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If you have a trader joes nearby look in the dumpster they throw out tons of the black plastic pots the fresh flowers get shipped in. I mean I guess you could ask the employees if they would save them for you but  e: have a spider bro for new page 
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Oct 1, 2021 16:16
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I should have brought the black swallowtail caterpillars inside when i saw them eating carrots and parsley. A murder of crows came by a few days later and probably scooped them up. 
Jabronie fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Oct 1, 2021 |
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Oct 1, 2021 16:42
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My er jing tiao are doing decently, with a couple dozen ripe peppers? Except I only now realise I have no idea what to do with fresh er jing tiao.  I think I'll use them as babby's first Sichuan pickling experiment and make pickled/fermented sichuan peppers. On the other hand, it would kind of suck to waste my entire harvest if I fail at it.
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Oct 1, 2021 17:06
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Jan posted:My er jing tiao are doing decently, with a couple dozen ripe peppers? Those look great! You can just chop them up and toss them in a stir fry, you can dice them up and put them on things, or pickle of course. Mala market has a good recipe that takes out the guessing. https://blog.themalamarket.com/making-sichuan-pickled-peppers-pao-la-jiao/ You can eat them green or red, the flavors are slightly different, but work well together too. You can get away with overwintering the plants too. They respond well to getting chopped off under their lowest Y split and will just grow new ones next year. Just don't let it sit in water and freeze. It'll need a lot less water, and if it stays above 50-55F you just need to worry about drowning it. If you take it inside after cutting it, it'll just start growing again too.
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Oct 1, 2021 17:28
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Jan posted:I think I'll use them as babby's first Sichuan pickling experiment and make pickled/fermented sichuan peppers. On the other hand, it would kind of suck to waste my entire harvest if I fail at it. I don't do a whole complicated pickling thing, I just slice up peppers and pour vinegar over them and keep them in the fridge, they last for months that way. And on the other hand I just royally hosed up babby's first fermentation project so I would not recommend you try that with a small and valued harvest.
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Oct 2, 2021 03:19
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Jhet posted:Those look great! You can just chop them up and toss them in a stir fry, you can dice them up and put them on things, or pickle of course. Mala market has a good recipe that takes out the guessing. https://blog.themalamarket.com/making-sichuan-pickled-peppers-pao-la-jiao/ You can eat them green or red, the flavors are slightly different, but work well together too. Yeah, I plan on overwintering the 2 plants that have survived, and keeping a bunch of seeds for replanting the one that I rudely drowned. Winter here is actually mild enough that I could probably just keep the plants intact for overwintering, I accidentally did that with chocolate bell peppers and they produced again the next year. This'd be more for the Chinese cooking thread, but I was hesitating between Food of Sichuan's pickling process and Mala Market's. The main difference is really just that Food of Sichuan includes a fermentation period, but I think that's just because it's the generic process for keeping a jar of lacto-fermented Chinese pickles. I dunno if the chilies are traditionally fermented as well or just pickled...
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Oct 2, 2021 05:51
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Does a hoop house style greenhouse absolutely have to be on a level foundation? I could see it being a problem if the ground is uneven for a rigid framed greenhouse that uses panels. For a lighter frame with a poly cover, it would lean, but it wouldn't be a problem, right? I'm still in the planning stage, so I'm not committed to any one idea just yet.
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Oct 3, 2021 17:22
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Jan posted:Yeah, I plan on overwintering the 2 plants that have survived, and keeping a bunch of seeds for replanting the one that I rudely drowned. Winter here is actually mild enough that I could probably just keep the plants intact for overwintering, I accidentally did that with chocolate bell peppers and they produced again the next year.
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Oct 3, 2021 17:43
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Topo Chico Debarge posted:Does a hoop house style greenhouse absolutely have to be on a level foundation? I could see it being a problem if the ground is uneven for a rigid framed greenhouse that uses panels. For a lighter frame with a poly cover, it would lean, but it wouldn't be a problem, right? I'm still in the planning stage, so I'm not committed to any one idea just yet. Depends on how you build it, but that sounds like it's going to cause all manner of structural issues. I would suggest picking the highest corner and build it level based on that, then fill in the gaps around the sides.
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Oct 3, 2021 18:50
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Who did you buy your initial seeds from? I pulled them from dried peppers from Mala Market and then isolated them in my basement last year. Then sent them around to a bunch of goons and family. I'll have more to send out after next growing season as I wasn't able to isolate myself this summer. You could just as well order a package from Mala Market and start them yourself. The ones they sell go in and out of stock, but they're sun dried and have all grown true. https://themalamarket.com/collections/sichuan-spices-dry-goods/products/er-jing-tiao-chili
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Oct 3, 2021 19:11
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A few weeks ago I asked if my runaway tomato plant would come back if I cut it way back, and I ended up taking maybe 1/3 to 1/2 off of it. Now it's still huge and unkempt but it's full of tomatoes with several bunches of 2/3/4 coming in nicely, better than at any other point in the season, so I guess it worked out.
