I’m so tired of this rainy June. All the chile plants are small, though pulling through all the storms admirably. I guess all the rain proves that my new container layering strategy is draining well. I am so ready for some heat up on the roof to get me motivated to install the drip system.
All four gardens well in process with over 80 plants planted out in Staten Island, East Village Manhattan, Fort Greene and Boerum Hill Brooklyn. Yeah! Hopefully up to another 50 to add if things go well. I think I took some of the plants too quickly from indoors to out. I overestimated the importance of temperature and didn’t think enough about stem strength and wind. Many plants look teeny and spindly when planted outdoors but thankfully they seem to mostly be surviving and thriving.
Bought a batch of seedlings from chileplants.com at the last minute. Now that I see how full and healthy their plants look I really feel like my indoor babies are starting out weak. But hopefully they will toughen up. A week of coolish temperatures and massive thunderstorms may cull a bunch of the weakest transplants. Very exciting to see these gardens coming together.
Recently back from setting up satellite garden number three in St. George, Staten Island. Thanks to the kind hospitality of Jason and Ondine around 25 containers and baby chiltepin, de arbol, and hatch plants are in the field. This site will be a real experiment as it’s definitely what I would call semi-shade. Hard to tell exactly how many hours of full sun the plants will get but I’m guessing less than six. It will be interesting to see how the plants produce in these conditions. I’m super thankful for the space in any case.
That’s what work is these days. Containers delivered to two new sites since last week, and some seedlings are now out in the “field.” I am so psyched about the new soil mix. Containers are so much lighter than last year – typically 20-25 lbs damp compared to 30-35 lbs last year. Walking up endless flights of stairs with buckets under my nose the growing medium smells fresh, like dirt that just took a shower.
I don’t know what I was thinking last year. As I empty some of last year’s containers to pot-up the overwintered chile plants I am surprised to find two or three inches of river stones at the bottom. The rocks alone in last year’s containers weighed 10-15 lbs! So this year I’m branching out and experimenting with loose fill plastic, aka packing peanuts, aka styrofoam as a drainage material. It’s post-consumer recycled, weighs nothing, and is cheap or free. When you consider the GaiaSoil I’m also using, I’ve got styrofoam in two forms in most of this year’s containers. So the question is, does this pose any kind of health risk? To put a finer point on it, am I now doing something other than organic gardening given the use of these man made materials?
Today I started filling containers for the roof to get an idea of how much I’m going to need of various materials. Experimenting with different mixes, comparing weights, and thinking about options. A couple weeks ago I bought a cubic yard of GaiaSoil and am now experimenting with that. The guy from Gaia Institute recommended using six inches of their mix (which is made of a mixture of crumbled styrofoam and compost), a layer of coir-fiber cloth, and then another few inches of compost on top. So that’s more or less what I’m doing, around six inches of each growing medium, plus a couple of inches of drainage rocks. When I was weighing things I realized that much rock weighs about 10 lbs. What if all or part of that was replaced with loose fill packing peanuts? Would the container be too light for the roof? Wow what a concept.
Almost all the 2008 chile plants are in the backyard. Started potting a couple of them up into 10 gallon containers with a few inches of fresh compost/pro-mix. Also potting up lots of the baby chiles. The Hatch and de arbol babies are doing amazing, the chiltepins a bit less. The volunteer chiltepins are generally still alive though a bit spindly. Two trays of chiltepin seeds have been under the lights for a long time but no germination yet. Very hard to wait weeks to see a seed sprout, especially after some of the other varieties popped out so quickly. But I feel like there’s going to be lots of new plants ready to plant out in a few weeks.
I turned off the music streaming into the garden room yesterday and everything looks a bit droopy this evening. I’m pretty sure I watered everything yesterday so that’s not the entire reason. Do the chiles really love sound that much? I hope they perk up now that I’ve turned it back on. Currently we’re all rocking out to “Young Liars.”
Germination is happening in the indoor chile garden. The first tray of seeds I planted were a gift from Lev and Catherine that they brought back from Hatch, NM. Of the 72 plugs planted I think I’ve got over 80% germination rate within 10 days. Now I’ve got another tray of de arbol seeds planted that I saved myself, and a third tray of chiltepins that Wilder and I planted yesterday. Where am I going to put all of these plants once they get big?
Thanks to Hali Lee for inviting me to the annual benefit for the Asian American Women’s Giving Circle. Brooklyn Chiles was part of the “bazaar” and it was my first experience giving the oil to strangers. It was more of a cocktail party than a farmer’s market, so most people didn’t seem in a buying mood, but it was still a good opportunity to develop a rap and see how people responded to the product. My feeling at the end of the night is that people continue to really like the product, but it’s time to raise the level of my game to more professional production.