TXCG's 2013 grow log - Big harvest (9/7)

Chewi · Feb 28, 2013

Nice list! I see that Texas Chiltepin is from Wimberly. Should be perfect down there. Yeah, got to have a Fatalli and a Lemon Drop in the raised bed! Do you have a specific design for your container garden?

millworkman · Feb 28, 2013

Welcome back tx and good looking list. No hydro going?

You need any seeds just let me know man.

queequeg152 · Feb 28, 2013

i hear snap peas get beastly huge. looking forward to seeing that.

TXCG · Feb 28, 2013

Chewi said:
Nice list! I see that Texas Chiltepin is from Wimberly. Should be perfect down there. Yeah, got to have a Fatalli and a Lemon Drop in the raised bed! Do you have a specific design for your container garden?

I had a Texas chiletepin/pequin in the past and it always did well for me, lived for about 4 years in a half-barrel. They're perennial around these parts, come back every year like clockwork. I occasionally even run into them growing in the wild while out playing disc golf. Chiletepins are my favorite pepper, perfect heat & flavor just a pain to pick enough to do anything with.

Container garden is going to mostly consist of 5 gallon buckets scattered around the yard to make best use of sunlight since the yard is mostly shaded. I'm going to have a few larger containers against a fence w/ a trellis for growing vine crops

millworkman said:
Welcome back tx and good looking list. No hydro going?

You need any seeds just let me know man.

Unfortunately won't have any room for the hydro system for another few months & it's killing me. I'm half tempted to rig up a simple windowsill DWC system & throw it in the window at work to grow some lettuce or herbs.

I sure appreciate the offer & I keep that in mind here in a few months once I'm able to break that thing back out. Can't wait to give hydro another go now that I've more or less got the kinks worked out.

I do have an experiment I'm running this summer that I've been wanting to try for years. In 2006 I worked for a landscaping company and it was my job to mow all the vacant soldier housing on Ft. Hood so I was in and out of a million backyards all summer. Over the course of the summer I found 4 volunteer melon plants, 3 cantaloupe & 1 watermelon, all bearing fruit & all had one thing in common: they were growing where the air conditioner runs off. Here it gets so damn hot & dry in the summer it's rare to find anything green that someone isn't intentionally keeping that way. So I'll be planting a mound of cantaloupes using A/C run-off as irrigation for science. Might as well put all that energy spent to good use.

TXCG · Mar 2, 2013

Did a bit of work on the raised bed today. Got a friend to come help me add another layer of cinderblocks & work in a half cubic yard of compost.

Before:

After:

Also went ahead and picked up 2 bales of promix & 4 cu ft of chunky perlite so all that's left is to buy pots & nutrients and wait another two weeks:

Sanarda · Mar 2, 2013

Very nice. It must be so terrific to be able to plant out in early March. Do you get a winter in Austin? Sorry if thats a dumb question.

TXCG · Mar 2, 2013

Sanarda said:
Very nice. It must be so terrific to be able to plant out in early March. Do you get a winter in Austin? Sorry if thats a dumb question.

Haha we don't get much of a winter but we sure do get one hell of a summer. It's usually only consistently cold from middle of December to the end of February although we'll have occasional days of 70 & 80 throughout winter. It's rare for us to get a freeze good enough to have ice on the ground & it snows very infrequently, maybe every 5-10 years.

According to Dave's Garden
Each winter, on average, your risk of frost is from December 6 through February 17.
Almost certainly, however, you will receive frost from December 28 through January 23.
You are almost guaranteed that you will not get frost from March 15 through November 14.
Your frost-free growing season is around 292 days.

armac · Mar 2, 2013

been planted here for 24 months.....last time we had a frost.

TXCG · Apr 10, 2013

So my plants from Cross Country Nurseries came in on Friday April 5th. I've been hardening them off ever since & was just getting ready to plant them out today when the weather decided to go to shit on me. Got home last night at midnight & it was 73 degrees, wake up this morning at 7:30 am & its 45 degrees...