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Oct 3, 2021 21:09
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This is your reminder to check your irrigation system. I noticed my blueberry bushes were looking a little toasty. The soil was dry, and I immediately gave them a thorough soaking with the hose. They’re on drip irrigation that has worked fine for months since I last touched it, and a manual cycle seemed to go as it should, so I’m a little confused about what’s gone wrong. Supporting that confusion is the fact that lingonberries and gooseberries in the same zone aren’t suffering, though I can probably chalk that up to them getting substantially more shade. Anyway, the plants will recover. I wish I’d caught the issue a couple days earlier, but it’s better than catching it a couple days later. I reset the time of watering to be at a time of day were I’m more likely to be outside and notice it running (or not). I’ll probably pull the zone’s lines and run fresh ones in the spring. There are some changes I ought to make to water new and growing plants better, and it’s a good opportunity to refresh all the ageing plastic.
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Oct 4, 2021 08:16
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showbiz_liz posted:I don't do a whole complicated pickling thing, I just slice up peppers and pour vinegar over them and keep them in the fridge, they last for months that way. And on the other hand I just royally hosed up babby's first fermentation project so I would not recommend you try that with a small and valued harvest. What happened with the fermentation? It should be as easy as pickling: add brine, cover, put in dark place, wait two weeks.
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Oct 4, 2021 13:59
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Jhet posted:I pulled them from dried peppers from Mala Market and then isolated them in my basement last year. Then sent them around to a bunch of goons and family. I'll have more to send out after next growing season as I wasn't able to isolate myself this summer. You could just as well order a package from Mala Market and start them yourself. The ones they sell go in and out of stock, but they're sun dried and have all grown true. https://themalamarket.com/collections/sichuan-spices-dry-goods/products/er-jing-tiao-chili
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Oct 4, 2021 17:22
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Arsenic Lupin posted:No worries, I already have a package of those. This will give me a good winter project. Expect to plant about double in the space you'd plant a bushier variety. They're stringy and don't mind growing closer together than a lot of other peppers.
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Oct 4, 2021 17:38
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Yeah, I tried germinating seeds from Mala Market's dried er jing tiao and didn't get much luck. Jhet sent over some more seeds and I also struggled with those. I eventually got 3 seedlings, but overall these have been trickier for me than other peppers or nightshades.
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Oct 4, 2021 18:33
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I've moved to a zone so moderate that you don't expect to be able to ripen tomatoes, so I think I'm finally going to splurge on one of these in order to grow weird hot peppers and probably a Cherokee Purple.
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Oct 4, 2021 19:10
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Chad Sexington posted:What happened with the fermentation? It should be as easy as pickling: add brine, cover, put in dark place, wait two weeks. It smells weird in a bad way and has a vey noticeable bitter taste.
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Oct 5, 2021 00:41
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showbiz_liz posted:It smells weird in a bad way and has a vey noticeable bitter taste. Do you have a vacuum saver? It’s one of my favorite ways to do pickles with just the salt and no added liquid. It’ll make its own and stay oxygen free. 1.5-2% salt by weight onto the whatever and leave the bag in a warm and dark place for a couple weeks. Beans and peppers are my favorite, but most garden fruit/veg can be done like this. Really takes out the guessing when you use your own produce too. In gardening news, my winter cabbage have exploded in size this week. That and the winter rye I planted as green manure is starting to sprout too. Radishes and water cress just don’t feel like enough, but I’m still dealing with the last of the tomatoes and the chard and collards haven’t slowed down even a little. Kind of wish I’d started a few more things because it’s feeling like a struggle to keep everything watered anymore.
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Oct 5, 2021 02:15
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I got my citrus trees this weekend!! Satsuma on the left and kumquat on the right.
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Oct 5, 2021 06:42
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I'm living in a basement suite with mostly small windows, and my large window not getting any light. I'm looking at picking up a light to help with my current set of plants (green onion grown from trimmings, and thai basil I'm trying to root from cuttings). Would a regular lamp with a CFL bulb over a shelf work fine? Should I get a grow bulb? And if I'm getting a grow light, will a smaller setup like that support a pepper plant? I'm looking at seeds for chocolate mini bells since I've never tried the variety and minis look like they'd be able to fit in my space decently.
