Windchicken 2013

stc3248 · Mar 14, 2013

Yo wizzle yo pizzles are off the hizzle fo shizzle!

feeltheburrrn · Mar 14, 2013

Plants look awesome Gary. Looks like your season is going great so far. Keep up the good work!

Sanarda · Mar 14, 2013

stc3248 said:
Yo wizzle yo pizzles are off the hizzle fo shizzle!

^^^^ My brotha from anotha motha. Aahhhhhhhaa. Straight comedy. Plants look wonderful and yes they are itching to get outside. What's the day of your last frost (supposedly)? That plant out day is a great day indeed.

Spicegeist · Mar 14, 2013

windchicken said:
Chilhuacle Rojo:

Green and sunny, looking good...

armac · Mar 14, 2013

I have one Zapotec that is podding, cannot wait to try one of my own...thanks Gary

Bigoledude · Mar 14, 2013

Hey Gary.

Nice to find you have a grow-log.

If I could coax that kind of production from OWd plants that I see in your plants, I'd be happy as a Cajun neck-deep in crawfish!

Ray

Pr0digal_son · Mar 14, 2013

Your plants are looking great,even better than your penmanship! I'm a sucker for green leaves and neat writing! Looks like you had no problems adjusting to growing under lights. How are the overwinters?

windchicken · Mar 14, 2013

stc3248 said:
Yo wizzle yo pizzles are off the hizzle fo shizzle!

Wow, Shane, you and Jamie made my day!

feeltheburrrn said:
Plants look awesome Gary. Looks like your season is going great so far. Keep up the good work!

Thanks!

Sanarda said:
^^^^ My brotha from anotha motha. Aahhhhhhhaa. Straight comedy. Plants look wonderful and yes they are itching to get outside. What's the day of your last frost (supposedly)? That plant out day is a great day indeed.

Thanks Pia! Those two guys do keep it interesting around here...

Normally in North Louisiana we plant out after April 1, but the adventurous sometimes plant about now, in mid-March. It's a gamble, but the prospect of a big harvest in June and July is real tempting....

Spicegeist said:
Green and sunny, looking good...

Thanks, Charles! Today was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. We don't get many like that...

armac said:
I have one Zapotec that is podding, cannot wait to try one of my own...thanks Gary

Wow, those Z-Jals (I love that--thanks Jamie!) are so crazy fast-growing plants!

Bigoledude said:
Hey Gary.

Nice to find you have a grow-log.

If I could coax that kind of production from OWd plants that I see in your plants, I'd be happy as a Cajun neck-deep in crawfish!

Ray

Hi Ray, thanks! I want to see both of those things!

Pr0digal_son said:
Your plants are looking great,even better than your penmanship! I'm a sucker for green leaves and neat writing! Looks like you had no problems adjusting to growing under lights. How are the overwinters?

Hi John! Thanks! I do really dig the lights. The overwinters are beginning to take off again, with the spring weather. Lots of new growth.

meatfreak · Mar 15, 2013

now look at those monsters. Looks like your new light setup is paying off big time, Gary! Deep green color on the leaves and no stretching of the plants, perfect job.

windchicken · Mar 15, 2013

Thanks Stefan! I'm loving being a chile grower more than ever now that I've finally discovered grow lights and heat mats. Who would have thought they could make such a difference? One would think some of the other THP guys would have suggested it to me before now..... :cool:

Quick update on a couple of overwinters here at work, as well as some more new babies that graduated from the light stand at home to the window ledge in the country...

New growth and flowers on Bahamian Goat Pepper, JungleRain version, seeds from capsidadburn. These are a couple of insanely robust plants from my 2012 grow. Some of you reading this probably received seeds from this plant last fall. I believe Idosimon is doing a hydro-grow, screen-of-green experiment from Goat seeds I sent him from this plant:

Congo Trinidad, PIC1 version. Greg makes an awesome sauce from this pepper. Last year I never got around to setting in the ground these 4 plants, so they spent the winter in my office...Love me some Congo pepper!