So plants are back inside for at least today, hopefully I'll get to set them out tomorrow for a bit but looks like planting has been postponed til Saturday. I'm trying to limit their time inside so I don't have to harden them off all over again. I think I might just bring them to work with me the next few days so I don't have to set them out while it's still cold before I leave for work.

So far most of the plants are looking pretty healthy with only some minor leaf damage sustained during shipping.

Going left to right:
Front row: Fatalii Red (2), Fatalii (2), Texas Chiletepin (2)
Middle row: Trinidad Seasoning (2), Trinidad Perfume (2), Datil Sweet (2)
Back row: Trinidad Scorpion (1), Cumari (1), Lemon Drop (2), Trinidad Scorpion Moruga (2)

The two I'm most excited about. One of em has a half-whiskey barrel with its name on it, the other might end up in the community garden.

TXCG · Apr 11, 2013

Brought my box of plants to work today to take advantage of the sun & finish hardening them off. Looks like 17 of the 18 are good to go, just got one moruga scorpion that can't hang. Also finally got a chance to feed them a light dose of kelp fertilizer. They came in last Friday and still hadn't needed any water until today.

Can't decide if I want to go ahead and plant the ones that are going in the garden on Friday or wait until Monday so I don't have to wait 2 days to check on them. Probably going to wait til Monday, otherwise I'll be anxious all weekend. All the other plants are getting bumped up to 6" containers for the time being.

After 4 hrs of direct sunlight, all 17 of these are looking happy enough.

After merciless taunting from the rest of the plants the moruga decided to go hide in a box with the kelp fertilizer until he can get his shit together.

grantmichaels · Apr 11, 2013

nice ... i never thought to use cinder blocks and that's definitely an option for my full sun (otherwise useless) backyard ...

i'll be watchin' your thread!

Pr0digal_son · Apr 12, 2013

Cool raised bed,good luck with the season.

TXCG · Apr 17, 2013

Planted 3 types of green beans on Friday 4/12. 2 bush beans & 1 pole bean

Planted lemon drop, red fatalii, trinidad seasoning & moruga scorpion in my raised bed on Monday 4/15. I was thinking about planting more but since it looks like we might have to relocate our garden next year I'm keeping most of my plants in containers this year.

The rest of my pepper plants got potted up into 1 gallon containers of PromixBX on Saturday 4/13.

TXCG · Apr 21, 2013

Wednesday 4/17:

Rattlesnake pole beans were the 1st out of the ground:

Thursday 4/18

Purple Queen (left side) wasn't far behind & the Burpees Stringless (right side) is beginning to pop too.

Friday 4/19:

Pretty much everything has sprouted at this point. Damn close to 100% germination on these beans.

Saturday 4/20:

Built a trellis for my pole beans out of cattle panel fencing from tractor supply co. $19 for a 50" x 16' section which I cut in half & another $5 for two T-posts. Trellis stands roughly 7.5' above soil level.

Finally got my first snap pea sprout this Saturday. Peas aren't doing too hot this year & I think it's due to the crappy scott's potting soil. Saving all the Promix for the important plants, peas can just suck it up and deal with it.

Red Fatalii, Fatalii and Lemon Drop:

Trinidad Perfume, 2 Sweet Datils & a chiletepin

Chiletepin, Fatalii, Trinidad Scorpion & Trinidad Seasoning

The 3 slightly retarded plants: Cumari, Trinidad Seasoning & Trinidad Scorpion Moruga. Cumari & Trinidad seasoning were damaged a bit in transportation and the moruga just took about twice as long as every other plant to finish hardening off.

TXCG · May 3, 2013

So, this is a new one to me. Just one more reason to hate wasps. It managed to chew that leaf clean off before I smashed its skull in.

