Scorching the Garden 2019 Part 8
Every year we grow the peppers and garlic and onions and herbs to make our sauces. Every year we try something new that we hope is better. We ditch something that doesn’t work out. And we repeat and refine those things that promote the completion of our goals. Follow along and steal all our ideas as we Scorch the Garden in 2019.
Summer, tragically is over. The plants are flowering and fruiting as we approach the end of Stage 1. Now is when all the prep and maintenance begins to really pay off.
The Scorch Wagon is a trooper, but so are our cans. You may notice landscaper trucks with mowers, trimmers, and wheel barrows of all brands, but if you look, the majority of the cans they use are the Rubbermaid Brutes. This is not a promotional plug for any particular product, it’s a review of a piece of equipment. These hold water, compost, mulch, whatever and it does it in the rain, sun, ice, and everything. They have a lifetime warranty, whatever that means, and are foodsafe-a lot of places will use them for ice or marinating hundreds of lbs of food at a time. We are using the 32 gallon size.
We didn’t have an issue with bugs again this year, and here is one more reason why:
Tomato hornworms don’t constrain themselves to just tomato plants. This jerk was trying to get it on with one of the Serrano twins. The little white pustules are predatory wasp eggs. The larvae will emerge from the eggs and eat the creep. Wasps are attracted by the dill and cilantro flowers we have throughout the plots. #noPoisonousCrap
We applied another layer of wood chips to clean things up and help hold more water as the plants build the peppers. Over the next month, the plants will triple in size and they need all the water and nourishment they need. We have begun to add things like banana peels to our compost tea to boost the potassium and phosphorus which is important during the flowing stage.
Wood chips really make things look clean and organized, and it makes it easier to identify which plants were just watered.
Under the leaves, shaded from the unrelenting sun of July, a ghost pepper plant mothers a dozen or more gnarled, green spears. The plants were much larger last year. admittedly. This is a concern, but it will be what it will be. That’s part of the beauty of our sauces. Every season is different and so every harvest is different. Our 2018 Autumn Harvest was one of the best batches we ever made. That is why we are more focused on the quality of the pepper instead of the quantity. If we produce less bottles, so be it.
