Pepper Recovery - the overwintering tale

My Fatali and Long Cayenne peppers have been attacked by aphids and I believe spider mites this winter. They have lost a fair number of leaves and all developing buds but then with the longer days, things are improving.



Much to my surprise the long cayenne appears to be bouncing back. I didn't take a picture of it at its worst out of respect for its dignity but suffice it to say that it had lost almost all of its leaves. The only reason I didn't ditch it was because I hesistate to end my experiments prematurely. When it started to re-leaf I thought that the leaves would come in even smaller than the decreased size they were before they all fell off so am pleasantly surprised by their increasing diametre. It even has some flowers on it.

I did repot it once with enriched (compost) soil to see if it was lacking nutrients so maybe that was the solution?

Anyhow, this year it will be planted in the garden as I will be gone for much of the gardening season (cries to herself) and won't be around to baby potted plants.

The Fatali has some leaf buds that haven't opened yet but I have hope. It hasn't lost all of its leaves but it isn't looking its best.

Links

Overwintering and pepper seedlings (really just an excuse to bring you a new gardening blog you might not have come across)

Overwintering Peppers - a long winter of bugs

This is the first year that I have had to deal with 'bugs' on my overwintered pepper plants and they have taken their toll but none have entirely succumbed yet. I have done the soapy water thing, the crushing insect thing and the hard water spray thing. Now, I mostly just pick off the aphids when I see them, and put a water bowl in the pots to increase the humidity and scare off any spider mites.


My Fatali is doing okay. It has lost a lot of leaves but it is bravely trying to bud up and leaf out again.


My long cayenne is struggling along. It self pruned off its top last year and lost almost all of its leaves this year. Now it is sporting new aphid ridden leaves so we will see. I have noticed that over the years, the leaf size has dropped. Does this mean that it is near the end of its lifecycle?


I h ave only kept two peppers over the winter this year due to a lack of south facing window space but next year I intend on keeping some small fruited sweet peppers indoors as an experiment too. I can just see my husband's face now. I also hope to make sure there are no, absolutely no, aphids on them before I take them indoors!

---

Want to know more about overwintering peppers - please follow the pepper tag for lots more links and more about my saga.

Overwintering peppers - another blog!

I love garden experimenters and here is one who grows peppers in a polytunnel year-round in France:

Mas du Diable

They have a beautiful blog, property and site! (Can I move there with you guys?)

My peppers

Currently, my peppers are fighting off a small infestation of aphids! I have been giving them weekly sprayings of mild soapy water and then washing them off but still the critters remain. They are concentrated on the weaker 'long cayenne' plant. Let us call that 'the fall guy'. The fatali is almost unaffected.

According to at least one site, I should let them drip dry with the soapy solution on them? I have been rinsing them off pretty quickly. I think I'll leave the soap on longer next time.


Hello in there little peppers. The white stuff at the foreground is you guessed it, the smoothering white of winter. I mean snow.

Links

More on Aphids on indoor Pepers at Urban Chiles

A frosty endsolanums versus brassicas

It looked like we might have had a November tomato, but 2 days before, frost hit.


Black cherry tomatoes, various other tomatoes, and in the distance, eggplant all frost bitten

Sad, yes, but not to despair, I still have my cabbage, brussel sprouts, kale, chinese cabbage, tatsoi, broccoli, rabe, as well as root crops and other greens.


From foreground back: chinese cabbage, kale, and brussel sprouts

Caution Gardening 201

For the not quite novice, the forgetful, or the bored.

This is the tale of two vegetable families.

The solanums

• tomatoes
  
• peppers
  
• eggplants
  
• ground cherries
  
• tomatillos
  
• potatoes
  
• etc...
  

These are warm weather lovers. They drink in the sun, and fear frost. With the exception of the potato, it is the fruit that we eat. They should be started between 6-8 weeks before the last frost date, eaten with gusto at the height of the season, and then bid farewell to at first frost in the fall.

