Tag Archives: habeneros

Cleome Main Roof

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IMG_0544Cleome blooms on the main roof.  Cleome seedlings were quite small this spring.  Placed two Cleome per 3 cuft container in caged position 8 and one in SE corner corner 3 cuft container.  These containers  probably could support companion wildflowers if seeded.  Maybe next year.

All hot pepper plants growing nicely.  I forgot to label them too which might become a challenge.

Update: Just thought of this observation.  The Cleome plants look kind of weak and haven’t grown as big as in previous years.  This applies to Cleome in front parkway as well.  I am worried my potting mix lacks nutrition and I have been lax fertilizing this season.  I need to make a fertilizing schedule and stick to it next season.  Maybe get one of these reminder apps to buzz me when it is time to fertilize.

Habenero Harvest

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IMG_9547Habeneros are good this year.  Even though the label on seedlings sold by Gethsemane said yellow habeneros, they always ripen to red for some reason.  There was a time when they did sell habeneros that only turned yellow.  This has been going on for quite a few years now.

Usually I complain about Gethsemane but their hab seedlings have been very vigorous this season.    All habs still growing and a lot of green growth.

TL;DR The above pic is a 2 gallon bucket dump of habeneros harvested today.  More to come.

Update:  I’m not complaining about red habeneros.  The red habs are hotter and more desirable than  yellow habs in my opinion.  Gethsemane used to differentiate between the two with their tags and now they only tag them as yellow.  I’m happy they’re really red because that’s what I want.  Will be back next year.

I may have been overcrowding habeneros in the past.  Plants seem bigger with more habeneros because I allocated more cuft root space to each plant.  I used to allocate 1 cuft/plant and now I’m up to 1.5 cuft/plant and the production is the same but with less plants.  Therefore, the numbers of actual plants doesn’t matter as much as the total container size growing that type of plant.  Next season I’ll experiment giving a habenero 2 cuft root space and see what happens.

Tomato Status

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IMG_8784 IMG_8785Here’s a brief update of tomatoes as of 6/27/2014.  All 8 tomatoes in caged positions healthy and we’ve had a lot of rain.  Fertilized once last week.  That might be kind of late.  Need to fertilize today.

The two wooden boxes are new planters that can hold two big plants.  They are 2x3x1.5=9 cubic feet.  The plastic tub planters are only 3 cu ft.  The two pictures show caged positions 1-7 of which there are 15 this season.  The wooden cage slots have not been installed and they may not be necessary.

Tomatoes buffered by Cleome in caged position 4 and skinny eggplant in caged position 1.  Caged position 7 has two habeneros and caged position 5 and 6 (bottom pic) has tomatoes.  The caged positions closest to the west which get the first shade are growing the best independent of container size.

Update 8/20

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No pics.  Celebrity tomatoes not doing well and dying on top.  Brandywines look very healthy but also have some brown leaves.  No mites.  This may be due to lack of nutrition since I didn’t add any compost into the mix this Spring and I’m behind on fertilizing.  Fat eggplant in caged position 14 is stunted due to sunflower.  Fat eggplant in caged position 1 is very big and healthy as well as its two habenero companions.  None of the 8 habs in NE corner will produce anything.  The sunflowers there look very nice however but they don’t play well with others.  Tomato harvest is coming in.  Second wave looks unlikely or maybe small due to flowers dieing even though there are tons of bees due to the sunflowers blooming.  We’ll see.  Maybe later I’ll post some harvest porn.  Until then….

BTW: It hasn’t rained since I can’t remember.  This might be considered a drought right now and watering is a PITA.

Note: Veranda north wall box was not being watered properly because I couldn’t see it.  Drip irrigation for these boxes is a must.  Soaker hose on alley level boxes somewhat work but is not a solution.  Those boxes need proper irrigation.  That is all….

Alley Vines

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Something is wrong with alley vines.  They aren’t growing and some of them look dead.  Not sure if it’s watering related or what.   From my finger tests it seems the soaker hose gets to the entire planter.  Nothing I can do but wait and see.  This year I let them grow on their own.  Maybe that’s a problem.  The soil might need to be regurgitated next spring — I don’t know.  Don’t really want to add another project to next Spring.  There could also be some dust in the air from the water project on Palmer that has drifted into their soil stunting their growth.  It’s a mystery now.  We’ll see how they are in a month when they should be at their peak.  The Veranda vines are doing very well and increasing the size of west wall boxes has helped.

