Hot Peppers

So it has started to get cooler here in Southern California, no more 90 degree temperatures. Prior to this, I had some of my new pepper plants loose a couple leaves. They started turning yellow and then fell off the baby plants.

I actually was not getting a lot of growth on my plants and I thought that maybe I had stunted their growth by over watering them. I stopped watering them every day and swapped to an every other day watering cycle to see if they would begin to grow more leaves, but they have not really picked up their growth.

Today I began spraying them with a solution of Epsom salt and water to see if this will perk them up and get them growing through the winter months so that next summer I will have them big enough to start producing lots of peppers.

I have found Pepper Joe ( http://www.pepperjoe.com ) to be a great resource and this is where I have purchased my Habanero, Moruga Scorpion, and Carolina Reaper seeds.
If anyone wants to share their experiences please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below, however, registration is required in order to comment.

The little can with the Trinidad Scorpion pepper seeds in it finally sprouted. I had this thing outside for nearly two weeks with no activity then all of a sudden this little guy showed up. There was another seedling that sprouted up as well but it was apparently not as strong as this guy and it shrank and looks to have died off. I plan on transplanting this little guy to a new home where he can grow a lot bigger over time.

This is the first Ghost pepper to sprout on my plant. I got this plant at Home Depot as one of the first plants in my garden. As you can see there is some trouble afoot as the leaves seem to have been chewed up a bit.

This little guy was the culprit of the leave being chewed up. He may look cute, but he can pretty much devour a whole plant in about a day. These Horn Worms hatch and then devour anything green in sight. I pulled him off the plant and then began a search for more. I ended up finding about 10 of these Horn Worms in various sizes, I promptly pulled them off my plants and put them in a different location where they could no longer get at my plants. I have now made checking for Horn Worms part of my daily watering routine.

I bought a kit at the Orange County Fair for growing a Scorpion Pepper plant. I followed the instructions to set it all up. I waited and waited but wasn’t getting anything and about 2 weeks later I got a surprise. I am going to wait a bit longer to allow these seedlings to get stronger before I transplant them to the larger pots where they will be allowed to grow into larger plants.

I felt that the sun was a bit too strong for my first set of plants so I decided to build a frame and put up some shade cloth to diffuse the sun a bit. I wanted to protect my plants while still allowing them to get the sun that they will need. We built a frame out of 2×4’s that I mounted shade cloth on top of to provide the protection for the plants.

Once the frame was finished I added the shade cloth. As you can see the sunlight still makes it through to the plants but it is diffused so as to protect the plants from burning.

This was a shot of the cloth at work at 12:30 PM the day after the frame went up.

Today I started working on my our Hot Pepper garden. We have this unused space alongside our house and I thought  that I would like to start a Hot Pepper garden to experiment with making some homemade hot sauces.

 This is the before picture I took this afternoon. As you can see there is not much going on here.

Here is another shot from the front porch looking down at the area. Again not much going on here, although the area does get direct sunlight for a good part of the day.

We made a run to Home Depot and my wife found a Green Bell pepper plant that she wanted and I found a Ghost Pepper plant that I thought would make a great fit in the garden. We also picked up a heat resistant tomato plant like the one we got my parents a couple years back that went absolutely nuts and handled the heat of Southern California quite well. I plan on getting some seeds for Golden Habanero peppers as well as some Carolina Reaper  peppers.

I currently have a Trinidad Scorpion Pepper germinating and I hope it sprouts soon so I can transplant it into its larger pot where I think it will thrive.

Here is the end result of my work this afternoon in the 104-degree heat. The plants that I set up today are as follows from left to right. Red Bell Pepper, Green Bell Pepper, Ghost Peppers, Tomatoes.

Today was just the beginning, I broke up the ground and placed the paving  stones in the dirt to give a level place for the pots to sit. I like the stone work that was done around the right edge and I might look to continue that along the back edge and along the right and then slowly work on paving the entire area as I add more plants to the garden. I might eventually have this set up as a spot to sit outside and relax when it is not too hot out, but this is just the start so we will see what we can do as this project progresses. Stay tuned as I will keep posting more photos and progress updates.