For most neophyte table gardeners, tomatoes are at the top of the list of vegetables they grow. They are relatively easy and the taste fresh from a backyard garden is without comparison. I credit the growing requirements of the tomato as part of the reason that so few beginner gardeners are aware of the best practice for growing another group of veggies.


The brassicas:

• Cabbage
  
• Broccoli
  
• Many chinese greens including bok choy, tatsoi etc..
  
• Kale
  
• Broccoli Rabe
  
• Turnips
  
• Kohlrabi
  
• Collards
  
• Brussel Sprouts
  
• etc...
  

Ah, delicious and very healthy brassicas, all are quite cold tolerant. Some are extremely hardy and will survive vicious winters in a cold frame, such as kale, tatsoi, and mustard greens. Others, require a bit more pampering but like purple sprouting broccoli, will happily overwinter in mild winter areas. Most, in fact, prefer cooler weather. Or, should I say, that to get the most out of the vegetable and prevent bolting, you need cool temperatures. For gardeners with a short growing season or little strong sun (because of fog or rain or both) or where it is rarely warm enough to grow a good beefstake tomato, these crops fill in the garden.


Left to right, brassica, parnsips and parsley then dead solanums.

They can be put out when soil temperatures are still on the cool side. Under cloches, and coldframes, I started some fabulous savoy cabbage this year when we were still having light snowfalls. The quick growing brassicas, like short season cabbage, spring broccoli, and any of the leafy greens such as broccoli rabe and bok choy are great early season choices. If you don't have a coldframe, try pop bottle cloches.

Then mid-summer, start another crop of the quick growers to mature in the cool temperatures of fall. Many brassicas such as brussel sprouts and turnips, taste better after being bitten by a few frosts. Starches are converted to sugars to lower the freezing temperature of the vegetable so they are sweeter.

Even if you don't love these tasty treats (and how could you not LOVE BROCCOLI???), grow them just so that your garden doesn't look so sad after first frost.

Long season purple cabbage beautiful contrasted with fall leaves, don't you think?

Links

Coleman's Four Season HarvestFall Crops - tips on plantingFall Crops - an equationVirginia Tech - brassica growing tips

Overwintering hot peppers - sunny season closing

The hot pepper plants will need to come in out of the cold soon so I've dug them up and repotted them in a pot that gave room for their rootballs to expand. Despite this insult, they haven't so much as shaken off a leaf.


Caribbean red and fatali, both habaneros, I believe.

The fatali (with yellow fruit) is doing fabulous this year (year 2) and according to my neighbour is hot HOT HOT. How hot? Let's relive the conversation.

Me: "Do you like hot food?"

Neighbour: "Oh yeah, I love hot food."

Me: "I had quite the harvest of jalapenos this year."

Neighbour: "I don't find them too hot. Just a bit spicey."

Me: "I have a couple of really hot ones. A caribean red one and fatali."

Neighbour: "I've heard of that one."

Me: "Yeah? Want to try one?"

Neighbour: "Sure."

I go and get a fatali, gingerly, wrapping my shirt around it.

Me: "Here you go."

Neighbour: "Thanks." He starts to take a bite.

My face tenses but before I can say maybe you want to cook with it or something - too late.

Neighbour:"Oh yeah, it's hot. Woah. Yeah hot. Wow. That's hot. Ah. I have to go to the backyard now..."

So I guess it's hot.

Here are my jalapenos (also hot).


Jalapenos with stretch marks

My long red cayennes are also in their second year but the top halves have died off. You can see the small one in the foreground.


Hot peppers potted up for overwintering indoors, including long red cayenne.

Unlike the fatali, they were kept in irregularly watered pots all summer so I wonder if drought caused them to die back. Also, unlike the fatali that produced one crop, the cayennes produced several all summer. I'll re-pot them and see how they do this winter.