TXCG · May 28, 2013

So I been kinda slacking on the updates but so far everything is progressing well. Only issue so far this year is aphids but I'm all over them with safer soap. Finally got some flowers on my beans late last week & should have a few to harvest by the end of this week.

My raised bed garden has been enjoying the unseasonably cool & wet year, I've only had to water it twice since I planted out in early April.

Front row (left to right): Trinidad Perfume, Unknown annum (rescued from an abandoned 6-pack of transplants), Fatalii Red
Back row: Lemon Drop, a couple basil volunteers & Moruga Scorpion

Both my bush bean varieties have really taken off & filled out and my pole beans are starting to climb. Still need to coax a few of the pole beans over toward the trellis, can't decide if I want to thin the pole beans any. I'm planning on thinning the bush beans at all but this should make harvest quite a chore. At least one of the varieties is purple & easy to see.

I have a feeling I'm about to have more beans than I know what to do with.

I really need to snag a few better pics of my container garden, my tomatoes & peppers have really taken off.

The superchilis I dug out of my garden & gave to a friend already have a ripe pod....Pretty impressive considering it doesn't even really have leaves.

Can I get a bump so I have room for container garden update pics this evening?

millworkman · May 28, 2013

BUMP WOOT! Good update TX!

TXCG · May 29, 2013

First up are my 4 plants in quarantine that are having problems with aphids. I've been spraying them every day or so with safer soap & almost have them completely gone but they're staying in the front yard until the war is won.

left to right: Sweet Datil, Trindad Scorpion, Trinidad Seasoning & Fatalii. The datil & the trinidad seasoning are both much worse for the wear than the scoprion & the fatalii. Overall the plants are fine just ugly leaves but they haven't slowed down one bit.

Sweet Datil closeup. Lots of bug damage & some damage from where I was squishing the aphids against the leaves. Ugly as crap but keeps on growing.

Trinidad Scorpion showing much less bug damage than the Datil:

The unaffected plants are all looking really good. Some do have minor leaf damage from when I was fighting thrips early in the season but I won that battle thanks to Spinosad. Spinosad is the first thing I've ever found to be really effective at controlling thrips.

Left to right: Fatalii Red, Fatalii, Moruga Scorpion, Sweet Datil, Cumari, Trinidad Perfume (in back), Texas Chiletepin, Lemon Drop & another Texas Chiletepin in a small pot.

The Lemon Drop got topped by a wicked hail storm we had a few weeks ago. It had already branched twice at the top & had its first flower going when the whole top got broken just below that first split. It has recovered quite well & is nice and bushy thanks to a bit of pruning from mother nature.

After transplanting to the 5 gallon bucket my chiletepin seemed to stall for a couple weeks longer than the other transplants but recently has started taking off. I'm super excited to have more chiletepins growing, they are by far my favorite pepper & I can't wait for it to start fruiting.

I'm also quite excited to finally have a viable Cumari plant after several years of failed attempts. Cumari was originally one of the varieties I had selected for my hydro system back in 2009 & I've tried to grow them 3 separate times in the past without ever getting a viable plant from seed. This one was a bit stunted due to stress during while hardening off but it's going pretty good now, just much shorter than the rest of my plants.

All 3 of my Magic Mountain Hybrid tomatoes are doing great. They didn't skip a beat after being transplanted & would be about a foot taller if I hadn't buried them almost to the bottom of the 5 gal buckets.

Tomatoes are setting & getting close to their full size. These are "campari" type tomatoes & are supposed to be similar to the ones they sell in clusters still attached to the vine at the grocery store. They are indeterminate but only supposed to reach 45-50".....we'll see about that. I've learned my lesson about how damn big indeterminate varieties can get so I have some 10' stakes on standby.

All in all life is good here in the Hill Country.

TXCG · May 30, 2013

A little bit of flower porn courtesy of my Fatalii Red.

Chiletepin is staring to flower! So stoked

First set fruit of the season, 2 Fatalii Reds: