wonder how big they'll get?

bpwilly · May 20, 2014

Turbo
I see what you mean about thinking their roots might be getting cramped. Those are some big plants for the cups. Nice thick stems from what I can see. Good luck with the new plants. You lucked out on having the rain miss you. We got a real dump here. I put a couple of 55 gallon drums under the rain spouts and each of them was filled in less than 30 minutes.

Good luck, I keep watching to see how your grow progresses.

turbo · May 20, 2014

Well, I'll be planting tomorrow morning. It'll be interesting to see what the root balls look like in the big guys. I'll definitely have to carefully work to loosen them up a bit

juanitos · May 20, 2014

turbo said:
Well, I'll be planting tomorrow morning. It'll be interesting to see what the root balls look like in the big guys. I'll definitely have to carefully work to loosen them up a bit

If they are really rootbound you might want to kinda pry them apart / loosen some of the roots up.... I didn't and the roots are only growing from the bottom on the couple i pulled.

turbo · May 20, 2014

Planting Day:
I planted 12 peppers in the raised bed this morning. The rest will go in root bags. My plan is to put one or two of each variety in each planting medium (bed vs bag) because I'm curious which will work better here in Seattle.

Like bpwilly predicted, my pepper's roots were really packed into their solo cups. Oddly enough the plants haven't seemed to mind. They are happy, healthy, and big. I did have a bit of work trying to loosen up their roots though. After getting them out of the cup, I lightly rolled the rootball between my hands loosening everything up. Then holding the plant stem I stuck a chopstick into the rootball and gently shook it back and fourth. I did this on each side, then moved up an inch, rinse, repeat. Once all the roots were hanging loose, I stuck the chopstick in towards the top and wiggled it down, trying to bisect the roots into two sides without tearing any of the roots. In the hole where I was gonna plant it I made a 3-4 inch mound of soil in the center. Then put the plant in so half the roots would be on one side of the mound, and the other half on the other side, with the mound supporting the center of the plant. Its a time consuming process, but I only had to plant 12 plants in the bed. Hopefully I won't have any issues.

Here is my crazy Lemon Drop, measuring in at close to 22 inches tall! (I can't seem to get tinypic to not auto rotate pictures that are not landscape dimensions)

Everyone all tucked away into their bed for the summer

The rest of my peppers will go into root bags on the other side of the yard

turbo · May 21, 2014

Got the rest of my hots and my cayennes planted in cloth root bags. I think that was more of a pain in the butt than making the raised bed. Now everybody is in dirt, all safe and sound. I can finally turn off my grow light for the season. Good night grow light, good night...

turbo · May 24, 2014

I think I have pepper plant empty nest depression. All the plants are out of the house and in the ground. After 5 months of checking on them a couple times a day in my office, doing this, doing that, little tweaks here and there, its just feels odd to leave them in the ground and sit back and let them do their plant thing without me.

We've got great weather for growing this next week. An hour or two of really light rain each day, followed by sunshine and mid-70's for the rest of the day. They have already put some good growth on in the 5 days they've been in the ground. I've even got my first baby pepper from my Lemon Drop (thanks bpwilly!)

turbo · Jun 5, 2014

All the hots and super hots seems to have settled into their new homes (pots and raised bed) pretty well, but the Indonesian and Charleston cayennes are looking pretty sad. Thankfully the Maule cayennes are doing really good.

I'm even starting to get some peppers. Here is the lemon drop I got from Bill. Its got about 10 peppers on it so far.

And a couple of Scotch Bonnet peppers already starting

This hot cherry pepper is the only pepper plant I got at a nursery this year. Its got about 4 peppers going so far.

This in my habanero from last year that I over wintered. It lost all its leaves about two months ago, but its stems stayed green so I kept it in the sun and watered. I noticed last week that it started to grow its leaves back. Its hard to see them but there are several dozen of little tiny leaf sprouts coming out of the joints. Hopefully he'll make a full recovery.

And this is my rocoto that I also over wintered this year. Its been growing like gang-busters. The one odd thing is that it has NEVER flowered in over a year and a half. Maybe someday...

OCD Chilehead · Jun 5, 2014

Nice looking plants. I can't believe the size of those plants in solo's. Congrats on getting everything planted. Now it's time to sit back and enjoy the progress.