You know – if I can be quite honest with you, there were times (and still are) when Shala & I wonder if this whole gardening thing is really meant for us. Our first year death to life ratio when it comes to plants is staggering. We tend to leave out the fact that something dies – as it isn’t as fun as the positive things that go on in our garden.
After talking to some people around this area and even hearing it on the news with local farmers – we realized this has been one of the worst years for vegetables in a long time. The extreme heat, lack of actual rain & hot dry wind… a deadly combo. So after hearing others say they were having a hell of a time, we didn’t feel so bad about murdering out half of our plants. 😉 See how that works… other people struggle and now our killing of plants are justified. Pretty smooth eh?
However, this past month we have gotten rain after rain (ok, like 3 inches total… but still – tons for our lil area) storm and nice weather in general (haven’t crossed 100 in a while). So with this great weather and actual Jesus drops… our plants started to really take off. Seriously we look at you guys’ gardens and we want to throw up. THROW UP!
“look at my peas/squash/tomato/bean/blahblahbalhABLHBALhBLahbahlah!”
We want to go and pee in your gardens… well – you know what we mean. By pee we mean steal all the plants & veggies and take pictures and post them on the web before we kill them with love and act like they are ours. We are sneaky like that. Sometimes.
I say all of that to say this…
The one thing I wanted more than anything was Jalapenos. If you saw how many we eat at any given BBQ – you would see why. In fact, any given day – sandwiches, burgers, tacos, quacamole… I mean anything & everything. So this was a no brainer to grow these guys.
Well just like everything else… all of our peppers have been a joke. Blooming and immediately throwing those blooms on the ground. Had a few die. We bought 2 more to fill the gaps… so 4 jalapeno plants in total… and we have eaten a total of ZERO jalapenos from them. We also have grown Santiago Hybrid & Hot Portugal from seed only to see them act like their row-mates – the jalapenos, and hate us as parents.
Not to mention the banana pepper & bell pepper plants that must hate us as well… they haven’t died, but they laugh when we walk by and see blooms on the ground. We have read, acted and tried EVERYTHING on earth to remedy this problem and until the rain of late… it was all futile at best.
So here we go… the time has come for us to be the badasses we knew we always were… you read? Ready to hate? Get your hatin’ hats on, your going to want to pee on our garden soon enough. Actually – go ahead and hate us after the jump.
These below are the ones we grew from seed, first one is the Santiago Hybrid… second one is the Hot Portugal.
Then lastly the banana pepper plant & bell pepper plant…
I have oserved,if plants throw of their flowers, they have stress! Possibilities:To much water, not enough water. The most common thing is: the watering has to be constant, never let the plant go thursty and then water again. Keep it watered and I would suggest to mulch your Chilli plants. They have very fine surface roots and they dry out quickly. Mulch keeps the sourrounding area moist and keeps the plant happy to prduce. You will get plenty of Jalapenos; I do!
Congratulations on your peppers taking off! Glad the weather is finally behaving for you!
Sam
@Sam – thanks, hopefully we have turned the corner. 😉
@titania – I agree, there definitely was tons of stress factors. I’m hoping that it is finally back to normal now. It appears to be on its way if not.
Thanks for stopping by.
My Eggplant has given me the same treatment hopefully it shapes up like your peppers.
@Kristi – I hope so… I read your post the other day about it being a tease. Savages I tell ya… savages. I guess if it was easy, everyone would do it though eh?
There’s something about real rain water you just don’t get when you water yourself.
I’ve never successfully grown anything from seed, everything died on me the year I tried that, nice work.
sounds like they just needed a little time and believe it or not HEAT. I just picked my first few today. Please don’t pee on my garden.
@Megan – agreed – there is something about it that can’t be replaced. Well we started with about a million things and ended up with about 4 that made it. Not a bad percentage right? heh
@deb – never would we pee in your garden… actually yours is one we would steal and claim our own.
Yep, now I want to pee in your garden! My garden has gone to hell in a handbasket! I have deformed cucumbers that the bugs are devouring. My corn just quit growing. The tomatoes… well actually they did great but I waited too long to can them and basically just let them rot. I know, shame, shame on me. I’m embarrassed to admit that weeds have completely taken over the waltermelon & canteloup patch now. I totally suck at weed and insect control!
BUT, I’m NOT going to give up. This weekend I’m going to get back out there and try, try again. Wish me luck.
By the way, your peppers look great!
@Angie – Thanks for the kind words (besides the peeing – guess we asked for that though!).
We just pulled our peaches early because of the birds (thanks deb!) and our watermelon died this week for no reason we can think of.
We still have an ant problem and we have yet to eat much of anything out of our garden yet.
So see… we would make great friends. haha
We have much better luck with jalepenos in the flower beds than in our garden plot…in the garden we get “pepper flies”..yuck!