The Year of the pepper

Had a lot of success this year with pepper plants. Seen at the very top was a Dancing spirit pepper mild in spicyness but tasty to add to meals. Below that is a Jamaican Scotch Bonnet pepper. Spicy and sweet. A friend wanted to grow these and was intrigued by their color.

And finally in the last shot it's a menagerie of peppers I picked from the deck garden. The little tiny bell looking peppers are Hungarian Cheese peppers. Another tasty and mild easy to grow pepper. In fact it's almost December and they are still producing.

I took a different approach this to pepper and tomato growing. All my plants were in pots. This was for a couple of reasons. One to keep them from pests. I had a heck of a bout with gophers in my garden earlier this year and wanted my stuff to survive. The pots offered the roots protection needed. Also the portability of them helped when the light was questionable.

I also was able to expand to my elevated deck in my backyard that gets much better sun with no shadows and a glass pane window blocking the west winds. It has been a hot spot for growing this year.

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Recycled sunflower stalks used to make grapvine trellis

So a little while back a posted about my grapevine extending out from my fence into the alley. It needed some support for it to continue its growth. So I brainstormed and thought what better way than to re-use the stalks from the sunflowers as a natural trellis. So I found a few tall stalks that were great for the task. I literally had to hatchet the stalks down. My clippers weren't strong enough to cut through their thickness. I already broke one set of pruners trying. I stripped the leaves off and dug them into the ground. Then used a smaller stalk as a cross beam for the vine to travel down. I think they really work out well. They similar color to the vine itself and add a natural touch to what would probably be an artificial structure. I have no idea how long they will hold up but I'm hoping a long time. Especially once the vine become entangled. I've also used some of the smaller sunflower stalks to create support sticks for leaning plants. I reccommend trying to...

Grapevine reaching out for support

So my grapevine is reaching out for support. I've tried to weave this vine into my fence but there are places where its just reached beyond for more. So i think I might try to build somekind of support structure into the alley. Maybe a simple pole or piece of wood to create a natural grapevine arch. My strategy has been to weave each independent vine into others to create a super vine that can still reach out and support itself. Sort of looks like an elephant.

Topping your early pepper plants

So I know you are going to think why would I want to cut the tops off my young pepper plant? Won't it die? Won't it hurt the plant? Take this example above of this young Shishito pepper plant. Now you can see with my snips I am about to cut just the top section of the leaves. Below the cut area I still have three levels of leaves. I don't recommend cutting your plant if it only has one set of leaves. Only perform topping when there are more than one set, preferably multiple leave layers. The cut will force growth back to the lower levels making your plant more stable with more lower branches as well produce more fruit. One stalk will be unstable when fruiting and limit production but the topping will add more layers and depth to your plant. This topping exercise can be performed more than once to help make a more dense plant. Some will even go so far as to remove flowers to help the plant grow larger or stronger before producing peppers.

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