Links

Info on the Scoville Heat Scale for hot peppers

Season closing part 1 - soil warming

What worked and what didn't in the veggie patch:







Eggplants and peppers were out of this world this year. Seriously, the eggplants performed like zucchini. And like those most notorious of vegetables, I felt like standing at the edge of the drive with armfuls saying, "please take some." Unfortunately, they also share the fact that not everyone is crazy about them (like me.)



Previous years, I have had adequate success with hot peppers but very poor luck with eggplants or sweet peppers.



I have now learned to use a technique called soil warming. This involves covering the soil with clear plastic about 2 weeks or more before planting - I use vapour barrier - and cutting holes in to plant. Seriously, the contrast is between getting a couple mishapen fruit to huge, healthy plants loaded with fruit. This year was not more ideal than most either. It was all down to this fantastic techique. See my demonstration earlier in the year.



Thanks again Ken Allan

Overwintered Peppers - a sunny update

Perhaps, followers (humour me) of my overwintering pepper saga are curious what has happened to the darlings now that they have come out the other side of darkness and cold.

Well, fourty leaf fatali has a little surprise for us:



Finally!

The Recap:

To save you from searching through links to find out all about the excitement of fourty leaf fatali, let me tell you a tale.

Once upon a time, there was a man who was married to a plant crazed lady. She made him watch the children while she attended some excruiatingly boring seed event with a whole bunch of long haired organic types. He would have been dozing in the corner if it wasn't for their baby and toddler. To try and entertain the man, she suggested he pick out a hot pepper variety to grow.

He picked out fatali. The name, at the very least, sounded promising.

However, the plant proved to be anything but. It produced a ground total of 4 leaves the first year. Yes, four. Admittedly, it was smushed into a pot with two other peppers but that was only because the crazy plant lady assumed that the 2 leafed seedling was going to keel over at any minute when potting time arrived.

Well, crazy plant lady decided to try one of her crazy plant projects and brought the overcrowded pepper pot indoors for the looooooooooooooong Ottawa winter. She managed through much subtle negotiation to secure the coveted south window light for her babies. Noticing they looked unhappy in January, she repotted them. By this time, four leaf fatali had suprised her by turning into fourteen leaf fatali. Maybe it liked cold wintertime windows and low angled sun? It also produced buds, would it grow fruit? No such luck! The beds fell. The leaves started to look sad.

Crazy plant lady sighed.

But come spring, she stuck it in the garden in the designated hot pepper spot with what she presumed were others of its kind. Unfortunately, a wind storm had knocked over all her potted pepper babies and she had repotted them hastily, forgetting to make sure they were all labelled properly so Fatali is surrounded by sweet peppers.

Then fourty leaf fatali made more buds, and low and behold fruit!

More overwintered peppers

And my cayenne plants are producing their second crop. I think I'll try and overwinter some of the sweet varities this year.

Reheading cabbage and short season sweet potato update

It's that time of year where I spend all my time gardening, and less time looking up gardening questions unless, of course, there is some problem...


So far, so good.


We have pests: cabbage moth, cucumber beetle, colarado potato beeltle (which only seems to be interested in my physalias - the primary reason I grow the invasive darlings). We have see-saw weather, but so far my veggie crises are minimal.



Re-heading cabbage



Same savoy as in the above link.


Can you see them? Darling little heads growing at the leaf axils as promised! They should make nice tender additions to a soup, a stirfry, my sandwich...

Sweet Potato Mulch

Short season sweeet potatoes starting to vine.


I keep hearing about how these things live by the same 'take-over-the-world-or-at-least-the-garden' moto as pumpkins so I am glad to see they are starting to live up to the promise.



Tender Fruit



Long, oriental type eggplant.


Thanks to clear plastic mulch, this is the first year that I have had such an impressive crop of sweet peppers and eggplants. Okay, perhaps I should be more clear. I have grown eggplants for three years in a row. The previous two years I have gotten less than 4 egg-fruits. Really, I hesitate to call them eggplant fruit at all as they were pathetic examples. I do not blaim the plants themselves but their growing conditions.



