• Please visit and share your knowledge at our sister communities:
  • If you have not, please join our official Homebrewing Facebook Group!

    Homebrewing Facebook Group

Gardening: My Tomatoe and Pepper Progress

Homebrew Talk

Help Support Homebrew Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Dont give them too much nitrogen though. You will end up with massive plants and no beans. :D

The dead bean plants are great fertilizer. They are also nitrogen fixing and supply nitrogen to the soil rather than deplete it.
 
Houston we have ignition!!
P1020749_zpszrmoqkjo.jpg

P1020754_zpsw8ip9uxm.jpg

P1020755_zpscwx9mwjf.jpg


My fire breathing idiot looks good. Its going on the deck since it should prefer a little more sun My colon is on fire just thinking about this one.
P1020756_zpsvfkkg1pm.jpg
 
Nice work. Glad I didn't plant yet. We just had rain and hail all week. The guy down the street takes good care of stuff and will discount before too long.
 
Most of these peppers are extremely hard if not impossible to get at local nurseries. A couple local places have Bhuts and Reapers but to me those are just a novelty and off the charts in heat vs flavor. I got one super hot just for grins and because the "hab" flavor is a bit tamed down. I can use 1 pepper mixed in with 450grams of a milder pepper just to kick up the heat of a hot sauce without changing the flavor as much.

My biggest concern now is growing season length needed. The 7 Pot Yellow requires a long season for peppers to ripen. The Scotch Bonnet Yellow MOA does also. I have 2 early producing varieties of hab but those are nowhere near as hot as either of those.
 
Most of these peppers are extremely hard if not impossible to get at local nurseries. A couple local places have Bhuts and Reapers but to me those are just a novelty and off the charts in heat vs flavor. I got one super hot just for grins and because the "hab" flavor is a bit tamed down. I can use 1 pepper mixed in with 450grams of a milder pepper just to kick up the heat of a hot sauce without changing the flavor as much.

My biggest concern now is growing season length needed. The 7 Pot Yellow requires a long season for peppers to ripen. The Scotch Bonnet Yellow MOA does also. I have 2 early producing varieties of hab but those are nowhere near as hot as either of those.

My local Home Depot has some varieties. I saw Bhuts at my home depot this wkend. I don't remember seeing anything but habs and jalapenos in the past.
 
My habs and cayennes are producing lots of fruit now.

Yesterday I had a sliced hab with nacho chips and sour cream. My wife came home later and used the same knife to cut some cheese. She said her mouth was on fire. In fact, and to my surprise, the inside of her upper lip blistered pretty bad. Crazy. I guess my mouth is lined with asbestos.
 
I set out 3 tomato plants this morning to see if Puppy leaves them alone (they are surrounded by concrete-wire cages) and if they can go straight from the grow lights to direct sunlight without burning too much. I will plant more this weekend, and some of my peppers. The peppers and one tomato in 4" pots have been outside in the sun for a week and seem to be loving it.

The rest of the tomatoes need to get in the ground soon, or be moved to bigger pots. Currently in 5 oz Dixie cups. The ones I set out were not pot-bound yet, but I have to water them twice a day.

Wife is freaking out about the monarch butterfly migration arriving early this year and there isn't any milkweed yet. Supposedly a monarch was seen at Carley State Park, which is not far from here. I have lots of MW seedlings, but they won't support caterpillars yet. And lots of year-old MW plants just starting to peek out of the soil (they grow really fast once they get going) so I hit them with some Miracle Gro yesterday.
 
the ground here is saturated to the point it was mud when I planted, had 5 backup plants and expected issues with the water but come to find out the rabbits are eating the leaves and breaking off stalks on 3, im down to 2 backups thinking about a rabbit fence now

Pellet gun and a stew pot.
 
its my entertainment, I have a beagle that tracks the rabbets but cant see worth a crap so he has his nose the the ground yelping all over the yard tracking the path and the rabbit just moves to the other side if the yard, it knows its safe its so funny he can be 10 feet away and never see him
 
My local Home Depot has some varieties. I saw Bhuts at my home depot this wkend. I don't remember seeing anything but habs and jalapenos in the past.

Bonnie just started offering Red Bhuts so that is why you are just now seeing them at HomeDepot and Lowes. Personally i would rather have the orange hab they offer now. Its a Spartacus hybrid from Lark seed and hotter than a typical orange hab.

You will see what i mean as soon as one gets mature. They don't look like a typical orange hab either.
 
Bonnie just started offering Red Bhuts so that is why you are just now seeing them at HomeDepot and Lowes. Personally i would rather have the orange hab they offer now. Its a Spartacus hybrid from Lark seed and hotter than a typical orange hab.

You will see what i mean as soon as one gets mature. They don't look like a typical orange hab either.

Ah, I see.

BTW, I grow red habs. Well, they spend a day orange, but then red. Nothing gold can stay :)
 
A friend gave me a handful of frozen very large red Caribbean peppers that someone gave him. They look kind of like habanero peppers with 5 lobes. He says they are hotter than a normal orange habanero. (I haven't tasted one yet) I think I'll thaw one and plant the seeds.

The germination rate will probably be terrible, but I've grown successfully frozen pepper seeds before.
 
Caribbean Red Habs are one of the hotter varieties. Then there is the Red Savina which is even hotter. My Scotch Bonnets should be just a tad milder than either one and my 7 Pot yellow can get about twice as hot. It will likely end up being just a little hotter than the red habs.

The Beni Highlands im growing are a mildish hab. Coming in at only around 50k scoville max. Occasionally you might get one hotter.