The SE corner sunflowers had another drooping session on 7/28.  It wasn’t even that warm out and they ran out of water after I watered them the night before.  Watering is a big problem with these sunflowers in containers and I don’t think that 2’x4’x1.5′ = 12 cu.ft. is big enough to hold all those sunflowers (~12).  May need to look into going 2′ high on containers in the future.  The edge of the roof line can hold more weight since the weight the underlying beams can hold relates to its sheer strength which can be rather large.  Don’t want to overdo it however but I thing 2 cu. ft. / square foot roof area = 200 lbs can be supported by the current joists.  Harvested 4 Ichiban eggplants (the skinny ones).  Those plants look smaller than last year — most likely due to sharing space with a sunflower.  I didn’t expect these sunflowers to grow so big based upon what the seeds said on the package.

Tomatoes look OK.  Some Celebrities look a bit stunted.  First wave harvest still a couple weeks away.  The Brandywines and Big Boys look healthy.  Noticed a bunch of volunteer habeneros mixed into a couple of tomato plants.  Never had this happen before.  They are small because habenero seeds take a very long time to germinate.  All this potting mix moves around from year to year so eventually a hab seedling was bound to emerge.  Ironic since the purchased hab seedlngs have struggled this year, so much so that these little sprouts may actually produce more habs by the end of September.

Update 7/29: After checking the soaker hoses tonight I don’t think the far south planter is getting enough water.  The soaker hoses seem to be distributing water unevenly.

Update 7/22

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No photos.  It has been hot and we had a couple of rains.  Went up at noon on 7/21 and everything was drooping.  Not good.  The sunflowers seem to suck a lot of water.  I noticed that the habeneros with sunflowers as a companion plant are not doing well at all.  Of the 8 on NE corner main roof maybe 5 are still alive but they are small.  There are 8 in the caged positions and only half seem healthy.  Caged position 1 has the two biggest and they share with a big eggplant — no sunflower.  May need to rethink using companion plants for habeneros.  They seem to do just fine on their own.  This is the first year I’ve had problems with habeneros.  The vines look good.  The alley vines seem like a week behind schedule.  Not sure if my soaker hose watering system is working.   I watered for 45 minutes yet far right planter vines showed serious signs of distress at the end of the day.  The veranda vines are doing much better than last year.

SE Corner Main Roof

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IMG_7309Finally a photo taken on the day it gets posted.  This is the SE corner main roof.  These two containers support sunflowers like last year.  This year however they’ll support 8 habeneros since the NE corner box is being dismantled throughout this season.  We’ll see how well this works.  Due to the cold Spring and still cool, rainy weather, the habeneros are struggling and are smaller than the seedlings when planted.  This has happened in some past years and the habs eventually grew to full size.  I suspect the yield won’t be as good as last year however.  I’m experimenting with sunflowers as companion plants this year in multiple containers on the main roof.

End of Year Harvest

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Massive harvest yesterday.  Over 50 tomatoes (I lost count).  This might be two dehydrators of habeneros.  I only grew 8 productive habenero plants and they all produced unbelievably.  I realize I should be counting but I don’t have any past data either for comparison.  Visually and using my memory, I suspect that the per plant harvested habs were around 1/2 better — possibly more.  This could be from adding mushroom compost or an increased amount of potting volume per plant compared to growing them in 5 gallon buckets.  It’s possible I’m giving them  50% more room for their roots to grow.   I’ll have to work some numbers later but this is definitely a clue to influence the design of the NE corner replacement box next season.

Tomato Harvest Resumes

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Tomato harvest resumed yesterday (after more than a week) and while up there I picked a bunch of habeneros, eggplants and cucumbers.  The tomato plants are waning.  They still have mites.  Hopefully next year I can thwart the mites before they establish a colony because once established they seem impossible to eliminate.  I estimate the second harvest to last a week or so with about 8 or 9 tomatoes per plant (65-75 total tomatoes).  There is no more growth in the plants so after this they’re done for the year.  I’m not complaining about the tomatoes this year.  The morning glory vines however …. more on that later.

Update 9/11:  Harvested 15 more decent sized tomatoes today.  There might be an average of 10 greens/plant left so projected harvest might be more than 80 until the end of season.  Habeneros also are coming in as well as 9 large cucumbers.

NE Corner Main Roof Status

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This corner has a collapsed box that I decided to let be this year because of the large population of volunteer snapdragons from last season.   The box contains 8 habeneros, 2 cucumbers, 1 eggplant, and 1 Cleome that I planted.  In the bottom left corner is part of the pineapple mint container which is on its third or fourth year.  Next season I’ll have to replace this box and since it supports edibles I can’t use treated wood.  This pine box painted with white polyurethane paint was built for the 2007 season so it has lasted only 6 years — which might not be so bad.  The treated wood boxes on the veranda level are on their 11th year and show no signs of wear.  I need to figure out a way to line the inside of these large box containers with some kind of plastic to protect the wood from soil moisture without introducing nasty chemicals that can get into edible plants.

Here’s the box in 2007 on SE wall main roof.