Mini-bells, italian frying and some other kind of pepper. They got knocked over as seedlings. It'll be a nearly blind taste test.

Thanks to Ken Allan's amazing book on growing short season sweet potatoes in the north called Sweet Potatoes in the Home Garden, I now have a new way to 'extend my climate zone.' Plastic mulch increases soil temperature which many plants, such as the aforementioned, appreciate.


Ken, you are one of my gardening idols.

Frost Watch 2007 - Day 8Peppers are frost tolerant?

Crabapple, Pretty plant interlude

It seems that the frost watch is nearing its end. We are heading into a mini heat wave, though there may be a few more dips in temperature, we should be leaving 4C and under behind.

All plants survived... (so far)

So to round it all up, a question... my big book of plants says peppers, even capsicum annum (the common garden pepper, including most hot kinds and all sweet kinds) are frost tolerant.

Heads turned on that one, didn't they?

So I endeavor to find out the truth. I figure they ain't that frost hardy! But exactly how hardy are they? Will they stand a light frost?


The Unintentional Experiment:

You may remember my frosted tomato post. That same night, I also left out my eggplants, peppers, ground cherries and sunberries. All frost tender but differently affected. The ground cherries seemed unphased. The peppers appeared wilted in the morning but recovered completely by midday - no obvious damage to the leaves at all. I can't remember what happened to the sunberries though they seem to have no leaf damage either. They may have been very immature at the time. The tomatoes initially seemed fine, but as the day progressed, brown marks appeared between the leaf viens, eventually these lower leaves fell off and new ones grew at the leaf axis.

Does this mean that peppers are marginally (like 1 or 2 degrees) more frost tolerant? Does this mean that ground cherries are husky northern cousins in comparison?


Googling peppers and frost tolerance

According to Plants of a Future database:

"Plants can tolerate a small amount of frost[171]"

My favourite source for plant info - Floridata - agrees, stating:

"Mature plants can tolerate a touch of frost."

That's all the evidence I need, for now. So it seems that a mature pepper plant could take a light or patchy frost occasionally but would be happier without one. I imagine it would drop its leaves but they would soon grow back, as happens when they are stressed for other reasons such as drought, change in light level, doesn't like the look of your shirt...

Ground cherry and frost tolerance?

I have been on this google romp before and found that there are solanum (tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, ground cherries, sunberries, garden huckleberries all belong to this group) brothers and sisters that live, even thrive, this far north. Amoung them are ground cherries. They are not necessarily the best tasting ones (though I have never sunk my teeth into them) but they exist.

Amoung the solanum relatives up north are:

1. Deadly Nightshade - not recommended eating

2. Chinese Lanterns. Anyone with them in their garden will vouch for their hardiness.

3. Clammy Ground Cherry

There are others, I'm sure, but let's focus on the 'ground cherries'. Of the many species listed, I saw a predominance of those that preferred to be in warmer climes but there are some that grow wild here. So was it a fluke that my Aunt Molly's Ground Cherry seemed unaffected by the mild frost that singed my tomatoes and scared my peppers?


I have yet to find a definitive answer, but as always I will notify you immediately when I do.


Black tomatoes more frost tolerant?

And finally, let us think on this quote from Ferme du Zephyr:

"Black tomato plants tend to be quite cold-hardy, with some degree of frost tolerance".

Really?

Anyone have any experiences?

Overwintering Peppers - the magic trick

Long, red cayenne fruiting indoors after flowering indoors.

Tadda!

Update on overwintering peppers: the saga

Long red cayenne fruiting indoors

The good news is that my two 'long red' cayenne are fruiting. I was hoping that they would wait until they were outside so they could get the full push power of the sun but I'm not complaining. (Thanks Patrick for suggesting that I leave the flowers on).

However, the four(teen) leaf fatali has dropped its buds! Otherwise, it looks fine... no new growth, nothing dying. I just hope that next March, I am not writing about my fourteeny fatali's ability to resemble a plastic plant. One of these years, I'll get to taste the citrus fire of fatali.