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Oct 5, 2021 14:24
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Tyty posted:I'm living in a basement suite with mostly small windows, and my large window not getting any light. I'm looking at picking up a light to help with my current set of plants (green onion grown from trimmings, and thai basil I'm trying to root from cuttings). Would a regular lamp with a CFL bulb over a shelf work fine? Should I get a grow bulb? LED grow lights are cheap these days. Depending on what you wanna do you can go with a variety of bulbs (the white light-emitting GE ones are a smidge pricey but v good, and there’s multiple kinds/tiers depending on how much sunlight you’re trying to replace) or tube and panel-style lights. For 1-4 small plants a basic LED bulb in a standard home housing would be fine. If you decide to start building a collection, you’ll want to light them all fairly consistently. In my apartment I ended up setting up an IKEA IVAR shelving unit with some Barrina LED lights to hold my succulents and indoor bonsai during the winter, but I also have like 125+ (mostly very small) plants Edit: clarifying bulb type. I would not go with CFL if I was buying new. I’m only talking LED trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Oct 5, 2021 |
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Oct 5, 2021 14:52
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The spectrum is O.K., you could grow a plant under them, but it’s not the most practical choice. In 2021, grow lights exist as a product category because they put out a lot of light and they do it on the cheap. The Sun is bright and plants demand a surprising amount of light. It works out to something like sixty watts of fluorescent draw (so two hundred‐watt incandescent equivalents) for every single square foot of growing space. Now with just a couple plants you could try huddling them up close, but then you run into issues with the intensity of the light varying widely across the foliage. The other reason it’s impractical is that CFLs take twice as much energy to put out the same amount of light as LEDs. I have several CFLs sitting on the back corner of a shelf, new in package, that I’m just going to have to dispose of as hazardous waste. Even though they are effectively free as a sunk cost, the energy they waste versus an LED bulb over their lifetime would more than pay for the LED bulb, and that LED bulb would last three times as long and provide better light quality all the while, not to mention turning on instantly and giving no trouble in the cold. Now that I think about it, in a basement suite, I expect you don’t have your own electric meter, so if the CFLs are free you may as well use them, but it’s going to take more light than you think to make the plants happy.
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Oct 5, 2021 14:55
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Tyty posted:I'm living in a basement suite with mostly small windows, and my large window not getting any light. I'm looking at picking up a light to help with my current set of plants (green onion grown from trimmings, and thai basil I'm trying to root from cuttings). Would a regular lamp with a CFL bulb over a shelf work fine? Should I get a grow bulb? I set this up a month or two ago and it's worked gangbusters for midseason herb starters and now bucket potatoes. Cheap shelving unit and $50 LEDs from Costco hooked up to a timer I can control with Google Home. Probably actually going to have to remove one of the shelves and hang the third light from the ceiling because the potatoes are crowding the light. Be forewarned though if your space is small: the light is pretty substantial. I don't have to turn on my basement lights for the most part because three of these LEDs illuminate the whole room from the corner.  Arsenic Lupin posted:I've moved to a zone so moderate that you don't expect to be able to ripen tomatoes, so I think I'm finally going to splurge on one of these in order to grow weird hot peppers and probably a Cherokee Purple. I have one of the smaller aerogardens (visible on the top shelf above!) and I can't recommend it. It's possible the bigger ones are built better, but the pump on the little one crapped out on me, causing an algae problem. I'm also a little dubious about whether 24 inches of clearance is enough for even a dwarf tomato. Small peppers you could probably get away with though...
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Oct 5, 2021 15:50
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Chad Sexington posted:I have one of the smaller aerogardens (visible on the top shelf above!) and I can't recommend it. It's possible the bigger ones are built better, but the pump on the little one crapped out on me, causing an algae problem. I'm also a little dubious about whether 24 inches of clearance is enough for even a dwarf tomato. Small peppers you could probably get away with though... Does anybody know a reputable all-in-one hydroponics system for larger plants? Aerogarden makes this one. Google and Amazon searches are now so hosed up that I can't find anything that looks promising. I do own an interior LED grow light, so I can do without that bit if necessary.
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Oct 5, 2021 16:23
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I have the smaller one, and yeah, it is way too small for peppers, the dwarf tomato it shipped with, or the basil it also shipped with. Honestly, I tried to put one together myself a couple years ago and didn’t like the mist for my peppers as much as I did for my greens. The roots just grew down quickly to sit in the wet at the bottom of the tub I was using. These days I usually see pepper growers using a Nutrient Film or Deep Water Culture system just because it’s easier to manage with the size of the plants. Aero garden is great, but you need a lot of mist on a lot of empty space because the plants prefer to grow farther apart than lettuce and herbs.
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Oct 5, 2021 16:48
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Thing is, I really don't want to hand-build a hydroponic system to grow maybe 4-5 pepper plants. Does anybody know somebody who makes prebuilt systems other than Aerogarden?
