- Joined
- Aug 17, 2005
- Messages
- 1,407
So this is my first year using the TLO organic method of growing on my Ghost Pepper plants.
I used no chemical fertilizers on these, only OMRI listed organic materials. The idea was not to
feed the plants but to feed the soil. I have living worm colonies in each of my pepper pots, and
when you touch the soil it moves, full of all sorts of beneficial critters.
I stayed away from peat and opted for coconut in the substrate mix, and the results were much better.
However, I have noted that the coconut coir that is used for reptiles contains a high amount of salts and
it is no good to use for growing. After this I am no longer going to use these coconut coir products in pet
stores, only steamed and sterilized coco fiber for my critters and my plants.
These products used to be much cleaner than they are now, so not sure what has changed over the years,
but I thought it was worth mentioning...
Instead of making salsa or hot sauce with my peppers, I instead went ahead and dried them all and made
pepper powder, and I am very happy with the end results. The peppers have much better flavor compared to
other harvests from previous years. There were less pest damages even though I did not use any pesticides.
The only pesticides used were beneficial organisms such as jumping spiders, which work especially well with
pest control. Also used lady bugs and praying mantids, but they tend to not stay on the plants like the jumping
spiders do.
Anyways, here are some pics...
In this first picture you can see some of the variation in the peppers. They came in all sorts of shapes. Some
looked more like jalapeno, some more like habanero, and some had that "scorpion tail" characteristic. Others
looked more like your average chili pepper similar in appearance to the Thai peppers. And some had this weird
"figure 8" appearance which is shown in the second pepper from the left in this photo. I am trying to breed this
characteristic out of my plants.
Here is a shot of one of the plants from above. I used the FIM technique on all of the plants which resulted in them being
bushier and lower in stature but spread out more.
Here are some of the peppers next to the pepper powder. If you compare the color of this pepper powder to others
that are marketed you can see that it is a brighter red because it is fresher and better material. Many of the powders
on the market are darker, made from imported peppers from India that have been dried and put in storage.
I used no chemical fertilizers on these, only OMRI listed organic materials. The idea was not to
feed the plants but to feed the soil. I have living worm colonies in each of my pepper pots, and
when you touch the soil it moves, full of all sorts of beneficial critters.
I stayed away from peat and opted for coconut in the substrate mix, and the results were much better.
However, I have noted that the coconut coir that is used for reptiles contains a high amount of salts and
it is no good to use for growing. After this I am no longer going to use these coconut coir products in pet
stores, only steamed and sterilized coco fiber for my critters and my plants.
These products used to be much cleaner than they are now, so not sure what has changed over the years,
but I thought it was worth mentioning...
Instead of making salsa or hot sauce with my peppers, I instead went ahead and dried them all and made
pepper powder, and I am very happy with the end results. The peppers have much better flavor compared to
other harvests from previous years. There were less pest damages even though I did not use any pesticides.
The only pesticides used were beneficial organisms such as jumping spiders, which work especially well with
pest control. Also used lady bugs and praying mantids, but they tend to not stay on the plants like the jumping
spiders do.
Anyways, here are some pics...
In this first picture you can see some of the variation in the peppers. They came in all sorts of shapes. Some
looked more like jalapeno, some more like habanero, and some had that "scorpion tail" characteristic. Others
looked more like your average chili pepper similar in appearance to the Thai peppers. And some had this weird
"figure 8" appearance which is shown in the second pepper from the left in this photo. I am trying to breed this
characteristic out of my plants.
Here is a shot of one of the plants from above. I used the FIM technique on all of the plants which resulted in them being
bushier and lower in stature but spread out more.
Here are some of the peppers next to the pepper powder. If you compare the color of this pepper powder to others
that are marketed you can see that it is a brighter red because it is fresher and better material. Many of the powders
on the market are darker, made from imported peppers from India that have been dried and put in storage.