Skip Pallesen

323

Retired Chemist

I have been growing peppers from seeds for over two decades. For much of that time I do fifty pots each year. Most of the peppers are your common garden variety such as bell, banana, serrano and jalapenos that I could pick up plants from a nursery but I enjoy growing them from seed. Other peppers I grow such as guajillo, pasilla and chile de arbol are not available as plants from places here. This season has not started out as I would like. I bought my seeds last November from a well-known company because they had one variety I could not find elsewhere. This was my first time with this company. I got nine varieties and they went into cowpots in mid-February. To date, not one seed has germinated out of my fifty pots. I usually plant three seeds per pot and keep the strongest looking one. I have ordered new packets of seeds from a different company I have used before, along with more seed starting soil and cowpots.

Seeds went into their pots today. Should know something in two weeks

Ordered seeds for next season. I am going to wait until March to start them

Has anyone tried to grow Dragon's Breath peppers?

After an unexpected detour that took me away from my pepper plants I am finally back. Talk about a bad year,. While I was not here,my wife did not keep up with watering and harvesting so I have nothing to show for my efforts. Time to order seeds for next year.

I am really about to give up for this year. I looked out my bay window this morning and found that my hummingbird feeder was missing. I just refilled it yesterday. All I could find was the chain hanging from the shepherds crook. Now, I have not heard of any sightings of an interstellar cockroaches or radiation enlarged ants so I am not sure what took it. I searched the yard and could not find it. I did see that one guajillo which had three red peppers on it yesterday, now had only one, and that was half eaten. Yields have been terrible, except for my jalapeños.

I must have mutant squirrels. Sometime in the past, the ancestors of the current inhabitants must have mated with shrews. At dinner tonight, I looked out the window and watched as one squirrel was eating an ancho pepper while two others were chowing down on a guajillo.

Well, I lost all of my reapers and Thai gong bao plants, two of my serranos, three of my de arbol, one ancho and two pasilla. The ancho went when a squirrel tried to climb it and broke it off near the bottom. I have peppers on most of my reaming plants.

In all of the time I have been planting, I have never had a season such as the one I am experiencing. Torrential rains, strong winds, cool temperatures, lack of sun and hail have played havoc with my pepper plants. Squirrels have dug up three plants burying nuts, rabbits have eaten the sunflower shoots I plant for finches and a ground hog feasted on the flower seedlings I plant for hummingbirds and butterflies. I hope to have at least one variety of each pepper survives. My tomatoes and cukes are not bothered.

After a series of storms, I may have lost one of my Serrano plants. It is mangled and has lost leaves. Not giving up on the plant yet.