Year end review 2019

juanitos

juanitos

Lets all reflect on our past year of growing.
 
We can all learn a little bit from each other so we don't make the same mistakes.
Also we can learn which peppers were great so we can grow them too
 
1. What were the best peppers you grew this year? why?
 
2. What challenges did you have this year? did you solve them? how?
 
3. What changes will you make for next year?
 
1. What were the best peppers you grew this year? why?
 
Yellow brainstrain are large productive and have heat that is somewhat bearable, they were great
Biquinho yellow and red both grew great, tons of pods that were great for snacking while in the garden
Jays ghost scorpion peach/red were great producers and i love the shape
 
 
2. What challenges did you have this year? did you solve them? how?
did not check my watering often enough / went on vacation and watering was broken. it appears my fert injector is not working great even after replacing all the seals.
also another cheap timer broke, maybe i should get a professional grade.
 
puckerbutt reaper seeds were not 100% even though he's the creator they were still unstable... lol wtf. i guess i need to just stabilize it myself or maybe it's just common with this pepper idk.
 
some of the ghost and brainstrain seeds were not good pheno either. uhg lol
 
i need more land (ongoing issue for years) so i can grow multiple accessions of varieties so i can find best phenotypes and isolate them for seed saving.
i talked with usda about getting farm loan, waiting for a good property to come on market.
 
the fabric grow bags did not give amazing results over coco slabs, i guess that was just a big waste of resources.
 
3. What changes will you make for next year?
 
with looking for new land / maybe moving house soon as well i don't think i'll have a stable 2020 season. 
i'm sure i'll get some plants started but then it's a question of where i'm going to keep them. 
 
getting workable land / fields changes my grow somewhat, i would probably do in ground rows with black plastic mulch instead of hydroponic slabs.
 
Nice idea!
 
1. What were the best peppers you grew this year? why?
White ghost - they were the most productive and pest free of all my peppers. They taste great and also have a neutral colour allowing better control of the colour of the sauces I made with them.
 
Not a specific pepper but my grow bag soil plants were literally set and forget. Once I had them planted out and on a timed watering system, I didn't touch them other than to pull off the occasional horn worm or to throw some slow release fertilizer every couple months. Much less effort than hydro and reliable production.
 
2. What challenges did you have this year? did you solve them? how?
Two main challenges - the first was going on vacation at the height of summer and being unable to tend to my hydro setup. I pretty much lost all my hydro plants - though some recovered, they were a shadow of their peak. Solution: no summer vacation next year :)
 
Second challenge is an abundance of little snails in my soil grow. I found that although they didn't seem to eat the peppers, they would sit on them and leave a scar which would eventually make them rot in that spot. What I noticed is that they only sat on the mild peppers - the bell, bulgarian carrot and Jalapeno. Next year I'm only growing hot and super hot in soil.
 
3. What changes will you make for next year?
Next year I may do more soil plants - I have the room, just need more dirt. They didn't grow as large as I thought they would in 10 gallon bags. But they really were easy so not much effort to add more.
 
I'm also not going to do any more Aji Limo - had far too many this year. I'm going to try and focus on hot/super hot varieties only. Lots of ghost peppers!
 
1. What were the best peppers you grew this year? why?
Im still waiting on two varieties to ripen, so this could change, but I've been really impressed with the Sugar Rush Peach. First baccatum to not taste soapy for me, also the plant is extremely productive. Very positive about this pepper. 
 
2. What challenges did you have this year? did you solve them? how?
Been doing hydro for 2-3 years now, I finally got the hang of it, with everything, except havesting, running automatic. The plants are thriving. Earlier in the year I did have trouble with pests, but I solved them with some (properly unhealthy) insect spray after a long time with no results using neem oil.
 
3. What changes will you make for next year?
I've grown quite fond of the milder varieties, this year being the first without a superhot. I plan to keep it that way, maybe getting some wild peppers and crosses up, but I haven't made that decision yet. I probably want to try out fermentation again. 
 
1. What were the best peppers you grew this year? why?

I would say El Scorponero Peach, California Reaper, Carbonero, BOC and Bolsa de Dulce were the best peppers of this year. They had such great taste - especially the superhots.

Carbonero was the best looking plant that I had by far and it's a must-grow next year.

Bolsa is an awesome pepper because of how easy it is to grow, the flavour, and the heat is relatively mild even when compared to a Cayenne pepper.

Rocoto Cristobal Colombo was a nice addition this year. Wife has commanded me to grow it again because of the overall experience with heat, taste and juicyness of the pods.

I dislike the soapy taste of my overwintered Aji Pineapple grown in soil. But the plant was producing like I paid it to do so and therefor it was placed in a kratky wicking-style setup outside. This time around the pods grew huge and they tasted SO much better when grown that way.



2. What challenges did you have this year? did you solve them? how?

Bad weather for most of the season nearly killed off my plants. They were all outside. A few plants were placed out of harms way and they did great - but Sadly there werent enough space for all of them.
Way too much Rain and terrible winds. Late in the season we had more sunny days and that helped a lot.
It seemed that plants in cloth fabric pots did a while lot better than those in plastic pots did, so I got some extra cloth pots for the coming season.



