2019 September Pepper Update
It’s been a while since the last season update. I figured that now is as good a time as any for one, especially as I’ve started to clean up a few plants.
So far, the 2019 season has been an interesting one. I’ve had some plants that have been more prolific than expected and others that have barley produced much of anything at all. There have also been some varieties that I’ve grown for the first time this year that didn’t warrant the effort or time needed to keep them going for another month (or two).
Let’s start off with the self-watering buckets. As you can see in the photo above, they’ve all been disassembled and packed up until they are once again needed for the 2020 season. The plants that called these home for the Summer had stopped producing pods consistently for a while now. Again, it just didn’t seem feasible or necessary to keep them going just to get, maybe, one or two more ripened peppers.
The three raised beds at home have produced a ton of fruit this year. That said, one of them had sustained some storm damage a few weeks back and needed some cleaning up then. The remaining plants in that bed – mostly Scotch Bonnet varieties – had started to wind down for the season as the nights hit the low 40s recently.
The remaining beds are still going strong. The Reaper, Scorpions, Primos, Charapitas and Aji Lemon are all cranking out more fresh pods as the month starts to come to an end. In fact, some of these plants – Jay’s Peach Ghost Scorpions, for instance – seem to finally be coming into their own and are just producing like it’s their job.
And finally, the overflow plot has been shut down for the season. The plants here just didn’t do as well as those in the same spot for the 2018 grow year. Some did better than their siblings that were in self-watering buckets, but for the most part, this portion of the season was a bit of a disappointment. More on that in the end-of-year review that will come along in a couple of months.