Im more of a baccatum fan myself. Im trying the Aji Cito for the first time. Kinda like a lemon drop but upto twice as hot.
 
the ground here is saturated to the point it was mud when I planted, had 5 backup plants and expected issues with the water but come to find out the rabbits are eating the leaves and breaking off stalks on 3, im down to 2 backups thinking about a rabbit fence now

In my corner of the Ozarks it is also a muddy freakin mess in the garden. I bought some purple hulls, corn and radishes today. Waiting for the ground to become solid again.
 
Well we have about 40 corn plants, about 50 feet of top crop purple hulls, 20 okra, 15 cucumbers, 15 squash, 15 tomatoes, 15 peppers and 6 different herbs. The corn is G90. I prefer a nice "cross" variety as my grandpa called them, which is a cross between sweet corn and feral. Southern Cross is a good variety I think. I'm not much of a corn eater, nor is SWMBO, but we will freeze some and eat it in the winter.

Not much to do now but water and let the Sun shine.

12946.jpeg
 
Waiting on the Peppers until they grow a bit more and the weather turns hotter. But I planted Squash last yesterday in one of my beds.

And it stormed last night. Very strong winds. I thought the plants may have been ripped out of the ground! LOL!

Anyway, I am here to as about what kind of fertilizer/soil for peppers? I have had poor yields previously and want to make sure they get the right stuff to grow well.
 
For more fruit with peppers or tomatoes use a fertilizer lower on nitrogen and higher on calcium and phosphorus. Jobe's tomato fertilizer spikes work well and are slow release so they work most of the season with one application. I usually place one a few inches down on either side of a newly planted starter plant. I also grow peppers and tomatoes under plastic mulch so it's hard to use a water based fertilizer with m soaker hose irrigation system. The plus is no weeds grow under black plastic.
 
Here is my final harvest from last year. I brought the plants inside my shed at the end of the season, and they came back and have blooms on them. I make pepper sauces out of these.

img_1862-68159.jpg

Clockwise, from the 12 o'clock position:
Yellow 7 pot
Red Jalapenos
Savina
Chocolate Douglah
Trinidad Scorpions
Green Jalapenos
Yellow Ghosts
Nagas (Vipers?)

I know, I know, Jalapenos are not considered superhots.

The second photo shows some of the Trinidad scorpions with their "stingers"
img_1864-68160.jpg
 
I normally dont grow any super hots. Orange hab in normally the hottest i grow. Ive gotten bored with them though and i like Scotch Bonnet flavor better so im trying a couple this year.

The 7 Pot yellow i needed just to zip up other sauces. So im growing one and sofar its seems to be doing better than any other plant. No blooms yet but its super healthy and likes full sun more than some of the others.

I have Mucho Nacho and Early jalapeno. The Mucho Nacho already has 3 pods. :D The Earlys i grew last year were crazy hot for a jalapeno. Hotter than store bought Serrano. My own serrano though had some zip but just barely more than the Early.

I cant wait to try the Thai Giant Orange. Its supposed to be a milder Thai pepper and super prolific. Ive grown Birdseye and Thai dragon hybrids in the past and all i can taste from them is heat. Now i grow Super Chiles to replace them. Not as hot and they make a killer hot vinegar when green.
 
I am cutting back on the tomatoes this year(10 plants down to 6). They usually end up all growing together. I planted 6 tomato plants, 6 pepper plants, 8 cucumber plants, some spinach, onions, garlic and my horseradish that comes back every year and keeps spreading. I usually harvest a couple plants every other year. I planted asparagus 2 years ago and I missed them while they were small. Now they have went to seed again.
 
I love growing these over regular cukes. They are called West Indian Bur Gherkins. Taste is very similar to a cuke but maybe milder. They make killer pickles.
P1020183_zps3cynwgyq.jpg


The little ones next to them are Mexican sours aka mouse melons.
P1020187_zpsln22dv1k.jpg


This one grew in a pot and ended up covering my deck. Very disease resistant too.
P1020164_zpshphxllzq.jpg
 
We've had storms all week and it turned cold again last night but didn't freeze; 40° with a dew-point of 32°. The peppers and tomatoes in the garden look fine, but the plants still in little pots on the deck look like crap, especially the eggplants and the tropical milkweeds. (I think they didn't like the cold more than the wind and rain)

I'll need to bring them back in and protect them for a day or two. Gotta get that other light set up, they are too tall to go under my seedling light.

I also saw a rabbit in the garden this morning but it got away. :mad:
 
Just went outside and checked on mine. We are getting several days of rain so i removed the drip pans yesterday. The ph of my tap water is high so i also save all rain water i can. The peppers and cukes are really loving it atm after several unusually hot days for this time of year.

I gave them all a good shot of Alaska vegetable and tomato pellet fertilizer before the rains came too.
 
Hard to believe another season is on us again...where does all the time go?..I have only completed maybe 1/3 of the projects I said I was going to get done by now.
 
Yesterday I started working on cleaning up old plants and planting new ones. We have a small patio, but we try to make it look nice because space in the city is so sparse. However, so far this year the patio has looked so dreary. After a couple hours working outside, it's cleaned up nicely and looking better.

I had hop rhyzomes I had planted last year. The hops grew great last year but didn't produce. However, this year NOTHING has grown up out of it's planter (they are Glacier). Meanwhile, the planter next to it with Cascade has exploded and is already about 7 feet high.

Since my Glaciers failed, I dug up the crown and threw it out to put tomatoes in the planter. Maybe this was a sin, I don't know. But the plant didn't do anything so I was done with it taking up valuable patio space. None the less, I couldn't believe how a few rhyzomes from last year had turned into such a large crown (which subsequently didn't produce as much as a weed).

Oh well. Also going with bell peppers and banana peppers this year. In my aging state, I just can't handle hotter peppers anymore. I'll spare further details. ;)
 
Back
Top