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How you care for plants can be entirely different depending on your area. If you go to a local bookstore you should be able to find a book on gardening in the Pennsylvania area.

I also recommend the NY Times Gardening Questions and Answers book.
http://www.amazon.com/York-Times-Garden ... 363&sr=8-1

I have a copy of that and it's great.

Wizard wrote:I love to garden.

this year i've decided to germinate like 12 different kinds of hot peppers. who's got tiiiips!

Welcome to the addiction of growing hot peppers. I can pretty much tell you whatever you need to know.

Here is one of my many harvests from a few years ago:



First, don't crap on your plants. I know that's a joke, but manure needs to be composted before you use it, whether it's cow, human, chicken, or any other type.

Second, Miracle Grow is fine if you know what you are doing, and choose the right variety. It's not my preferred fertilizer, but it works. You're better off starting with a good growing medium, and supplementing with controlled release fertilizer (WITH micronutrients).

If you really get the urge to fertilize, use the right type at the right time. Fertilizers have 3 numbers-- N-P-K. For vegetative growth, use high N. For flowering, use high P. For the vegetative growth, early in the season, use fish fertilizer. Search Home Depot's site for "alaska fish". It stinks really, really bad, but it works really, really well. It is very gentle-- 5-1-1. Use the strongest recommended strength listed on the bottle. When flowers start appearing, shift to a higher P fertilizer. Don't run out and get 10-60-10 or anything like that. Get something milder-- 2-6-1 or whatever you find. You'll have good luck with fertilizer for flowers.

Third, how are you growing these things? In pots, or in the ground?

Fourth, buy a couple of sprayers. Fill one with "parrafin oil" from Home Depot. Spray this weekly to avoid pest breakouts. It's perfectly safe. Fill the other with "liquid copper" from a garden center. Spray this every other week. This will prevent fungus. Don't let water (from watering, rain, or spray) from one plant drip onto the leaves or soil of another plant, or else you're asking for trouble. That's how disease and fungus are transmitted.

Fifth, augment your soil. Add a very small amount of dolomitic lime (Home Depot) to provide extra calcium. Add bone meal (4-12-0). It makes a HUGE difference. Add composted cow manure. It's great shit. If I were going to do only one of these three, bone meal would be it.

By the way, if you don't have your Bhut Jolokia germinated and growing, DO IT NOW. They'll take about 200 days from seed to harvest, so you're already pushing September. In fact, start all your seeds very soon. Hot pepper seeds need warmth to germinate, around 80 - 85 degrees. I start mine on top of my fridge. You have a much shorter growing season than me. You're like a 6b. I'm a zone 8b. We have a much longer growing season, and I'm already late getting my seeds started. You're probably right on time.

When they're about 6" tall, and when the last frost has passed, I harden them off by putting them outside in a sunny, shielded location for a few hours one day, a few more hours the next, and so on, until they are outside all day. I leave them in a shielded, sunny location for a few days before moving them to an open, full-sun location for the season.

I can literally go on and on about this. Give me some specific questions and information about your plans, and I will give you good, proven advice.

Mike

Great post ^

I usually just do flowers. I may have to step into the bright bold world of hot peppers.

jfrey wrote:Great post ^

I usually just do flowers. I may have to step into the bright bold world of hot peppers.

If you do, I highly recommend Pepper Joe's. Excellent stuff.

By the way, I sometimes blog about my pepper garden. Here is a search for "peppers." Start at the bottom. There are some good tips in there.

Mike

Mike wrote:If you do, I highly recommend Pepper Joe's. Excellent stuff.

By the way, I sometimes blog about my pepper garden. Here is a search for "peppers." Start at the bottom. There are some good tips in there.

Mike

Favouriting

that's amazing.

I'm about to go out and get a propagation mat and some soil to germinate these suckers with... What would you suggest soilwise/nutrientwise to add and start with?



i'm really planning on growing an unreasonable number of plants so i think it's going to be split between pots and garden. Would any work better in pots than in the ground?


i wish i had naga jolokias.. they're my favourite tasting peppers.

Wizard wrote:that's amazing.

I'm about to go out and get a propagation mat and some soil to germinate these suckers with... What would you suggest soilwise/nutrientwise to add and start with?



i'm really planning on growing an unreasonable number of plants so i think it's going to be split between pots and garden. Would any work better in pots than in the ground?


i wish i had naga jolokias.. they're my favourite tasting peppers.