3. What changes will you make for next year?

My goal is to get a polytunnel for the plants to stay in. Maybe a cheap dripsystem as well.
I will test out some kratky diy systems - and finally I will definitely hook up my Autopots to a tank. I prefered watering manually in the trays because of the rain, but really it's just a waste of time. :p
 
1. What were the best peppers you grew this year? why?
 
125 plants, ~50 varieties, raised beds
 
Stuffing Scotch Bonnet:  Productive and delicious
Ms. Junie:  Roasted, peeled and frozen.  Great variety.  
Faria Bonnet:  Made a great sauce and were very productive
Red Bhut:  Almost over run with these.  Most dried and made into powder.
Jamaican Hot Chocolate:  Great all around pepper and productive.
 
2. What challenges did you have this year? did you solve them? how?
 
Most of challenges were weather related. 
Cold and wet spring slowed growth for over 1 month.
Huge summer storms flattened and broke plants.  
Normal number of off phenos and mislabels.
 
3. What changes will you make for next year?
 
Moving from 8 plants to 6 plants per 4'X8' bed for improved airflow and ease of harvest.  
 
Great idea for a post. I wanna say, congrats on the prospect of getting more land--i am a satisfied small-scale repeat customer of yours and i love your business practices, my only possible complaint is you could stand to offer more variety and more land could help you do exactly that!

I also want to comment on your observation about PuckerButt's Reaper. It's a weird paradox or some shit that one of the most commercially successful varieties is so flawed. I hope you'll dump the Reapers, grow Primos instead. Or, better yet, maybe work on re-setting and improving Red Brainstrains or even maybe 7SR? A lot of heat potential there, and thru 2019, Brainstrain is so the most powerful chile I've eaten to date... And getting quality Brains send to be getting harder as time goes on.

Here are my somewhat pointless responses to your excellent questions...


1. What were the best peppers you grew this year? why?
 
All of my best peppers in 2019 were pretty much the same best peppers i grew in 2018 & 2017. None of the "new-to-me" varieties really blew my mind, although many of them impressed me, for sure. My old favorites remain Red Brainstrains, TFM Bonnets, Zapotec Jalapeños (to be fair, i didn't grow these in 2017), Naga Morich, JPGS. Standout new favorites include Aji Jobito and Big Black Mama, but neither of those send me like my top favorites.

I will say that this was the first year that my Primos kicked ass. I got many pods, all very hot, very consistent, very deliciously hot. My only gripe, which i also had last year, is that the pods were pretty tiny. It's tough to abide by Lilliputian Primos growing next to big Jonahs, Barrackpores, and Brainstrains....

2. What challenges did you have this year? did you solve them? how?

My biggest challenges, tbh, were unintentional crosses (from seeds i knew to be OP, so I'm not mad, but i will likely grow more from iso stock in 2020), finding homes for my ridiculous surplus of culls (which i mostly solved, i guess... Gave most away but i know probably 2/3 or more of those died. The rest i grew in fabric pots in media i improvised last-minute. Got mediocre results with those, at best), and StankBugs in my Jalapeño patch and SuperHot patch...i didn't quite solve that problem, but i did manage to reduce damage by quite a bit, using old fashioned ninjitsu techniques plus some FGDE.

3. What changes will you make for next year?
 
Slightly fewer plants, far fewer varieties... Trying to mix up hear levels and generally "types" a little better, and I'm even working out percentages of my grow in certain heat ranges, colors, species, etc. . . This year and last, i planned out my grow on googledocs using tables to represent beds, with the grid system providing coordinates showing which plants were where. Now, I've added the % of Supers, Hots, Mediums, and Milds, colors, etc.. and I'm also not carefully planning my number of seeds started for each variety, to suit my plan and my available indoor space, but also for having the number of culls, and even how many seeds I'm starting for plants i know i get good germ rates for, vs ones that i anticipate poor germination rates..

TL;DR: lots of pedestrian nerd-ass planning, with semi-dubious math and my usual pessimism in-place to muck up my results...

Again, thanks for the awesome thread idea, Juanitos. Sorry if my response is too long-winded.
 
1. What were the best peppers you grew this year? why?
1) Dragonroll pepper was the best and most prolific. Growing season was terrible this year, winter came a few days earlier, September so real short growing season.
 
2. What challenges did you have this year? did you solve them? how?
2) The challenges was the weather, could not control it, terrible season for growing. Once I brought in some plants, the Aphids attacked, slowed them down but could not get rid of them.
 
3. What changes will you make for next year?
3) Make grow room in Garage to get ahead of the season.
 
1. What were the best peppers you grew this year? why?
 
Jwala, ended up with a good last minute harvest despite late start and growing in a few hours of morning sun. Perfect chilli for using in our Indian food.
 
2. What challenges did you have this year? did you solve them? how?
 
Late start (Late June/July) because of moving across country. Balcony faces North/NE. 
 
3. What changes will you make for next year?
 
Hope to rent a community garden plot close by for my chilli garden (and okra and bitter gourd).
 
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