Note on fun and games with latin names:

According to Ashcroft in Seed to Seed Capsicum chinense (which Fatali belongs to) has been reclassified as belonging to the Capsicum frutescens. I have noticed a W I D E spread use of the original so am not sure of the level of acceptance of this new nomenclature. I will report on further findings!

Floridata discusses this on their capsicum page.

More on overwintering peppers:

Cayenne in flower
Fatali budding
Latin names of hot peppers
Overwintering Peppers - the beginning

Links:

Fatali in flower and a whole load of other peppers in flower. Some have purple blossoms.
Fatali fruit. It's a habenero type.
hot pepper blog
You have got to check out the maturing hot pepper plant - wow!

Cayenne in flower and four(teen) leaf fataliOverwintering Peppers

An update in pictures:



The smaller of the two long cayenne peppers is producing tonnes of flowers. There are even some signs of immature fruit just starting to swell.



The previously named 4 leafed fatali has shocked me by putting on a magnificent flush of leaves and even producing flower buds. I'm waiting impatiently for them to open as they grow oh so agonizingly slow.



For those of you with unusually accute vision or who are afflicted with hortiphilia, you may now be able to see the buds drooping delicately down.

(abundant alliteration accompanies alegere?)

Only two more months before these go outside, maybe less time before I can put them outside for short soujourns under cover. Right now, they have been inside from October onwards - 4 months!

Optimistic Gardener Warning

Will my mini bell peppers make it if I try and overwinter them too? How about tomato stem cuttings?

Links:

Hot Peppers - more facts on growing by self sufficient (ish), a fun site on urban living
Propagating Tomatoes by stem cuttings

Hot peppers are budding again

It wasn't so long ago that I was worried about the demise of my overwintering hot peppers. Well, low and behold, much to my amazement (can I think of any more cliches?), I see buds. The long cayenne has been steadily producing flower buds which I have been plucking off. However, worried that this may be hurting rather than helping (what do I know), I stopped and the healthiest parts are producing thick buds again.

But the big news is that my Fatali - a.k.a. four leaf fatali - (as that is all it had all last season) has flower buds. They are small. The kind of thing that I wouldn't force my non gardening obsessed friends to find, but they are there!

A pepper by any other name...

Foreground: Fatali
Background: Two long cayenne (loosing leaves) and a rosemary plant

First, more fun and games with latin names.

On a previous post, I was hesitant about calling sweet peppers perennials even though I was pretty sure that they were because a 'internet person' had stated that they are called Capsicum annuum. In other words as close to annual as you could get without being so. His reasoning concluded that since they were probably spent by their first year of growth, it didn't matter that they could live another year, or more.

I knew that this wasn't true of hot peppers whose spectacular pictures I had seen, but I wanted to do some more investigation before I made any proclamations about sweet peppers.

Well, my research has lead me to believe that peppers are (most if not all) short-lived semi-woody sub-shrubs. The most commonly grown species is Capsicum annuum which includes many hot and all? sweet peppers (see list below for more details). There are some other Capsicum species from which we get hot peppers such as Capsicum frutescens. I mention this other species in particular because it may explain a mystery of overwintering my own peppers.

Update - Overwintering Peppers

I brought in one overcrowded pot of hot peppers to try an overwintering experiment. They were doing really well. I have not had the bug problems experienced by many other growers and after the initial shock, the plants had all grown a new flush of leaves and blossoms.

Now the embarrassing part. I told you that they were overcrowded right? Yup. Three hot pepper plants had been stuffed into a medium sized pot. It originally was supposed to contain one fatali pepper but my seeds germinated poorly, only one made it to transplating age and then it just sat there with a couple leaves all season. So when someone offered me a couple of long cayenne plants I said sure and threw them in the pot with the fatali. (By the way, the long cayenne produced like champs even in those crowded conditions).

