Well, the outside herb garden is now wiped out and everything has been moved inside. Next up is to set up the automatic watering. For now, it'll be interesting to see just how well they survive the transplant.
Anyone know what kind of pepper this is ? I had a volunteer pepper come up and thought they were banana peppers until they started to turn bright red. https://imgur.com/a/5WH4K
Sorry, I can't help you with that one... but I pulled a fucking boner move tonight. I, too, have a few unknown peppers that I've been growing all summer. I have no idea what they are, and they are only now starting to really ripen up... haven't really been able to harvest any peppers this year until now that they've been transplanted indoors. So yeah... I have a few different types of peppers that I didn't recognize. I did recognize the habaneros and the cayenne and the jalapenos peppers, but there were these other ones I didn't recognize, and after 10-15 minutes of bad Googling, I was none the wiser. So yeah... I tasted one. And caught on fire. Then melted. Then cried. It's now been about an hour and I've stopped sweating and my mouth is no longer on fire... it's more like a good bed of coals. Started looking up "really hot peppers", and yep, I have two good sized ghost pepper and one scotch bonnet plants that have quite a few peppers on them. Good to know, just a shitty way to figure it out. It was like I was channeling ROTN or something.
I started reading that and I was laughing like “yep, sounds like something I’d try.” And then you called it. How the fuck do you grow peppers you don’t know? Like don’t you buy the plants or seeds from a nursery where they’re labeled?
Yep, bought about 10 seedlings where some were labelled, and some weren't... I figured they were just the same as the others in the little seedling planters, but they weren't. As they started to grow, some of them weren't the same. I'm thinking they were "assorted hot peppers" seedling boxes, but weren't labelled properly. When they're small enough that they only have a leaf or two, they all look the same. It took them almost 2 months to start showing any real mature peppers, and even then it became a game of, "when do I pick these ones?" Some peppers you pick green, and then others go through this weird colourful transformation... hard to tell at what stage you're supposed to pick them, especially when you can't identify them.
I have been posting my ghost pepper plant all season, you just had to go a page or two back to see it.
The ghost pepper, bhut jolokia, is awesome. I’m gonna grow some in the spring. Love using them in hot sauce, but what I’m really interested to try is what they do in India with them. Over there, elephants are a major problem ruining crops and rampaging through villages. So they take ghost peppers and basically weaponize them. They nail them to trees and put them on fences around the crops and villages to keep the elephants away. And it works, so well in fact that the government officially recommends the tactic. So I’m gonna try that to keep the hogs and armadillos out of our yard.
My unknown was a volunteer from a dropped pepper from a previous season. It could even be a hybrid. I am a little scared to try it but since it is bright red and ripe I will pick it this afternoon and try it.
Some of the plants that I brought inside were too big for my countertop shelving gardening unit, so I had to add an addition that was "full height" lighting. Some of the plants are in shock, but hopefully they recover quickly. Meanwhile, my peppers are just loving the new grow light setup:
Hands down this was my best gardening year that I can remember. We had a shitload of rain here in Upstate NY which led to a great growing season. I threw away more cherry tomatoes than got eaten. Our oldest loves them and I've always planted them for him. Those plants grew like trees. From now on I'm putting in one plant, that's it. Spuds grew like gangbusters as always as did the beans, zucchini and cukes. I tried carrots but the soil was still too hard so they were stunted. Next year I'll look at a different set up for them. Best thing I ever did was build raised beds and mix my own soil. It's way easier to work than the native clay and will only get better as the years go by.
That's what I'm doing in the spring. Meanwhile, the hot peppers are really REALLY liking the grow lights.
I totally agree about your comment about the cherry tomatoes. My Juliet tomatoes were almost little trees by the end of the season and I definitely threw away and let a lot right on the ground. Did you do anything special for the potatoes? I know they are supposed to be easy to grow but I have never known anyone to try them around here. The fall Garden is kicking off pretty good. The snow peas are doing great, but the broccoli didn't really come up much. I looked this morning and the Creole onions that I put in are all coming up so I should have about a hundred onions and another couple of months. Nett, your grow lights are giving me ideas. I threw up a frame and some visqueen for a cold frame to go over my peppers when we had a cold snap last week and I kind of want to strap some of that Lighting in there. It's totally unnecessary but I've got the itch. I finally figured out how to grow peppers towards the end of the season and now they are loaded and I would hate for them to die in a cold snap. The good thing about the supplies that I have sunk money into so far, is that I really can use them from season to season. It makes me feel better about shelling out the bucks.
Nope. The only thing I did different this year was, instead of trying to hill dirt up around them as they grew I added straw. They're really easy to grow. Hell, I ended up with some harvested directly from the compost pile too.
Peppers! I think I have one or two more waves and then my season is done. Our weather snapped again and it is in the 60s so hopefully my visqueen cold frame will keep them happy for another couple months. The snap peas are just starting. Also, cold stratification ftw. My gardening skill just leleved up. I bought a pack of swamp milkweed and I planted 25% of the seed pack last season; jack all came up. Buuut put them on a wet paper towel on a plate, cover with saran, and leave in the fridge for a month before planting and voila, all seeds came up. I was digging through the bag of old gardening stuff that was from my childhood bedroom closet and found one that I wanted so badly, but could never get to come up: Columbine. They are in the fridge now, maybe I will get some after all these years.
I took in my last haul yesterday because the first frost is today. I brought in Jalapeno's, Cayenne's, Eggplants and a ton of tomatoes. Never did a season last so late for me in CT, not even close. I did bring in two Jalapeno and the Ghost pepper plant in the basement. I am going to trim them way back and water them a little and hope they make it to next year. It worked for a Cayenne plant last year and since it had an established root system it exploded when it went back outside.