:

Ashe County Pimento, seeds from kentishman. I love growing annuums, and my Dad loves sweet peppers:

Kitchen Pepper Peach, seeds from Datil. These squash-style annuums should be interesting:

Pepper-Guru · Mar 15, 2013

Great growth here man! Just at 6 weeks from sowing seed right? Looking real healthy. Like your seed starting station as well. Here's to a great season ahead :cheers:

idosimon · Mar 16, 2013

Your plants are looking good! I topped my BGP a couple of days ago, so I'll try getting pictures up today.

Bigoledude · Mar 17, 2013

Do you have the most success from plants that get full all-day sun? I'm wondering if I need to set up some shade cloth or situate the plants in places around the house where I could expect some success.

If I must use shade cloth, I'm gonna have to secure it well enough to withstand some serious winds.

windchicken · Mar 17, 2013

Pepper-Guru said:
Great growth here man! Just at 6 weeks from sowing seed right? Looking real healthy. Like your seed starting station as well. Here's to a great season ahead

Thanks Rich! That's right, 6 weeks, and my germination rate is orders of magnitude better than I've ever seen...I'm a grow-lights-and-heat-mat advocate now, an obnoxious evangelist testifying to anyone who will listen...

idosimon said:
Your plants are looking good! I topped my BGP a couple of days ago, so I'll try getting pictures up today.

Thanks Ido! Goat never ceases to amaze me with its vigor.....

Bigoledude said:
Do you have the most success from plants that get full all-day sun? I'm wondering if I need to set up some shade cloth or situate the plants in places around the house where I could expect some success.

If I must use shade cloth, I'm gonna have to secure it well enough to withstand some serious winds.

Hi Ray! You definitely need shade cloth or the shade of a tree or bush when you first set your tender little babies outside. They need a week or two with only early morning and evening sun to grow the extra layers of UV protection in their leaves. After that ease them out into full sun. As long as the temps are below 95 or so, most varieties seem to like as many hours of full sun as they can get. In the extreme heat of July, August, and September some varieties may like some shade, but I normally just let them tough it out. Many annuums and baccatums will sag in the heat of the day, but will recover in the evening. Almost nothing produces above 95 degrees, whether in full sun or shade. I just keep them alive and healthy until it cools off in October. The 3 months of babysitting will be repaid many times over...

Good luck with your grow!

Bigoledude · Mar 19, 2013

Yeah, I kinda knew about giving the young plants a little time to adjust to full sun. But, I figured with the production you guys get, that y'all must not be experiencing the mid-summer-meltdown that I do.

I'm pretty sure I read where you had a California Wonder grow tall and produce great numbers for you. Have you had any other sweet-type peppers give you good production? I just haven't been able to get bell-type peppers to succeed for me like we did years ago?

windchicken · Mar 19, 2013

Hey Ray, sorry about preaching to you about something you already knew perfectly well...I know that experience, and it ain't fun!

We do get the nuclear meltdown here, from early July through the end of September...and almost nothing produces...The exceptions are Tabasco, which seems to keep pumping out the pods no matter how hot it gets, and Habanero and Scotch Bonnet, which slow down some, but keep producing at a lower rate. The annuums pretty much shut down completely or give only a few tiny waste pods, except for Thai Chile, which behaves much like Tabasco...

You're right, I did get excellent production from Cal Wonder last season...Small cull pods during the bad heat, after that lots of huge pods on plants 4-5 feet tall. Apparently some of that can be attributed to its being the California Wonder 300 variety, which is supposed to give way more fruit, but also, now that I think about it, those plants were protected from the late afternoon sun by the shade of our house.

As for other sweets, I've only grown Trinidad Perfume, a C. chinense. It did very well, a robust plant and a great producer. This year I have a couple of new sweets, both C. annuum: Doux Tres Long, from France, and Ashe County Pimento, from North Carolina. I've grown other French peppers in the past, namely Piment d'Espelette, and they suffered mightily in the Louisiana heat. So the Doux Tres Long is a gamble, but they looked interesting...I've been wanting to grow a Pimento for a while, so when kentishman offered me Ashe County seeds I jumped on it...

Sorry about being so wordy...If you're still sowing, look for California Wonder 300. I believe it's a Ferry-Morse variety. And it is probably good to protect the plants from afternoon sun....

