Scorching the Garden 2020 Part 4

This is the third documented grow for us and we are introducing a lot of new things this year. We have more hardware, better software, and the same growing plan that has worked for many years. In a matter of months, we will be setting up the gardens. We visited them at the end of February to see how they were doing…

We visited the main gardens again to see how things are going. This has been a very wet winter with a few periods of freezing temps. In the first plot, the bedding has turned to dust. It doesn’t look like any weeds popped up. It’s probably due to a combination of the weather and our growing system.

The other plot was not given the manure treatment. You can see where each plant was. There aren’t any weeds here either. Some of the cardboard has survived and when a piece was flipped over, it revealed what we thought we would see. Life is living. We discover an earthworm and a few cutworms breeding. Digging down into the woodchips, we find the fungal network that we love so much being built.

All in all we’re pleased with the condition of the plots. We still have 3 months to go before we can set up. Good thing too. We need more cardboard, tomato cages, posts, and time.

Back to the nursery! We set up another round of seeds to sprout. We’re getting a good germination rate and every day, more and more sprouts are being planted and the planted ones are coming up.

We’re growing several other varieties of peppers along with our traditional GANG OF NINE this year: Lemon Drop, Datil, Bebier, Aja Charapita, Chiltepin. There are just so many amazing kinds of peppers out there, its hard to not grab a few seeds and grow a plant or five.

One thing we did with the dried Aji from last year was to mix it with a 5% salt:vinegar brine. With Aji being touted as the world’s most expensive pepper, that would make this world’s most expensive hot sauce. We’ll let this sit for a year and give it a try. Ajis taste like little habaneros. They may or not be as spicy, you only get a little pebble for each pepper and they do have quite a bit of heat for their size. That may be what makes them so munchable.

We’ll be doing more experiments like this with these new peppers and asking you to sample them. So if you haven’t yet, like our FB page so we know who our fans are.

This is our super hot wing, where we’re growing our super hots. We started out with Reapers, Ghosts, and Scorpions. Thirty-six to begin with, then another 18 each.

This year, we had the highest germination rate ever which resulted in the fastest filling of the nursery yet. This is also the most amount of peppers we have started at one time.

We have an abundance of our experimental pepper strains: Lemon Drop, Datil, and Aji Charapita-the world’s most expensive pepper. Ajis are not pictured here, they were too small to see when the photo was taken.

On the other side, we have habaneros and the rest of the Gang of 9. Serrano, cayenne, jalapeno, wax, and pepeproncini. Since the not as hot pepper plants tend to produce more, we’re not growing as many as the super hots this year.

If you’re not familiar with our Gang of 9, do yourself a favor check them out. They seem like a rough bunch, which they are, but once you get to know them, you start to love them. Next thing you know, you can’t get enough of them.