Sari's Garden 2006, a bit about 2007 and 2008 dreams

[riccardino]

I have several plant with a great smell, but my C. Galapagoense do not have any! I tried Galapagoense from several source, but all look the same and noone has any smell!
Are there different varieties of Galaapgoense?

Riccardo

[Guy]

Hi

I noticed the smell thing going on with my Tepins last year, very fragrant!! The galapagoense did not however, like Riccardos..not surprisingly really, as the seeds came from Riccardo. I noticed a very faint smell on the Manzano leaves too but much less pronounced than the tepins.

This year I have a lot more Pubescens than last year and have been pleasantly surprised by the fragrance of some of them. I just wish the chinenses smelled as good as they taste..;but I suppose you cant have everything.

Happy sniffing

Guy

[bassino]

I noticed the smell thing going on with my Tepins last year, very fragrant!!

I've noticed the same with Tepin. The smell remains C. pubescens a little but it's more intensive and not so sweet.

Some of my C. baccatums smells too. If I remember right, the CAP 1151 has quite noticeable smell.

[svalli]

I have one fuzzy tepin plant and I tried touching the leaves today. It has that nice fragrance too. It seems that most chile plants, which have hair on the leaves, emit a scent when touched.

[svalli]

I put first seeds in the peat pellets on January 3. There is still some that have not sprouted and I have kept them under the plastic dome on the heat mat, since I started remaining pepper varieties between coffee filters and did not need the starting tray. Yesterday I checked the tray and to my amazement Pimenta Campuci had sprouted after two months. I will need the tray soon for tomatoes, but I may have to keep the unsprouted pellets in the tray too, since there may still be hope for some of the seeds.

[svalli]

I got the spring fever and started the tomato seeds yesterday. Last fall I promised my self that I would limit tomatoes to 30 plants and 10 varieties. I ended up with 17 varieties and 50 plants. I also ordered the seed potatoes. I found a place, which sells Peruvian Purple potatoes and some other unique ones too. I ordered 7 different varieties. This season my garden will have quite many different Solanaceae families represented with many different varieties.

How does Peruvian Purple potato pancakes with Peruvian Purple Pepper and Purple Tomatillo salsa sound like? It would be a great dish today.
Happy St. Urho's Day!

Saturday we had freak +19 C temperature and thunderstorms. Today we have Winter Storm Warning and it has been snowing whole day. I will never get used to this totally unpredictable spring weather here in Midwest.

[JartsaP]

Interesting indeed... I had never before heard of St. Urho nor his day... but why not, another reason to celebrate is always welcome.

Hell, I had never even heard that there's actually a place called Finland in Minnesota...
http://www.sainturho.com/index.htm
Grasshoppers demolishing Finnish grape harvest... how drunk has the inventor of this story been?

For non-Finnish people: grapes are rarely grown in Finland, because only during last few decades some hardy-enough grape hybrids have been bred. These are mostly hybrids between common grape V. vinifera and V. riparia (riverbank grape) and/or V. labruska (Concorde grape). Grasshoppers, though, DO live even in Finland (well, in southern parts at least), but they're mostly small and pretty harmless. For more information on grasshoppers and bush crickets in Finland: http://hepokatti.net/grasshoppers.html

Sounds like you are going to eat a lot of tomatoes this year? I promised myself not to grow tomatoes at all this year, but now I have a few seedlings growing anyway. Only three or four, all of different variety. LAst year I had half of the greenhouse filled with tomatoes, but only one or two plants cropped well. This time I wanted to have more room for the more interesting plants like eggplants, exotic Solanaceae and, of course, chiles!

Last few days have been all sunshine here. Temps around zero centigrade daytime and -10-15 night. Greenhouse temperature reached +24c one day and went down to -11 next night. A few days more and I can start heating it up, I'm only waiting for the night temps to rise a little.

[Nike]

I have the same attitude with tomatoes; luckily I`ve managed to keep the number down to one this year. They take up a lot of space and effort,and even then you aren`t guaranteed to get a good harvest.

[Gekko]

I'm also planning to reduce the quantity of my tomato plants dramatically this year, and tomato size too. I'm going to grow only Solanum pimpinellifolium

[svalli]

I wish peppers were as easy to germinate as tomatoes. First tomato seeds showed sign of life just after two days! Even older seeds germinate fast.
The window starts to be crowded with peppers. I may have to get another shop light, so I can get all seedlings close to the light.


One of the peppers I dug up last fall from the garden was an Aji Omnicolor. It has been by living room window without any other light than the sun. Now it has started to bloom and fruit even it has not grown much. There must be at least 100 buds on it.

[svalli]

Right now it is the night between Good Friday and Saturday about 1:20 am, temperature outside is about 12°C and I am sitting by a fire at our back yard.  It is getting a bit chilly in just a T-shirt. Today we had 29°C in shadow, which may be the record for this date (I did not watch the news today).  Everyone else went to sleep, but I want to enjoy the night and listen the frogs and Eppu Normaali, playing on my laptop.

I moved my Aji Omnicolor, Tepin, Bird Pepper and Poinsettia outdoors today, because I do want to get rid of the aphids in house. I hope there are enough hungry ladybugs outside. Tomorrow should be also fine weather so I may bring some other plants outdoors.

