Windchicken Grow 2012

windchicken · Oct 9, 2012

Eephus Man said:
Garden looking good, Gary! They dry great, as you know.

I'm finally getting some more fruit set with cooler temps and some rain/ferts, too. Hoping winter this year is as mild as last. I culled about 60% of my plants in September, but kept my favorites.

One of the GDVs that I planted out "wild" in my yard is acting like a local. No water through a brutal late August/early September, and it somehow bounced back with the rain and is setting fruit. It speaks volumes to how tough that strain is that I literally haven't watered it since about July. And rain here has been better than last year, but by no means frequent or regular. Tough variety!

Hope you're well, buddy. Life has been up front for me lately. Hoping to have a little more free time to hang 'round here this fall.

-E

Wow, that's amazing Eric! I guess maybe the Guampinha is sorta the baccatum version of the Piquin. What a cool plant!

Good luck with your grow, and I hope you get some time to relax in your garden real soon!

romy6 said:
Looking good G man. Love the last pic of the Mulato . How is the flavor on those bad boys ?

Thanks, Jamie! Mulato is real similar to Poblano, as nearly as I can tell. I haven't really gotten any pods large enough to pick yet...been too hot.

My Nagabrain plant is podding up real well since it began cooling off...

Spicegeist said:
How are the Bondas looking?

They're podding up nicely. Those plants are in my other garden at home. Pix very soon.

Justaguy said:
Looking good. Somehow it fell out of My Content and just stumbled back upon it. 6 pages of catch up were great. Hope the end treats you well.

Thanks for stopping by JG! I've been kind of out-of-the-loop for much of the summer, myself...

armac said:
Very nice........lots of pods

Thanks Rodney!

meatfreak said:
Very nice update, Greg. Glad to see your still doing okay I for one, love those Zapotec Jalapeño!

Thanks Stefan! I'm saving you some seeds from Brito's Peach...

I just realized my new iPhone can take panoramic photos...so naturally I had to try one of the garden. This is facing northeast, toward the bayou. The rows are 50 feet long:

This view is from the northwest side facing southeast:

armac · Oct 9, 2012

Good looking garden.....lot of work there.....and lot of wood chips.

windchicken · Oct 9, 2012

Thanks! If you only knew how many wood chips...The Youree Drive Lowe's should name the mulch aisle after me...

Maybe one day I'll get a wood chipper....

Sanarda · Oct 9, 2012

Great update and I love the new Iphone's ability to do panoramic. Plants look amazing. Looks like you have some harvesting to do my man :rofl:

armac · Oct 9, 2012

Put a few bags of hardwood chips in my new raised bed. Two or three years from now I may see some positive results.......hope to anyway.

Justaguy · Oct 9, 2012

Nice looking garden

windchicken · Oct 10, 2012

Sanarda said:
Great update and I love the new Iphone's ability to do panoramic. Plants look amazing. Looks like you have some harvesting to do my man

Thanks Pia! It will be a tedious chore harvesting all those little bird-type chiles. It's easy to see why so many growers favor the larger pod types...

By the way, if you have the iPhone 4S, an update to iOS 6 will give you the panorama functionality....

armac said:
Put a few bags of hardwood chips in my new raised bed. Two or three years from now I may see some positive results.......hope to anyway.

You should see some results a few weeks after adding the wood chips. When you see the weird bright-colored fungus growing on top of the mulch, the soil is already getting happy. Also, right away there will be lignin leaching out of of the tree bark into the soil. That's good..Be sure to watch your plants closely for signs of nitrogen deprivation during the first year, however. I've ended up using Liquid Miracle Grow to adjust nitrogen content, but fish ferts, manure, etc. should work just as well or even better...

Justaguy said:
Nice looking garden

Thanks Brian! It's not how I envisioned it back in January, but at least it's not completely choked with weeds and Bermuda grass any more....

RedtailForester · Oct 10, 2012

Looking good as usual Gary!!! After your season, do you till the woodchips into your soil?

windchicken · Oct 10, 2012

Thanks Dan!

That's a really good question--The Lemieux study (links below) demonstrated better results by not tilling the soil after the initial amendment. It seems that it is important to preserve the biological stratification in the soil. In my 12-plant "pilot" garden in the suburbs, I have been able to avoid tilling, as I can keep the ground weed-and-grass-free with a minimal amount of simple "hand pulling." In the large country garden shown in photos here, however, the Bermuda grass and weeds cannot be managed that way. The weeds and grass runners are just too pervasive, and they grow way too fast. That's the reason for all the nursery containers you see in the photos--For the first 4 months of the growing season I was trying to pull the weeds and grass runners by hand--Impossible!...Live and learn!

The bottom line is that I'm seeing amazing results in my small home beds, where I don't till, but just "top up" with a fresh mulch layer at plant-out time. (It's important to note that the original 2010 and 2011 amendments involved mixing quite a bit of hardwood chips with the very sticky brown clay, then topping with a thick mulch layer of chips.) The larger beds in the country, which were thoroughly tilled all the way down to the hardpan, are also showing very good results. So either way is good, but I believe it's better to not till, if you can avoid it.

The Lemieux study says that new woods chips should be mixed in every 4 years.

https://dl.dropbox.c...mieux_Paper.pdf

https://dl.dropbox.c..._2007_11_27.pdf

armac · Oct 10, 2012

I mixed mine in, when my plants get some size I will add a nice top layer.

meatfreak · Oct 10, 2012

windchicken said:
Thanks Stefan! I'm saving you some seeds from Brito's Peach...