My overwintering project was a bit impulsive too. I just brought a pot in at random, which happened to be the one with the plants mentioned above. About two weeks ago, the largest of the long cayenne plants began to drop leaves again. So I decided in my... what to call it?... desperation to transplant the poor dears. Surprisingly this hasn't seemed to phase them at all and now they all have a lot more foot room.

The long cayenne's are dropping less leaves but don't look so happy. However, the fatali immediately sprouted when I brought it inside. It has been growing steadily and happily ever since. Could this be because it is a different species? Could it be because it was less grown up? I don't know.

I suspect that the long cayenne peppers took a turn for the worst when the temperatures plummetted several weeks back. They are facing a southern window with lots of light but of course they are also more exposed to cold temperatures so close to the glass. I must remember to draw the curtain at night to see if that helps.

Read: Overwintering Peppers

Common Garden Peppers (taken mainly from Pepper Mania):

1. Capsicum annuum:
   
   
   
   • Bells
     
   • Poblano
     
   • Cayenne
     
   • Cheese
     
   • Cherry
     
   • De Arbol
     
   • Frying Italian Types
     
   • Jalapeno
     
   • Ornamentals
     
   • New Mexican
     
   • Paprika
     
   • Pequins
     
   • Tepins
     
   • Wax
     
   • Serrano
     
   
   
2. Capsicum baccatum:
   


• Aji
  
  
3. Capsicum frutescens (according to seed to seed by Ashcroft, the species formally known as chinense are now included here):
   
   
   
   • Tabasco
   • Scotch Bonnet
   • Habanero
   • Fatali
     
   
   
4. Capsicum pubescens:
   
   
   
   • Rocoto
     
   • Manzano.
     
   
   

Some references/links:

Great Pictures: http://petterssononline.com/habanero/peppers.php

Fantastic Site for hot pepper info: http://peppermania.com/chile_seeds.html

Lots 'o' latin names: http://www.g6csy.net/chile/variety.html

Floridata's pepper page: http://www.floridata.com/tracks/peppergallery/pepper_menu.cfm

Another overwintered pepper (scroll to the bottom): http://thomas-jefferson.stumbleupon.com/tag/pepper/





Dried long cayenne chilis

Overwintering Peppers

After reading that:

Hortiphilia Fact

Peppers are perrenials

At least hot peppers are.

I wondered if you could keep them alive for a second growing season. Food producing plants that self seed, overwinter, or are perrenial makes me giddy! So I did some research and found that many people were keeping their hot peppers, and eggplants(? - more reseach to follow) alive to grow another season. So I brought in one of my potted babies. Here it is, a long cayenne, behind the azalea in beautiful bloom.



When I first brought it in, it experienced leaf drop but then started to grow a bunch of new leaves, and flowers. I have been dutifully picking them off so it saves its energy for another season. Hopefully, as according to, Pepper Joe they will produce an early crop next year!

Go to Part Two - A Pepper by Any Other Name...

Sites:

http://www.gardenerscorner.org/subject073929.htm
http://www.rocoto.com/overwinter.html
http://www.gardensalive.com/article.asp?ai=641&bhcd2=1169352244

Peppers in the North

I can do hot peppers - cayenne, banana. No problem. I have a jar full of them dried, but I have yet to be successful with sweet peppers. My one attempt of growing them in a container on my south facing concrete steps ended in three or four edible red mishapen peppers from stunted plants, and I am to embarrased to tell the tale of the eggplant disaster. This will not stop me!

Optimistic Gardener Warning

So I have done my research, and come up with a plan that involves:

1. Growing seedlings in a heated tray
2. Prewarming the soil in my raised bed with 6 mil plastic
3. Surrounding the plantings with stone mulch
4. Fertigating - supplying a slow drip of compost tea or the like directly to the plant
5. Low tunnel during the worst of the season
6. Digging them up to overwinter inside if possible.

Under this will thrive a crop of mini bell peppers, and some italian frying kind (to be purchased), as well as the elusive northern eggplant.

Right now they are just seeds.

Interesting Site:

http://www.fiery-foods.com/dave/garden.asp