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Oct 5, 2021 19:03
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Thing is, I really don't want to hand-build a hydroponic system to grow maybe 4-5 pepper plants. Does anybody know somebody who makes prebuilt systems other than Aerogarden? You're not likely to find a pre-built system sized for peppers that's non-commercial and has multiple plants per reservoir because it'd be enormous and prohibitively difficult to ship without breaking. The closest thing to a "prebuilt" system for indoor pepper growing is probably going to be 5 gallon bucket DWC systems that come with an air pump. There's a ton of those on Amazon available individually or in small sets (the sets typically have a gang valve for splitting a larger air pump across multiple containers). They don't have integrated lights and usually don't come with fertilizer, but you won't need to break out a drill and holesaw or anything. They may or may not come with media, which is something else to keep in mind.
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Oct 5, 2021 19:24
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That's very very helpful, thanks. I'm in weed-growing country, so we have hydroponics stores; I may enquire there. (When I first moved to California in the early '00s, I waltzed into the local hydroponics store and asked about growing tomatoes. They gave me blank stares. I realized that I was not their audience.)
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Oct 5, 2021 19:41
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Arsenic Lupin posted:That's very very helpful, thanks. I'm in weed-growing country, so we have hydroponics stores; I may enquire there. (When I first moved to California in the early '00s, I waltzed into the local hydroponics store and asked about growing tomatoes. They gave me blank stares. I realized that I was not their audience.) Oh. If you've got local shops, that changes some things. A DWC set up for tomatoes or peppers is really only going to differ from one for pot in terms of fertilizer and odor control. The 5 gallon bucket DWC systems are priced as high online as they are because shipping big hollow thin plastic things is expensive and riddled with shipping failures. You can also just get 5 gallon bucket lid netpots. They're absurdly priced individually online (because they're hard to ship economically without them breaking) but I bet a dedicated hydro shop either has them already or could order them for you.
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Oct 5, 2021 19:53
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Peppercorn plants came in. I've never had anything like this shipped before so this is kinda fun:
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Oct 5, 2021 21:32
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Motronic posted:Peppercorn plants came in. I've never had anything like this shipped before so this is kinda fun: Northwest native plants always ships like that. It's great. Never lost a plant they've shipped me.
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Oct 6, 2021 02:57
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Motronic posted:Peppercorn plants came in. I've never had anything like this shipped before so this is kinda fun: I was incredibly impressed when my citrus arrived like that.
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Oct 10, 2021 16:16
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Hydro: get some work buckets from Lowe’s and two socket plug timers, then also two air pumps, 4 air stones, and some tubing from the aquarium aisle at the Walmart next door. Total cost ~$60 Buy a bag of hydroton and some baskets from your local hydroponics store and you’re all set, minus lights and nutrients and space and cutting holes in the bucket lids for the baskets and air pump tubing
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Oct 11, 2021 05:41
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Ghost peppers, right? They should be a little more red in a few days, but they’re such nice specimens and I’m sending peppers to family and one of these pretties is in the box.
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Oct 11, 2021 17:05
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Is there a go-to tome I can get from the library (or buy) that covers the mechanics of various irrigation techniques for raised bed planters?
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Oct 11, 2021 17:51
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Thanks for the advice! I ended up picking up just a simple phillips grow bulb for now. Just a temp setup since I don't have a lamp that points down, but they seem to like it. They're growing more upwards instead of reaching like they were when I had them on the windowsill. I have some veggie potting mix ready for when I get some nicer indoor pots to transplant them to too. Chad Sexington posted:Be forewarned though if your space is small: the light is pretty substantial. I don't have to turn on my basement lights for the most part because three of these LEDs illuminate the whole room from the corner. I don't actually mind how bright mine has ended up. I prefer daylight temperature, and the bulbs that are up in the ceiling are kinda dim anyways.
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Oct 13, 2021 05:43
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Tyty posted:Thanks for the advice! I ended up picking up just a simple phillips grow bulb for now. I like running my annoying grow lights early in the morning. They turn on at 5 and run for like 6 hrs to supplement the daylight. I could probably start them at 4 and get them to shut off at 10AM. I know people who run their office, etc grow lights at night/when they aren’t around
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Oct 13, 2021 05:55
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Ok Comboomer posted:I like running my annoying grow lights early in the morning. They turn on at 5 and run for like 6 hrs to supplement the daylight. I could probably start them at 4 and get them to shut off at 10AM. I have mine all running from 6 AM to 10 PM and it makes my living room feel like summer even in the dead dark cold butthole of winter and I love it.
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Oct 13, 2021 13:39
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Wallet posted:I have mine all running from 6 AM to 10 PM and it makes my living room feel like summer even in the dead dark cold butthole of winter and I love it. I wonder if keeping a v “unreal” photoperiod like that could have any negative effects on plants I imagine that running lights 24/7 would be bad for CAM plants in particular, like many succulents, which need nighttime to perform vital metabolic functions Guess I know what literature I’m gonna be looking at this morning 
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Oct 13, 2021 13:58
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