Today I guess I finally went off the deep end. Completing planting meant squeezing in three more tomato plants (a Casey's Pure Yellow regular leaf - meaning it is a mystery F1 hybrid - that already set a cluster of fruit, an indeterminate growing in the dwarf Summertime Green - also an F1 mystery hybrid - and an additional Striped Sweetheart; in fact, the one in the 10 gallon container didn't look quite right, so I swapped a new seedling in that pot and moved the existing one to a 2 gallon pot. All three new tomatoes are small pot, meaning they will get the extreme pruning treatment - the goal is a few clusters of fruit to see what results - and some saved seed.
But the real deep end for me is represented by the 150 plus small (1 gallon) pots that contain my annual ornamental hot pepper experiment! They are lined up in the driveway, as well as in two different areas of the big garden. I took all of the best looking ones from last year and started seed; I then (today) planted one each of each different leaf/stem color for each of the varieties. I had 9 flats of them....18 pots to a flat - that translates to 162 different hot pepper plants, each one of them a bit of a mystery. It is clear that most of them are still segregating a bit, but by planting so many I can get a sense of the full potential/color range of the various selections. Fun stuff for sure and a future seed saving and record keeping headache!
A few other random thoughts today - some lower foliage disease is starting to show up here and there, no surprise with the warm, muggy nights we are now getting. Nothing seems all that serious yet; the worst hit so far is Dester, a variety that the SSE kindly shared with me (it won the best tasting tomato prize at last year's tasting at the SSE in Iowa). A few of the dwarfs are also showing just a bit of yellowing and spotting on the lower foliage. Tomorrow I may take my scissors and a pot around and take off any ugly looking branches that I find. Some of the dwarf varieties are really kicking out the blossoms. And there is fruit setting on lots of plants.
So for my future updates I will be rotating among the following categories: indeterminate tomatoes in large pots, indeterminate tomatoes in small pots, dwarf tomatoes, hot peppers (including the various Bird types), sweet peppers (including the new varieties out of Islander), eggplant, and the colorful experimental small pot hot peppers.....wow. Going to be lots of videos and pictures to take and post so I can take you all along on the ride with me!
But the real deep end for me is represented by the 150 plus small (1 gallon) pots that contain my annual ornamental hot pepper experiment! They are lined up in the driveway, as well as in two different areas of the big garden. I took all of the best looking ones from last year and started seed; I then (today) planted one each of each different leaf/stem color for each of the varieties. I had 9 flats of them....18 pots to a flat - that translates to 162 different hot pepper plants, each one of them a bit of a mystery. It is clear that most of them are still segregating a bit, but by planting so many I can get a sense of the full potential/color range of the various selections. Fun stuff for sure and a future seed saving and record keeping headache!
A few other random thoughts today - some lower foliage disease is starting to show up here and there, no surprise with the warm, muggy nights we are now getting. Nothing seems all that serious yet; the worst hit so far is Dester, a variety that the SSE kindly shared with me (it won the best tasting tomato prize at last year's tasting at the SSE in Iowa). A few of the dwarfs are also showing just a bit of yellowing and spotting on the lower foliage. Tomorrow I may take my scissors and a pot around and take off any ugly looking branches that I find. Some of the dwarf varieties are really kicking out the blossoms. And there is fruit setting on lots of plants.
So for my future updates I will be rotating among the following categories: indeterminate tomatoes in large pots, indeterminate tomatoes in small pots, dwarf tomatoes, hot peppers (including the various Bird types), sweet peppers (including the new varieties out of Islander), eggplant, and the colorful experimental small pot hot peppers.....wow. Going to be lots of videos and pictures to take and post so I can take you all along on the ride with me!
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