Gardening: My Tomatoe and Pepper Progress

[Littletimmy]

Red, Yellow, Orange, Brown and White habanero seeds are available from a myriad of sources. I usually try to start several types each year in the greenhouse, usually in early February. Slow to germinate and grow until it gets warm, but man, what beautiful color and taste late in the growing season. I'm partial to the red variety in the wife's hot pepper jelly. If you want to play with someones mind, grow some "trinidad perfume" peppers. They look just like a cross between scotch bonnets and habaneros but without the heat.

 

[applescrap]

The tomatos are really producing and ripening staestc. They look good and juicy. So did you pop a hab? Could lead to some extra toilet time. Memba the beavis and butthead in mexico episode.

PassedPawn thanks for sharing the beautiful nature poem. Makes me think of how my partner at work and I joke, that people probably think we communicate through grunting. If they only knew.

 

[HarborTownBrewing]

My tomato plant with spots has a bacteria according to my research. Sounds like that ones not save able but oh well. I've got another plant.

Habanero pepper is just starting to peek out, and I have a number of serano peppers coming through. With temps in the 90s all week I should see some fantastic growth.

Working long hours this week so the wife has to do all the watering. I told her it was her chance to show me she could be a house wife and quit her job. I'll say the kitchen is clean and my laundry is folded, but the planters are dry. She's failing.

 

[passedpawn]

Yea, my tomatoes are not doing well. There are a bunch of decent looking tomatoes on there, but the leaves are dying. I think it's just too hot/humid here for tomatoes now. Winter plant maybe.

 

[Homercidal]

Some of my tomatoes are doing quite well. I planted 4 in some pots and they don't seem to drain as well as they should. I had my daughter drill holes in the bottom as additional drainage and it's helped, but I think it's too late for at least one plant. Getting some flowers on some of them.

Pepper plants are still kind of small, but we're getting Zucchini on a couple of plants. Wife is excited. I told her she's going to have to wait until their a bit bigger than 4 inches before she can pick them. She really likes them grilled with parmesan cheese. I prefer them steamed with a small amount of butter and salt.

Curious to see if the peppers will affect each other. I planted some Jalapenos in one bed and some bell peppers in the bed next to it, separated by about a foot and half.

 

[StonesBally]

I don't think planting peppers varieties by one another has any effect on each other. I very been doing it for years. You only get hybrids if you save and use those seeds. This is why I can't save my seeds each year. Last year I let one hybrid tomato go on my compost heap and they turned out to be some nice yellow cherry tomatoes.

 

[Homercidal]

Funny. I have read that growing them next to each other can produce hot green peppers, or mild jalapenos. I'll have to read up on it again.

It's fine either way. It would be interesting it if happened. The garden is just for fun, mostly anyway at this point. It would have to be a fair amount bigger to really produce a useful amount (For canning/storing.)

 

[Homercidal]

Interesting read on isolation and cross pollination.

https://www.southernexposure.com/isolation-distance-requirements-for-peppers-ezp-34.html

Here's an excerpt:

A misconception exists among a number of individuals who save their own seed. The misconception is that no crossing has occurred if the fruit and foliage of the first generation (F1 generation) or subsequent generations appear no different than the parental generation. This misconception can be illustrated by performing the following test. The test consists of growing a row of hot peppers next to a row of sweet peppers, both varieties having approximately the same shape and color of fruit and otherwise similar in appearance. The seed from the fruit of the sweet variety is then saved and planted. When the fruit of this planting (F1 generation) is eaten, a high percentage of these peppers will be found to be hot (due to the presence of a dominant gene received from the hot variety). One enthusiastic bite into a hot sweet pepper will illustrate that similarity in appearance does not mean absence of cross-pollination. Incidentally, the hot trait will not disappear in the next generation (F2 generation) or subsequent generations unless the hot plants are rogued out (each plant would have to be grown in isolation to do this). Instead the genes will "move around" in the plants of the subsequent generations. This experiment demonstrates the obvious results of cross-pollination, but the manifestations of NCP between two similar varieties will be less obvious, especially where recessive genes are involved. These recessive genes are not so easily removed from the population of plants resulting from the NCP of two different varieties, partially because these recessive genes are not readily identified.

