Gardening: what are you growing this year?

[Jade Falcon]

I'll be a first-time grower, and it seems I'm dipping my feet into one of the more difficult things to grow: peppers. Specifically, peppers in food-safe 5 gallon buckets. And MAYBE some strawberries. And planting two dwarf apple trees.

I can do it, but the only concern of mine is starting the seeds indoors, and getting a grow light and heating pad. I can probably plant them outside around May or so, maybe June? I also have the additional challenge of growing these in limited space/sunlight, as well as living in a run-down trailer park that is frequented by rats and other rodents. So I'll be putting these on wooden shelves from Home Depot outside.

I'm planning on growing maybe six buckets, with Thunder Mountain Longhorn Peppers, KS Peach Starrkist peppers (I may rethink this...the plant gets pretty big), Red Hatch Chiles, Joe's Long Cheyenne, and Jimmy Nardello peppers. I welcome any advice folks wish to give.

So what are you growing this year?

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[Tlock]

Sweet corn, green beans, rhubarb and hubbard squash.....oh ya and 250 acers of thornless marion berries! I have extra green bean, zucchini and cauliflower seed if anyone needs some

 

[Hop Sing]

I'll be a first-time grower, and it seems I'm dipping my feet into one of the more difficult things to grow: peppers. Specifically, peppers in food-safe 5 gallon buckets. And MAYBE some strawberries. And planting two dwarf apple trees.

I can do it, but the only concern of mine is starting the seeds indoors, and getting a grow light and heating pad. I can probably plant them outside around May or so, maybe June? I also have the additional challenge of growing these in limited space/sunlight, as well as living in a run-down trailer park that is frequented by rats and other rodents. So I'll be putting these on wooden shelves from Home Depot outside.

I'm planning on growing maybe six buckets, with Thunder Mountain Longhorn Peppers, KS Peach Starrkist peppers (I may rethink this...the plant gets pretty big), Red Hatch Chiles, Joe's Long Cheyenne, and Jimmy Nardello peppers. I welcome any advice folks wish to give.

So what are you growing this year?

Sounds like lack of sun will be your biggest challenge, as peppers thrive on it. Make sure you have good drainage in the buckets - peppers don't like wet feet as a rule. I'm not sure about the rodents - here deer are pretty much the only problem. Jimmy Nardellos are my favorite, so good luck with them!

Oh, don't worry about planting late - they always catch up. Better to be a bit late than have long, spindly stems when you put them in.

 

[Member 361]

I started all my pepper seeds on Feb 1. They take forever in this climate and having large, healthy plants when it's finally time to put them outside makes a huge difference in how many mature peppers you end up with. I started all my tomato seeds on Saturday. Peas, shallots, and onions all went in on sunday. Corn will direct planted in late May. Squash, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and pumpkins will get started indoors in April or May depending on the weather. Strawberries are already in from last year and I uncovered them this weekend. Blueberries got pruned this weekend also and are looking great. Apple trees get pruned later this week. I think that is about it for this year. Downsizing a little so I have more time for shooting.

 

[Jade Falcon]

I started all my pepper seeds on Feb 1. They take forever in this climate and having large, healthy plants when it's finally time to put them outside makes a huge difference in how many mature peppers you end up with. I started all my tomato seeds on Saturday. Peas, shallots, and onions all went in on sunday. Corn will direct planted in late May. Squash, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and pumpkins will get started indoors in April or May depending on the weather. Strawberries are already in from last year and I uncovered them this weekend. Blueberries got pruned this weekend also and are looking great. Apple trees get pruned later this week. I think that is about it for this year. Downsizing a little so I have more time for shooting.

Sigh. Maybe I should just abandon the idea for peppers this year and focus on planting dwarf apple trees instead. Wouldn't mind some blueberries too. I haven't even bought anything yet anyways.

 

[Member 361]

Sigh. Maybe I should just abandon the idea for peppers this year and focus on planting dwarf apple trees instead. Wouldn't mind some blueberries too. I haven't even bought anything yet anyways.

You can always buy starts at a garden center. That will give you a huge head start and you dont have to worry about raising them from seeds.

 

[Certaindeaf]

I'll be a first-time grower, and it seems I'm dipping my feet into one of the more difficult things to grow: peppers. Specifically, peppers in food-safe 5 gallon buckets. And MAYBE some strawberries. And planting two dwarf apple trees.

I can do it, but the only concern of mine is starting the seeds indoors, and getting a grow light and heating pad. I can probably plant them outside around May or so, maybe June? I also have the additional challenge of growing these in limited space/sunlight, as well as living in a run-down trailer park that is frequented by rats and other rodents. So I'll be putting these on wooden shelves from Home Depot outside.

I'm planning on growing maybe six buckets, with Thunder Mountain Longhorn Peppers, KS Peach Starrkist peppers (I may rethink this...the plant gets pretty big), Red Hatch Chiles, Joe's Long Cheyenne, and Jimmy Nardello peppers. I welcome any advice folks wish to give.

So what are you growing this year?

Spend a few dollars for starts, established plants at a garden center. I always bought tomato, pepper and probably other things as starts.