That's great, Greg. We'll talk about that when the season has ended, would love some Jalapeno Zapotec as well. I got you some Aji Umba Yellow and Madame Jeanette seeds already

Sanarda · Oct 10, 2012

I do have the 4S. I have to figure out how to do it. Thanks!! I didnt know the update gave me that function

windchicken · Oct 10, 2012

armac said:
I mixed mine in, when my plants get some size I will add a nice top layer.

Perfect!

meatfreak said:
That's great, Greg. We'll talk about that when the season has ended, would love some Jalapeno Zapotec as well. I got you some Aji Umba Yellow and Madame Jeanette seeds already

Sounds good. You've got it!

Sanarda said:
I do have the 4S. I have to figure out how to do it. Thanks!! I didnt know the update gave me that function

With the camera app open, tap the "Options" button.

KiNGDeNNiZ · Oct 11, 2012

nice panoramic shot greg... wow... simply amazing... hope the grubs have been taken care of... as for me.. i have to put more layers as they are still there... perhaps thats why my dog keeps digging in that same area ...

PIC 1 · Oct 11, 2012

Gary, The panaramic shot is pretty amazing! Did you relocate the pots to that location, if not why didn't you just plant into the raised rows?

gnslngr · Oct 11, 2012

Very Nice Gary! My only issue with "no tilling"-is 4-6 down -it straight clay.Next will have me spreading things out a bit-will add chips to start, and amend with w/2 year old composted bagasse.Happy to let it sit undisturbed after that .....but otherwise the clay just seems to slowly and inevitably stunt the plants-obvious exception being the ones I dig out a 5- 8 gallon hole and totally amend . I do try to add some clay/heavy top soil when I "cap" or top up simply because helps keep everything in place, and helps retain moisture.Those are some great shots...I have a severe case of plot envy now! :rofl:

You mention update for the panoramic function?You mean iOS6?

oh- the in ground pots work fairly well for me-those are my "extras", buried 3-4 inches in a hole filled with good stuff, capped with the clay-they love it.

windchicken · Oct 11, 2012

KiNGDeNNiZ said:
nice panoramic shot greg... wow... simply amazing... hope the grubs have been taken care of... as for me.. i have to put more layers as they are still there... perhaps thats why my dog keeps digging in that same area ...

Thanks Dude! I don't know what it is about these grubs...They just keep coming, like those damn Cylons...My 4 tomatillo vines died, and when I pulled them up I found an army of the little &$&@#s!

PIC 1 said:
Gary, The panaramic shot is pretty amazing! Did you relocate the pots to that location, if not why didn't you just plant into the raised rows?

Thanks Greg! That's another excellent question. I just got so tired of "grooming" that soil to get out all the Bermuda runners that I threw in the towel and began potting-up with bagged soil and the large nursery containers. There is also a metric buttload of grubs in the native ground, and I didn't want to sacrifice my tender little babies to those creepy damn things. Besides that, I don't think there are enough days before the first freeze for your Congo plants to set ripe fruit, so they will be overwintered...Those plants, as well as my Peppermania Congos and Cachuchas, spent most of the summer fighting off the BLS (my fault), and never really developed into full-sized, productive bushes...

gnslngr said:
Very Nice Gary! My only issue with "no tilling"-is 4-6 down -it straight clay.Next will have me spreading things out a bit-will add chips to start, and amend with w/2 year old composted bagasse.Happy to let it sit undisturbed after that .....but otherwise the clay just seems to slowly and inevitably stunt the plants-obvious exception being the ones I dig out a 5- 8 gallon hole and totally amend . I do try to add some clay/heavy top soil when I "cap" or top up simply because helps keep everything in place, and helps retain moisture.Those are some great shots...I have a severe case of plot envy now!
You mention update for the panoramic function?You mean iOS6?

oh- the in ground pots work fairly well for me-those are my "extras", buried 3-4 inches in a hole filled with good stuff, capped with the clay-they love it.

You are so right about the clay--I am so jealous of the THP growers that can just set their plants down in the ground and grow big, beautiful chile bushes. Not here, where we also have a very dense, impermeable clay substrate or "hardpan." For the last couple of years I have built my beds or "raised rows" high enough to accommodate a substantial root ball well above the substrate, so I know the soil will drain. That also allows me to mix a healthy amount of hardwood chips into the clay to give the soil some permeability.

I am curious to see how your bagasse compost works out...God knows there's plenty of it for free where you live! It could be a new agri-cycle for South Louisiana!

Yes, if you have the iPhone 4S or 5 running iOS 6 your phone will do the panorama shots. Just tap the "Options" button with the camera app open.

The plants are doing surprisingly well in the containers. They take quite a bit more watering, but they don't seem to be suffering otherwise...

windchicken · Oct 13, 2012

More panarama photos...my small garden in the 'burbs. Pod porn later, when the sun comes out.

Trinidad Scorpion. These 3 plants are 6 feet tall, in 16" dia. containers. Hurricane Isaac blew them over half a dozen times. The containers were ballasted with large paving blocks:

Yellow 7 in the front (8 plants, seeds from Romy6), then a Bonda ma Jacques row in the ground behind (5 plants, seeds from Spicegeist). Behind them there is another row of 6 Aji Umba bushes, obscured by the Bonda plants:

A couple of overwintered C. baccatum from 2011. Guampinha de Veado on the left, Birgit's Locoto on the right:

Aji Umba, 6 plants:

The first 5 plants in this row are XL Caribbean Red Hab, seeds from THP member Tim S. The last 2 are a Congo Trinidad x Brito's Mystery Peach cross, seeds from Cmpman1974. These plants are in 2.5 gal. containers:

armac · Oct 13, 2012

Where is Charlie?

windchicken · Oct 13, 2012

That's him with Tippi, between the Guampinha and the Birgit's, gnawing on an old blanket...total puppy at 70 lbs.