 

[Oldskewl]

I have grown bell peppers next to Jalepenos, Serranos, Habenaros, Cherry Peppers, and Hungarian wax and even Cayenne and have never had any issues. Maybe the Bell peppers made my hot peppers milder?!?! Hmmmm?

My Tomatoes plants are going down hill FAST this year. Blight has gotten them bad. Apparently it is a fungus in the soil that is splashed up onto the plant. I need to get some Fungicide for next year. Funny though, I found some San Marzano plants this year and (knock on wood) they are doing fabulous.

 

[Staestc]

This thread keeps expanding in topic and I love it. Original topic should be reduced to just "Gardening" in my opinion [emoji1]

I have thousands of solid white moths all over my entire landscape plants. They don't seem to be doing anything bad at the moment, but I am assuming larva probably did and or will. I am near Dallas in Texas. Anybody have any idea what these guys are? I have never seen them before this year.

I did also notice for the first time this year very white crap on a bunch of my plants that looked like white sticky cotton candy. May be related. Never seen that before either. Again did not seem to hurt anything that I can tell.

 

[jsguitar]

(Ok, figured out the upload thing.)

Here's a few pics. My sugar rush cherry/grape tomato was outgrowing its diy cage so I had to add more to it. Sorry the pics aren't great. I'll try to get some more of everything later.

We have evil mutant garden eating squirrels that require the use of all sorts of ugly caging.

Nice looking gardens here!

 

[HarborTownBrewing]

I have grown bell peppers next to Jalepenos, Serranos, Habenaros, Cherry Peppers, and Hungarian wax and even Cayenne and have never had any issues. Maybe the Bell peppers made my hot peppers milder?!?! Hmmmm?

My Tomatoes plants are going down hill FAST this year. Blight has gotten them bad. Apparently it is a fungus in the soil that is splashed up onto the plant. I need to get some Fungicide for next year. Funny though, I found some San Marzano plants this year and (knock on wood) they are doing fabulous.

Blight! Yeah that's what my tomato plant has and it's done.

 

[jsguitar]

We got our tomatoes and peppers from a local nursery this year that is usually great but the tomatoes and peppers were diseased with what I'm fairly sure is bacterial spot and maybe bacterial speck on the tomatoes. I pulled two tomatoes out and went back to the nursery a couple of weeks later and almost all of the tomatoes had the same disease all over them. I got a couple more that didn't look infected for my patio and have been treating the others mostly with Serenade, which has kept it somewhat in check. The peppers are doing well even though they have some spots. I'm going back to starting them from seed so at least I don't have to worry about buying diseased plants.

 

[applescrap]

I have blight everywhere, it sucks! Nice Gardens jsguitar. Tomatoes are big, I like your cage idea. I don't know how often I can spray on fungicide, I think I'm going to use it again. The green beans were like 10 feet tall last year they're dinky this year. But they're starting to give fruit . Hope to make some pickled hot green beans like you did passed

 

[Homercidal]

I have grown bell peppers next to Jalepenos, Serranos, Habenaros, Cherry Peppers, and Hungarian wax and even Cayenne and have never had any issues. Maybe the Bell peppers made my hot peppers milder?!?! Hmmmm?

My Tomatoes plants are going down hill FAST this year. Blight has gotten them bad. Apparently it is a fungus in the soil that is splashed up onto the plant. I need to get some Fungicide for next year. Funny though, I found some San Marzano plants this year and (knock on wood) they are doing fabulous.

Apparently it doesn't affect the current year's crop, but if you save your seeds for next year it might show up then.

 

[Oldskewl]

Apparently it doesn't affect the current year's crop, but if you save your seeds for next year it might show up then.

Good to know!

 

[Littletimmy]

If you are concerned about fungal spores overwintering on your seeds, you can always soak them in a 10% bleach solution for a couple of minutes and then rinse with water. Use your stirplate, stir bar and a flask to increase agitation time & contact. That's how we treated seeds and plant explants in our tissue culture lab.