 

[Jade Falcon]

Yeah, I'm pretty picky on the peppers I want to grow though. But I will look around all the same. I think Bi-mart up the street might have some soon.

 

[Certaindeaf]

Yeah, I'm pretty picky on the peppers I want to grow though. But I will look around all the same. I think Bi-mart up the street might have some soon.

I always used to go to the bomber nursery on McLoughlin. There has to be more than a bimart down yonder.

 

[Stomper]

Spend a few dollars for starts, established plants at a garden center. I always bought tomato, pepper and probably other things as starts.

There you go starting things again.... oh, you!

 

[made in china]

I like to grow Anaheim peppers in 5 gallon buckets every year. I buy starts from the local nursery.

I usually have great luck, except last year I made a bad choice on the potting soil.

We also add coffee grounds to the buckets. Seems to help.

 

[Jade Falcon]

I always used to go to the bomber nursery on McLoughlin. There has to be more than a bimart down yonder.

Oh there are nurseries out here for sure. The Santiam region is full of them to varying sizes and popularity. But Bi-mart is about half a mile from me, so it's the first obvious choice.

 

[Member 361]

One thing to watch out for is mislabeled starts. Check reviews from any place you might get them from. One of the reasons I always start everything from seeds is so I know exactly what I am getting.

 

[MikeInOr]

I'll be a first-time grower, and it seems I'm dipping my feet into one of the more difficult things to grow: peppers. Specifically, peppers in food-safe 5 gallon buckets. And MAYBE some strawberries. And planting two dwarf apple trees.

I can do it, but the only concern of mine is starting the seeds indoors, and getting a grow light and heating pad. I can probably plant them outside around May or so, maybe June? I also have the additional challenge of growing these in limited space/sunlight, as well as living in a run-down trailer park that is frequented by rats and other rodents. So I'll be putting these on wooden shelves from Home Depot outside.

I'm planning on growing maybe six buckets, with Thunder Mountain Longhorn Peppers, KS Peach Starrkist peppers (I may rethink this...the plant gets pretty big), Red Hatch Chiles, Joe's Long Cheyenne, and Jimmy Nardello peppers. I welcome any advice folks wish to give.

So what are you growing this year?

Last year we did our starts indoors with just cheap LED lights shaped like rectangular fluorescent shop lights. I think we got them from Costco.

Are you doing the self watering / self wicking 5 gallon bucket setup? We tried this for the first time last year and had excellent results with them! Our strawberry plants grew great but we didn't get very many strawberries off of them. This is what we expected and typical of first year strawberry plants in my experience.



We have a much shorter growing season over here in Central Oregon with hotter days, colder nights and early frosts. We were able to grow our first full sized tomatoes last year and the cherry tomatoes were very numerous. We also had good luck with peppers, onions, basil, rosemary, sage, mint, horse radish, turmeric, and ginger in the self water 5 gallon buckets.

The self watering buckets work on the principal that the plants will always have a ready source of water without the roots being wet. They also massively increase the amount of oxygen available to the roots. There are MANY videos online about the various ways to construct these buckets and some expensive bucket inserts that you can buy. We made our own by cutting the bottom 5" off of one five gallon bucket. Drilling holes in the bottom of this. Cutting slits in the side of this bucket fragment every few inches. Then turning it upside down / bottom side up and putting it in the bottom of another 5 gallon bucket. The slits in the sides of the bucket fragment allow the fragment to fit in the 5 gallon bucket. My daughter took videos of our build process... I will have to get those videos from her.

Google Search

Example:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47sMCFDQL_k


These are WAY too expensive IMHO but they give you kind of an idea about what we were recreating:

Amazon.com

 

[MikeInOr]

Sigh. Maybe I should just abandon the idea for peppers this year and focus on planting dwarf apple trees instead. Wouldn't mind some blueberries too. I haven't even bought anything yet anyways.

Last year the Redmond, OR Walmart had local plant starts for half the price of the big nursery starts. We bought some to supplement our own starts.

I would highly recommend getting some strawberries this year. You won't get many berries this year but you should get a huge harvest next year. Blueberries are also a multiyear investment so they are good to start early in your growing career.

We used Miracle Grow potting soil (Costco had bags twice as big as every other retailer at the same price as the other retailers). We mixed in Osmocote slow release fertilizer and worm castings into the Miracle grow in our 5 gal self wicking buckets. This worked great for us!

 

[P7M13]

I'm doing a plot that's 6x bigger than last year's garden. For peppers, I'm doing habanero, jalapeño, serrano, Thai, Anaheim, and Bell peppers. I concur that chili's like good drainage and lots of sun.
What I've done for my starts is freeze the seeds, then Nick them with a knife where they attached to the parent pepper, then planted.
I'm experimenting with other start soils this year, too.
Last year, I grew only poblanos and serrano peppers. If they get too spindly (mine did last year), you can support them with bamboo stakes and string, almost like a tomato cage.
If you water stress them, they will grow hotter.
I haven't tried it, but I wonder if they do better with something warm besides them, like tomatoes do when planted against a fence.
As far as soil, last year I mixed mulch, shredded garden material from my yard (including wood chips), dog poo (my dogs produce a lot), lime, and a bag of 10-10-10. It was the most productive garden I've ever had.

