Whew, I didn't screw it up! I mean... Season 2 Begins!

As per the post title, WHEW!

It was two weeks ago that I gave the project reaper it's super hard chop to get rid of the second round of aphids and clean out the entirely too dense branches that had developed over the winter from the previous chops, and a week since I put it out in the raised bed.

Was starting to get a little worried that it was too hard of a chop followed by too cool of weather (it dipped down into the 40's a time or two), but checking it today reveals:

See 'em?  See the little green leaf buds?  ITS ALIVE!

Okay, I didn't kill it.  Its warm (its actually 85 out there now), and we should be all good.  WHEW!

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Ahem, composure regained, lets get back to some actual update news.

As you can see in the above picture, I buried the plant back up to the base of the skull again.  I had several issues with the neck, namely a lack of stability and several important face roots keeping a rather tenuous grasp on the soil.  Decided that it was worth a shot, but that I'd rather stick to a good looking version of the original design than keep pushing the neck that might end up ruining the entire thing.

This season should be a good one for it.  Without the constant pulling down of soil, the plant itself should be much less stressed, which means it should get a lot more growth.

Now, while I will be continuing to selectively prune off new growth in areas I don't want (like down on the base trunk or too low down on the limbs), I intend to let it grow however it wants above a certain line.  I want it to grow big, tall, bushy, and set lots and lots of pods.

Why?  Because that is how we will thicken the trunk, the limbs, and the roots up to truly gnarly proportions!

You see, the roots and the trunk will only grow thick enough to support the current amount of foliage.  If I were to keep it pruned down to proper bonchi size now, the trunk and roots would essentially stop developing.  Sure, they'd grow a little bit, but its the constant pruning that stops a bonchi (and bonsai in general) from getting bigger.  But to get them up to size, you want them to grow lots of leaves so that there is a constant demand for ever increasing amounts of support.  Same for the roots, the greater the demand for nutrients, the more root development we get.

So, by letting it grow big and bushy (note to self, get a tomato cage to put over this one so the extra growth has some support and the lower limbs don't break) we should thicken the trunk and limbs up, and especially setting pods will put a lot of demand for nutrients on the planet, which should turn our spindly roots into a real gnarled mess, which will be great.

Season Starting Chop Back

Okay, the various plants (including the project reaper here) have spent the last week outside in the relatively warm weather, and either the ladybugs just aren't out yet, or they didn't find these guys, as the aphids were getting bad again when I inspected today.

I also noticed that the last couple of aphid chops I had made left too many small stems in place, and the growth nodes had become very crowded, leading to vegetation that was WAY too thick and close together.  Not only do aphids love that, but it creates pockets of moist air that can harbor disease and fungus growth, definitely not what we want.  Unfortunately, I didn't think to get pictures of how dense it was under there until just now while typing, but oh well.  The answer was another HARD chop.

Zombie Reaper got a hard chop back as well, for the same reasons.  It had a few aphids on it, but not nearly as bad as the project reaper.  I know from experience though that you leave one spot with aphids in it, and they just come right back.  So both of them got whacked.

Now, that might seem a little extreme with warm weather and being ready to set it out in the raised bed again for the season being just around the corner, but there is a reason to my madness beyond simply the aphids.

Namely, sunburn.

I've been hardening things off, but there is only so much hardening you can do.  This way, I can avoid sunburn entirely by placing them out in direct sunlight from now on instead of partial shade, and any new growth will be good to go.

Last frost date here is the 18th, and we've got a single night of 35 degrees coming this Saturday, but after that its solid 70/50, I think it should be safe to actually put stuff out this Sunday.  That'll give them a few days in the soft grow cabinet to recover from the chop, then out they go!

I also have sprouted some kind of large heirloom sweet pepper, I have no idea what kind.  Family member basically gushed "I found the best sweet pepper at the farmer's market, it was delicious!  They said it was heirloom, so I saved the seeds, grow this for me!"  So I sprouted half a dozen or so of them.

They seem to be naturally leggy, or at least more so than the nuclears I've been growing.  Same tray with a couple new reapers, and the sweets were really stretching out while the reaper was staying short and squat, so I decided to use that legginess to my advantage.

I picked two of the lankier ones that already happened to have some natural bends in the trunks, and made sure not to water them for a while.  When they started wilting a bit, the stems became soft and pliable so I repotted them together and braided them into each other.  Watered, and now they're pretty well locked together like this without the need for any kind of bands or tape (though I may end up tying them together later anyway if I need to).

Never tried this kind of twist tie grafting before, but they *SHOULD* fuse together into a single cool twisted trunk as they get bigger.  Least I've seen other people who have pulled it off, so I'm giving it a try.

I usually wind up with nice thick tree like trunks on my peppers with only one plant, so kind of interested to see how this one turns out.

Long Time No See

Hey everyone, long time no update but thats been mostly due to there being nothing to update about.  Aphids continued to be a problem after I brought a different plant in during a hard freeze that re-infected everybody.  Didn't feel like chopping it back again, so just been constantly treating them with neem.  Figured it was close enough to spring that I could just wait it out and let the ladybugs do the job for me when the weather warmed up.

As you can see, the Project Reaper overwintered just fine, despite the constant battle with the aphids, and has lots of nice green foliage and is raring to go.  We still are getting nights where its dipping down into the 30's (thats roughly the 1-5 degree Celsius range for our metric readers), so for now everybody just gets to sit on the covered front porch hardening off where I can bring them back in when I need to.

Remember, when you've overwintered, the foliage on your plants is weak.  You can't just set it back outside in the sun or you'll sunburn them, and possibly kill them.  A week or two of morning sun, wind, and cooler night time temperatures will help toughen them up so that when it starts staying warm all the time they can be put back out permanently.

Not really a must have shot, but I do like the morning light, it makes the skull look really cool. :)

Other sprouts are doing well.  Some sweet peppers, a couple more reapers to give away (remember I overwintered the best producer from last season as well as the project reaper, so I don't need any fresh ones this year for myself), some new tea plants sprouted from seeds produced by my established tea bushes (those things are notoriously difficult to germinate, I'm happy), and I'm going to try growing a banana plant this year (thats it in the second picture, small black container above the dragonfruit cutting).  Not really relevant to the blog, but don't be surprised if you see them start sneaking into the backgrounds of pictures.