Closing Down the Overflow Plot for the Season

Taking a look at this week’s upcoming forecast made it a bit easier to make the difficult decision to close down the overflow plot for the 2018 season. With overnight temperatures projected to be in the low-to-mid 40’s it would just be a matter of time before Mother Nature forcefully made that choice for me. On an overcast and gray Saturday and the verdict decided, I made one final harvest run at the overflow plot.

Upon trudging to my small section of dirt, visions of the “Bring Out Your Dead” portion of Monty Python and the Holy Grail filled my head as I gazed over the 23 plants before me. They all proclaimed in unison, “I’m not dead yet.” Certainly, the ripe fruits sprinkled throughout the dense plant growth hinted at the same. At least, I would have one final haul of fiery goodness from a plot that has provided just under half of all the peppers I’ve collected this year.

Many of the lesser potent peppers had pretty much already delivered their gifts a couple of times over this season while several of the superhots (7 Pot BBG for instance or the gnarly Carolina Reapers pictured below) just started coming into their own recently. Needless to say, I picked the plants clean, greedily collecting all the pods I could, even those that weren’t all that ripe — I’m hoping the old brown bag trick works on those.

It wasn’t until I started clearing out the plants from the fairly loose soil that I noticed their trucks. Through the season, the canopies of the plants had formed a uniformly dense cover, often making it difficult to find all of the ripe fruits or make my way amongst them. And now, looking at the 7 Pot BBG pictured below, I can see why. That plant is more like a tree with a trunk just below the surface that was about three inches in diameter. I’d call that impressive for sure and a good reason to work this plot again next season.

It’s always a bitter sweet moment when going through the process of removing plants and wrapping up the outdoor season. I can say, though, that this was a huge year for me in terms of the expansion and overall plant production (more on that in the “Lessons Learned” post coming in a week or so). The outdoor season isn’t quite done just yet, however. I’ve still got a couple of standard and peach variant Bhut Jolokias left at home that I’m hoping to clean up mid-week. I’ve also got the three hydroponic plants to keep me busy as well, especially now that they’ve started flowering.