 

[Jade Falcon]

Last year we did our starts indoors with just cheap LED lights shaped like rectangular fluorescent shop lights. I think we got them from Costco.

Are you doing the self watering / self wicking 5 gallon bucket setup? We tried this for the first time last year and had excellent results with them! Out strawberry plants grew great but we didn't get very many strawberries off of them. This is what we expected and typical of first year strawberry plants in my experience.

View attachment 2047917

We have a much shorter growing season over here in Central Oregon with hotter days, colder nights and early frosts. We were able to grow our first full sized tomatoes last year and the cherry tomatoes were very numerous. We also had good luck with peppers, onions, basil, rosemary, sage, mint, horse radish, turmeric, and ginger in the self water 5 gallon buckets.

The self watering buckets work on the principal that the plants will always have a ready source of water without the roots being wet. They also massively increase the amount of oxygen available to the roots. There are MANY videos online about the various ways to construct these buckets and some expensive bucket inserts that you can buy. We made our own by cutting the bottom 5" off of one five gallon bucket. Drilling holes in the bottom of this. Cutting slits in the side of this bucket fragment every few inches. Then turning it upside down / bottom side up and putting it in the bottom of another 5 gallon bucket. The slits in the sides of the bucket fragment allow the fragment to fit in the 5 gallon bucket. My daughter took videos of our build process... I will have to get those videos from her.

Google Search

Example:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47sMCFDQL_k


These are WAY too expensive IMHO but they give you kind of an idea about what we were recreating:

Amazon.com

View attachment 2047916

I'll look into this, but that's probably way more effort than I want to put in lmao. Watering from the top is the old standby for me. Thanks though!

 

[MikeInOr]

I'll look into this, but that's probably way more effort than I want to put in lmao. Watering from the top is the old standby for me. Thanks though!

Getting air to the roots of the plants is the major advantage and REALLY improves plant growth. I suggest trying one this year and see how much difference there is in the plant growth.

The top watering 1" PVC pipe is really unnecessary. You can just add water to the drain hole in the side and skip the PVC top pipe.

The hole in the side serves two purposes. 1) To keep from overwatering the container and soaking the plant roots. 2) Allow an air/soil interface down in the pot which provides air to the roots and greatly enhances plant growth.
Try one... I think you will be surprised at the difference!

A similar technique for getting more air to the roots is to grow your plants in those breathable spun poly Walmart shopping bags.


I haven't tried this method... mostly because I prefer the neatness of the self contained buckets.

 

[MikeInOr]

I'm doing a plot that's 6x bigger than last year's garden. For peppers, I'm doing habanero, jalapeño, serrano, Thai, Anaheim, and Bell peppers. I concur that chili's like good drainage and lots of sun.
What I've done for my starts is freeze the seeds, then Nick them with a knife where they attached to the parent pepper, then planted.
I'm experimenting with other start soils this year, too.
Last year, I grew only poblanos and serrano peppers. If they get too spindly (mine did last year), you can support them with bamboo stakes and string, almost like a tomato cage.
If you water stress them, they will grow hotter.
I haven't tried it, but I wonder if they do better with something warm besides them, like tomatoes do when planted against a fence.
As far as soil, last year I mixed mulch, shredded garden material from my yard (including wood chips), dog poo (my dogs produce a lot), lime, and a bag of 10-10-10. It was the most productive garden I've ever had.

We did an experiment last year. We planted a few of our pepper and tomato seeds on top of aloe snot (we have many aloe plants). The seeds came up earlier and grew faster than the non-aloe seeds. I will probably repeat the experiment agoin this year with a greater number of seeds. I am not as excited about the aloe snot as I am the self water/self wicking buckets though (every container gardener should try at least one self watering / self wicking bucket). But the buckets are a mute point for your garden patch.

It stays cold here in Central Oregon during the nights through most of spring making growing vegetables much more challenging. When we grew in a garden plot we tried black polypropylene ground cover (basically a tarp). The warmer soil helped our plants mature considerably faster. It also almost eliminates weeding as well as saving water. You use drip line under the polypropylene.


Many production farms use the same polypropylene ground cover technique.

 

[thorborg]

. And planting two dwarf apple trees.

Might want to do some looking into the dwarf aspect of apples, My Dad has tried several (dwarf ) Both grew to 10 feet plus, so much pruning was needed to keep them even six feet. the other down side was the apples of each tree were not good eating. Don't know if it was just bad luck, not saying dwarfs cant be good eating but worth looking in to. I was told to get good eating apple trees, find growers that you can taste the apples, then get clones of them, as each seed is a real sketch for taste and never like the original apple they come from. in another life, I had good luck with container plum trees but if they like what your doing it is still hard to keep them in their place. Not sure if it is legal so When we moved I may have taken them up to the coast range and one may still be living today though the animals seem to get most the fruit before they are ripe.