Wednesday, April 6, 2016

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.

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