Datil · Mar 19, 2013

Amazing growth Gary!
You will sample some KPP in no time!
We've got the (hopefully) last snow this weekend, things should speed up a bit now cause my seedlings are struggling in a cold garage.

A couple of Thai Garden Birdseed from you are doing great, hardy genetics for sure.
Still no luck with Birgits atm :rolleyes:

Take care

Datil

windchicken · Mar 19, 2013

Thanks Fabrizio! The KPPs are loving NW Louisiana, itching to get outside in the big boy sun...

Thai Birdseed is a stout fellow for sure. If I could only grow one pepper, that would probably be the one...Sorry about the Birgit's...I used the very same seeds for the contest grow, and got 100% germination. Don't give up on them...It's a great pepper, and a real fun plant to grow.

Wow, snow, what a concept. I'm anxious to see your babies get out of that garage into the full sun!

I've been potting-up for the last several days, and have just about gotten everything out of the germ trays into 5" Jiffy pots. The problem now is that I'm out of space, and it's still too soon to move stuff outside, so beyond the plants you see here in my light stand, all the south-facing windows in my house and my office are loaded with plants...

The horking obnoxiously fast-growing plants on the lower left are Jamie's NagaBrains. I've never seen anything like them....100% germination, growth rate to rival the Jalapeños, and the largest leaves of any of my plants. To the right of them are the Yellow 7s, then Charles' Bonda x Yellow 7 cross, then Fade's Bahamian Goats. The top shelf is annuums and baccatums, except for the rightmost tray, which are the MOA Scotch Bonnets:

The next pix are for the THP skate crew. (We really have to get together and session, guys. I think Mike still has a halfpipe he's not telling us about...)

My original quarter pipe, a.k.a. the Burtz ramp (my old homebrew brand), circa 1979. This photo was taken from the kitchen door of my college apartment, in Monroe, Louisiana:

After graduation we rented a real house and brought the Burtz ramp with us, where it morphed into this "fish hook" ramp. Later on we added more flat, cut down the vert side from 8 feet to 6 feet, and added a platform with 2" steel pipe coping:

This is the halfpipe we built at the home of Robert Draper's mom, in 1983. I copied the design from a Bones Brigade newsletter. The "transitions" used a 9-foot radius, and there was 1 foot of vert. The coping was 2" PVC pipe. I could barely do a frontside grind on this ramp, but the other guys blazed here....I was standing on the roof of the house when I snapped this photo. That's my brother standing on the platform. (Note the Spanish Moss in the tree behind him.)

This is as rad as I ever got, Burtz ramp, Christmas Day 1984:

David "Z", Indy Air, Draper ramp, 1983. Dave was a Powell-Peralta sponsored am. Mellow guy, except when he was skating: always head-first like this:

Damian, Invert, Burtz ramp, 1985. Damian craved skating more intensely than anyone I've ever known, and is my true brother from another mother. This pik was snapped the night of the "Last Burtz Jam." The next day we cut it into pieces and moved it to a neighborhood kid's back yard....Little did I know when I snapped this shot: That night would mark the end of an era, and life would soon never be the same again....

capsidadburn · Mar 19, 2013

Gary, Awesome looking plants and setup! I'm sure you'll have another monster season. I can see the mailman carrying loads of flat rate boxes coming from your zipcode!

Great looking ramps, the fish hook looks like fun. Beautiful "9 foot" transistions that probably had many hours of fun on them. It is definately sad to see it go when it goes.

Great pics of you and your buds laying down sweet memory's.

I did help my son build a quarter pipe in January but it's a little small for skating. My son is in science olympiad and recently took 2nd place in Houston for his gravity vehicle. He has another regional competition this weekend in San Antonio. I'll post some pics in my glog.

Skate Jam THP 2013
Later Mike

PIC 1 · Mar 19, 2013

It's like watching a "yo-yo".......I keep scrolling to the plants back to the skates, don't know which I like better they're both too cool !

Plants look crazy!. Big ole fat leaves.........you could roll a cigar with those. Nice indoor start from an outdoor master.

Still have a Congo kicking? I've got both Congo varieties (mine/yours) going. The plants are small yet but the leaves are filling out,

Your plants grow lush and are always full of pods. I'm curious to see how the MoA's produce with the long growing season down in LA...