Re: [CH] Nearly-averted disaster (and a couple of questions)

Jim Graham (spooky130@cox.net)
Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:32:33 -0500 

On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 03:41:44PM -0700, Doug Irvine wrote:

> I only grow in containers.

Same here.  We don't have soil (unless you pay to have it trucked in,
and given that I don't plan on being stuck in a <hangs head low>
trailer park<sigh> any longer than cancer forces me to, I have no
intention of shipping in a lot of soil...especially when it'd just
be a new home for ants).  We have beach sand.  You have to go about
30 (I think) miles inland before you see anything resembling soil,
and even then, it's a mix.

I've found that tabascos do best in (at least) a 5-gallon bucket.
Without the ability to dig a deep root system, they just don't seem
to want to grow nice and tall (I've had some grow almost as tall as
I am, and I'm 5'11") and bushy (and once there, they produce fruit
like CRAZY...gotta love it!

Habaneros don't seem to care as much, but I've got some plastic pots
about half the height of a 5-gallon bucket and just as wide at the
top (you know the type) for my habs.  Same planters for my cayennes
(which don't seem to give a rats backside one way or another, but
I'm tired of dealing with pots any smaller than that---too many cases
of pepper plants getting blown around by wind, etc....


Ah, here's another question:  how much difference does it *REALLY*
make whether you only leave about a foot in any direction between
plants and 2--3 feet as some suggest?

My pepper garden is limited in size by A) the amount of "yard" I've
got, and B) the amount of tarp I've got covering the ground (and
the weeds, ants, etc., that would love to take over).  Last year I
used old scraps of plywood, etc., being tossed out of trailers that
were being re-done inside, but the weeds just grew up around them.
This morning, after running completely out of energy to the point
where I could barely stand (any other cancer patients out there
probably know exactly what I mean), and then another half hour or
so of walking around Lowes looking for the "right" solution, whatever
that was (and driving my energy levels well into the negative range),
I found 8'x10' canvas tarp.  Bought two of those, and some white wire
fencing, and this is going to be the area for my pepper garden:
8'x20'.  I could probably add another 4' to the 20' if I could afford
it, but I've spent all of my birthday money and then some, so.....

Here's yet another question, going back to the tabascos that survive
through the winter from the previous year.  I've noticed a few things
that don't seem to make sense:

   1) The old main stem/trunk/whatever is dead.  Nothing grows from
      it, except at the very base.  It basically starts off as much
      smaller than a store-bought plant (except, and I be answering
      my own question here, for having a well-established root system).

   2) Even though nothing sems to want to grow from anything but the
      lower 1"--2"), it *VERY* quickly leaps up to and beyond its
      previous height.  They then proceed to produce enough peppers
      that I'm picking, between about 4 plants, as many as 20--30
      peppers some days (a good friend of mine taught me to wait on
      tabascos until they almost fall off of the plant on their own---in
      other words, until it only takes the tiniest amount of pressure to
      pick them---anything before that and they're not hot enough yet).

   3) The store-bought plants don't catch up until 6--8 weeks later.
      These seem to produce about 75% of the amount of peppers as the
      previous year's survivors.

Any idea why?  Does that pre-established root system do it?  Or is there
something else I'm missing?

> bunch of seeds a couple of years back, Byron sent some last year, and I 
> simply cannot get good germination

I may be doing things wrong (when I plant from seeds, I either get a
sh*tload of plants sprouting up in each pot, or nothing.  Zilch.  Nada.
I just take a small pot of fresh potting soil, spread a bunch of seeds
(obviously for the same type pepper) about, and bury them by about
1 cm of soil, then gently water them and put them out with the rest of
the garden.  As such, I never start seeds until mid-to-late April (have
had exactly ZERO luck starting them indoors).

If anyone has any additional comments/suggestions, now's the time.  It'll
be a few days, according to the roommate who advised me about the freeze
tonight (and possibly the next few nights) before I can consider planting
(and with the plants in here staring at me, and given how much I love my
pepper garden every year, that's going to be a painful few days!).  So
I'm taking that time to see if I can do something to improve my yield
and/or heat.  :-)

Thanks,
   --jim

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