Now it is time to go to bed, so I can do some gardening tomorrow.

[svalli]

Two of days ago I moved most of the smaller pepper plants outside into my temporary coldframe with tomato seedlings. Most of the C. baccatums are still inside, because they are too tall for the coldframe and they are still in the tiny cups, which could dry fast during a sunny day. I may have to plant them to bigger containers, before planting them on the ground. Some of them may end up being container grown, but I have not yet decided, which ones. The C. chinenses are also inside waiting for warmer weather.

I ordered some more pepper plants from chileplants.com to supplement some, which I did not have seeds for or had hard time germinating. My order arrived yesterday. Good looking sturdy plants, but they had some aphids, so the plants went into my doghouse size temporary greenhouse with the overwintered peppers. I really did not need anymore aphids, it has been really hard to try to get rid of them. I'm hoping that soon there will be enough predators outside, so I do not have to start spraying the plants.


Day time temps have been around +20°C and nights around +10°C. Next couple of nights have been forecasted to be cooler, but still there should not be frost, so I am planning to leave the plants outside. I may have to add some heat sources into the coldframe and the greenhouse or just cover them up with blankets.

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My Garden Journal

[svalli]

Saturday morning we had frost on the lowest spots of the yard. Luckily I had covered the greenhouse and the coldframe with plankets and had put Christmas lights inside them. I had 15x7W sets in both of them. Temperature outside had dropped to +0.4°C and the lowest inside the greenhouse had been +5.9C° and my plants looked happy.

Today was warm and sunny, so I spent whole day outside working on the yard. I also potted the tall C. baccatums to bigger pots and moved them to the temporary greenhouse. I mixed my own potting mix from unfertilized peat, coir, composted manure, organic humus, kelp meal, perlite and a bit of tomato fertilizer. I hope the mixture works fork for the plants.

[svalli]

We have wind advisory for tomorrow, so I moved all my plants from the temporary greenhouse to garage. The greenhouse thing may fly to the next county or at least the light row cover fabric would have been torn down in the wind and the tall plants could have got damaged. I hope the weather does not get so bad, but better to be safe than sorry. It could be bad to loose the plants now. It is still totally calm outside, but overnight it should get windy and the gusts can be 23 m/s tomorrow.

The flimsy shelf thing I purchased earlier came now handy. I was able to get a lot of plants on small area.


The plants may have to stay indoors couple of days, because Friday should be quite cold. Northern Wisconsin may even get some snow.

[svalli]

#@%&#*@% One of the C. chinenses, which is still inside has started to look really bad. The leaves have brown spots on them and have started to yellow and drop off. First thing in my mind was that it had got some disease transmitted by the bat guano, but some recent posts on the forum made me to take a closer look. I had to look really hard, until I saw something tiny and pale moving on the stem. I checked also the plants which still look good and saw these tiny pests moving on them too. My peppers have MITES!!! :x

I searched information and found out that these must be Broad Mites, which are known greenhouse pest on peppers. I sprayed pyrethrin canola oil mix on the plants yesterday evening. This morning I still found moving mites, so I may have to find something stronger. Some websites recommended dunking the plants to 45°C warm water for 15 minutes. This should kill the mites, but not the plants. I may have to try that with the worst looking plant first. These plants are my favorite mild seasoning peppers, so I do not want to throw them away, without a fight. This is a declaration of war against the mites!  :evil:

[Tupakka]

Happy hunting!  

[svalli]

I do not recommend the warm water bath as remedy against mites. I tried it last week with four plants and it almost killed them. The mites seemed to die and the plants looked  good even the next morning, but in the evening the leaves were hanging down. There still seems to be life in the stem and the tiny leaf buds are still green, so I will try to nurse the plants back to life. I sprayed the plants with Harpin, hoping that this new miracle product will make the plants grow faster and still be able to produce this season.

I was going to plant tomatoes and some of the peppers in the garden last weekend, but luckily I checked the weather forecast before starting. We had still frost last night. By the house the lowest temperature had been +0.9°C, so in the lower spots it might have gone below 0°C. Many people in the area have been telling me not to plant tomatoes until Memorial day (last Monday in May). I have been usually planting at Mother's day. This year I am glad that I did not hurry, since we have had these late frosts.

[svalli]

What a difference a week makes. Week ago Sunday the high temperature was about 15°C and now we have 33°C in shadow. Garden beds are ready for planting, but I it is too hot to plant right now.  I may have to try to do it just before sunset or wake up early tomorrow and start working right away.

This may be a record hot Memorial day weekend in our area.

[svalli]

We found the first ripe strawberry!    May has been so rainy that this year we may get good strawberry harvest.

I have finally started to plant peppers into the garden. Annuums are now in and tomorrow I will plant the rest. I have to get everything planted this weekend, because next Friday I will fly to Finland for two weeks.

[svalli]

I came back from Finland just before Juhannus (mid summer). DH had watered the plants and all had survived. Naturally I have now a lot of weeding.


One Aji Habanero grew quite large inside, so I left it in the house, since I did not want to risk it to the wind. It has grown quite large and there was already one ripe pod. For some reason it has been dropping most of the flowers.