I buy my heirloom seeds and plant 8-10 each year as starters in the GH and store the rest for next year.

My plants look like **?!!* here in north Texas. Too much rain, then heat and a bad back equal a poor harvest this year.

Here is a nice link to a website detailing tomato blight identification and control.
http://www.tomatodirt.com/tomato-blight.html

 

[StonesBally]

Best way to avoid soil borne diseases is to practice good crop rotation. At least 3 seasons between planting the same crop. I know it's hard to do on the home size.

 

[Oldskewl]

Thanks for the info Littletimmy. Wish I had more room. I only grow tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, horseradish, asparagus and a little lettuce. I usually rotate the cucumbers with the tomatoes and peppers every year. But it's not enough.

 

[passedpawn]

Took a pic of my habs last night. They are still producing at an unnecessary rate. Started with seeds almost 11 months ago.

Those orange peppers will be red by tomorrow.

 

[Staestc]

Took a pic of my habs last night. They are still producing at an unnecessary rate. Started with seeds almost 11 months ago.

Those orange peppers will be red by tomorrow.

Gorgeous plants! If I remember right, it was a picture of one of your habs and the double bucket that got me googling and led to be building the sewer pipe planter!

 

[HarborTownBrewing]

Took a pic of my habs last night. They are still producing at an unnecessary rate. Started with seeds almost 11 months ago.

Those orange peppers will be red by tomorrow.

Unnecessary?! You hush!

I'll also add, your pictures of peppers somewhere on this site earlier this spring got me interested in gardening and now I'm hooked.

And btw, your coffee thread led me from buying roasted beans to buying a roaster and green beans and a ton of other toys.

Needless to say, @passedpawn has been a great influence on my bank account for two years now haha.

 

[applescrap]

^^me too haha

 

[passedpawn]

Haha, you guys are true blue HBT'ers then. When the apocolypse hits, and zombies force us into our basements, and the shelves of every grocery are empty, your uninfected friends will be coming to your houses. But you have to start making cheese first

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

I planted a ton of crap this spring and all of it either died or isn't producing. All except one Cajun bell Pepper plant which has ~11 fruits on it.

The things that died were
6 Habeneros started from seed.
10 Lemon Cucumber plants from seed. They all sprouted, I gave two to my mother-in-law (those are growing fine),and the other 8 died.
1 seedling of some heirloom chili pepper, it's alive but not flowering or anything.

 

[Homercidal]

Garden is mostly coming along well. Certain tomatoes in one box are gangbusters. If I had known they woudl grow this bushy I'd have separated them more! The others are a different type and not as big. Just started seeing some flowers blooming last week. Same tomatoes in pots in front of house are thin with some yellow leaves. The pots weren't draining well, so I drilled the bottoms.

Got 2 bean plants out of a whole row. Not sure why. They are looking ok, but I doubt I'll enough beans to do more than snack while weeding.

Picked 2 zucchini last night. Probably about 8" long now. Wife was excited. She loves to grill it with parmesan cheese.

It's nice to have a garden that does something. My previous attempts here have been very underwhelming. The peppers are shorter than I expected, but I think I see some buds forming.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Picked 2 zucchini last night. Probably about 8' long now. Wife was excited. She loves to grill it with parmesan cheese.

(2) 8 foot long Zucchini, excited wife, grilled cheese,....

 

[Homercidal]

(2) 8 foot long Zucchini, excited wife, grilled cheese,....

HA! Ok, I fixed it. It was 8 INCHES long. Nothing to get too excited about I guess, but it seems quite big to me.

 

[Oldskewl]

Every year I say I'm going to separate my tomatoes more(2 across the garden instead of 3 across). Every year I forget and plant 3 across. When we have a wet spring and early summer they get huge and totally grow together to the point it's hard to keep and eye on the fruit ripening. It probably doesn't help my blight issues. Maybe next year.

 

[HarborTownBrewing]

How do you guys know when to pick your peppers?

I have a couple Serano that are looking somewhat appropriate, size wise. Are there any other indicators?