You really don't need a mat. Just do it somewhere warm, preferably without drafts, and keep it covered with plastic wrap to retain moisture.

Any old potting mixture works just fine. Just don't use anything marked "soil." Some "seed starting" mixtures exist, but I've never used them. I worked at a high-volume, high-end commercial greenhouse, and we used regular ol' potting mix for every plant, from asters to zinnias, mums to poinsettias, vinca to verbena. Hundreds of thousands of them.

Put the seeds in warm water, and soak them overnight. Plant the seeds just below the surface, maybe 1/8", and mist them with a spray bottle whenever the soil appears dry. I use plastic cups with holes in the bottom. Two to three seeds per cup, and then kill off the weaker plants to leave just one per cup.

Containers vs. ground. In the ground is cheaper, but you may need to adjust your soil for pH. You can get a cheap test at your local university extension. They'll tell you what to add for specific varieties. You can just plant in the ground and will probably get good results. I fail miserably in the ground-- nothing but sand, fungus, and mole crickets in the soil down here.

Containers provide control. You know exactly what is in them because you put it there. Most potting mixes are well-balanced and have some controlled release fertilizer. But, they're expensive, since you have to buy the growing medium. The smallest container I use is about 3 gallons, the biggest is about 7.5 gallons. The bigger the container, the bigger the plant, the more peppers you harvest.

One benefit of containers is that they're mobile. If a plant develops a fungus, you can move it to a different part of the yard. If you're going to get hit by a tropical storm (not a problem for you, but a definite problem for me), you can move the plants to shelter. If you have indoor storage space, you can winter over your plants, and have a HUGE jump start on next season.

It is better to transplant several times than to start with a big pot from the beginning. I typically go from a plastic cup to a 7" pot to a 12" pot to the final pot, allowing the plant to get nearly root bound between transplants. To check if a plant is rootbound, tap the side of the container all around, put your hand over it with the stem in between two of your fingers, flip it, and pull off the pot. You won't damage the plant. If the roots have started to spiral around the outside, it's time to transplant. If the roots are brown, time to transplant.

And one final tip for down the road... I don't know if this actually works, but I do it. Once the plants have started flowering and developing peppers, I let them go down hard before I water them. The leaves get all soft and wrinkly, and the plant looks really bad. Water them, and they perk right up. Not only does this minimize fungus growth, but... here's my unproven theory: The peppers are the means of reproduction, and the heat is their defense. I reason that if you let them go down really hard, something triggers in the plant that screams "Oh shit, we're gonna die-- reproduce as much as we can-- and defend the future by making the fruit extra hot!"

Mike

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xExSdzkZZB0[/youtube]

got the potting mix, have 100 seedling slots and here i go.

i will be referring to these guidelines each step of the way!!

thanks mike!

OK, so I looked up your planting guide (here). You may want to hold off a bit, except on varieties that take a really long time-- the Bhut Jolokia in particular.

The guide recommends setting your plants outside in mid-May. That seems to be on the safe side to me, considering your average last frost is April 20. Peppers are pretty hardy-- beginning of May is probably good. So if you count backwards from then, you have 2 weeks to germinate, a month to grow in a window, and you probably want to wait about 3-4 weeks.

I hope you didn't already plant them! If so, just keep 'em going indoors in a window. The more vegetative growth time you get, the bigger and better developed the plants will be, and the more peppers you get. Some of my plants produced well over a thousand peppers in a year. Then again, my planting guide has me putting them outside in March.

Don't get discouraged if they don't sprout right away. Pepper seeds take around 7-10 days. Some, like the Red Savinas, take about 14 days, and the Jolokias, from my understanding, can take up to 3 weeks. The Jolokias are notoriously difficult to start, by the way, as are certain habaneros.

You're going to have a lot of fun.

Mike

DUDE FOR REAL YOU NEED TO POOP ON THAT SHIT BRO.

Okay, Cool.

I havent planted yet, But i will probably do the jolokia's tomorrow or tonight. I would like to get the peppers germinated as early as possible, i don't mind them living in a window for a little bit, i would like to fully germinate them before going on tour for 10 days, leaving my mom to water them. I will leave them in a window for a bit! plus, more vegetative growth FTW!

Thanks!

This is how I make a garden succeed.

Step One: BUIld the fence
Step Two: Make the Woman farm it.

Oops, step Three: Poop in it.

SPACERITUAL wrote:DUDE FOR REAL YOU NEED TO POOP ON THAT SHIT BRO.

Apparently you need to shit on it.....