I spotted what appears to be new buds on one of the tarahumara chiltepins. I’m pretty sure that they weren’t on the plants when they were up on the roof. So hopefully this indicates that the plants are getting enough light indoors, and maybe will set fruit.
Where did all these aphids come from? How dangerous are they to my plants? Why weren’t they a problem up on the roof? I kind of figure that they were laying dormant in the soil, maybe even trying to get a foothold up on the roof but maybe the wind kept them off. One huge difference between the indoor setup and growing on the roof is that the roof was almost always windy. Could that have been what prevented this kind of infestation?
Aphids or something are infesting some of the plants. The tarahumara chiltepin leaves are totally covered with the little buggers. Little white dots on the leaves and stems. I think you have to squish every single one to get rid of them. Maybe a soap solution misted on will work. For now all I can do is very delicately rub all of the newest most delicate growth through my fingers and squeeze just hard enough to crush the white but not the green.
It’s been weeks since these plants have had a boost up of nutrients. I don’t know why I wanted to give them a hard time the last few weeks on the roof. But it seems like they’re hungry and I want to really encourage new growth. I’m using tap water that sits for a few hours before use in a 6 gallon plastic bucket that once held 5 Type olives at the coop. Mixed in a few ounces of seaweed/fish fertilizer and stirred. I have a couple of half-gallon watering cans and have to climb up on a ladder to reach the top level of plants. All the plants have wood chip mulch which was a nice water insulating blanket up on the roof that I don’t think they really need anymore. So I raked all that off with my fingers, trying not too be too rough on the already crammed branches of each plant, and exposed the actual soil in each container. Most plants have extensive roots visible right at the surface. I top dressed each plant with a generous sprinkle of Floyd Bennett Field compost, then gave a big drink of the fertilizer water. It took a good couple of hours to do this for all 19 plants. But luckily I was able to do it neatly, didn’t drip more than a few drops on the floor, and after cleanup the room didn’t smell like the fertilizer at all. At least not to me.
Teeny tiny little sprouts of life all over the chiltepins. Not so sure about the de arbols. But every kind of chiltepin that’s getting light is putting out new growth. Very excited about this, but setting fruit is the real test and it may take much brighter light to produce fruit than leafy growth. We’ll see but this is certainly a good start. The one row with double lights installed above does seem to be growing more than the other rows.
I’m preparing to send some samples of chunky chile oil to a lab at Cornell for testing of pH and water activity analysis. The results of these tests are crucial for determining if these recipes I’m using are safe to sell to the public. So I’m using stainless steel cookware, wearing a hat and rubber gloves, cleaning everything carefully, and weighing everything going into the current batches.
It’s not just an improvement of my scientific method though. I feel like I’m really improving my basic recipes, refining my technique and creating new variations of the basic method. Today I made batches with a higher proportion of chiles, mixing de arbol and chiltepins together. One batch has garlic but no shallot, and another has shallot but no garlic. In both cases I left it chunkier. The results seem spectacular, especially visually. Bigger chunks and more chile yields a really good looking chunky chile oil. I hope it’s just as good in the eyes of the food scientists at Cornell.
Yesterday I finally set up lights in the grow room and gave the plants a much-delayed drink. I think I had forgotten how quickly containers dry out when they’re relocated to the relatively dry and warm atmosphere of the indoors. I’ve read that shocking plants with a mini-drought now and then will make them more prolific and possibly increase the heat factor of the chiles but I feel like I’ve pushed these plants to the edge. Factor in all the jostling of the trip down from the roof, getting heaved roughly around on the shelves, and bashed with light fixtures as I tried to install them single-handedly. So when I turned on all the lights and gave the plants a deep drink of water yesterday I hoped for the best but actually felt a bit grim.
But this morning when I entered the room the air felt damp with moisture that hadn’t been there yesterday. I reckon that’s the product of healthy transpiration and these chiles are still alive. Grow on chiles! Who would have thought the hum of florescent lights would ever sound so good.
So the plants seem like maybe they are going to survive the rough transition to their indoor home. The basic setup is as follows: a couple of four foot long adjustable shelving units, each with three tiers of shelves for plants. Each shelf barely fits three plants if I cram them together. I’m using cheap linear florescent shop lights for illumination to supplement the south-facing window in the room. Most shelves I’ve given only one light fixture but I’m concerned that might not be enough light. So one tier has a double set of fixtures to see if it performs any better than the others. I have each container in a clear plastic nursery tray. Setup is simple, hopefully it will work.
If my plants could talk that’s what they would say. For the past week or so since I moved them inside light has been weak and irregular. I’ve forgotten to turn the lights off at night a couple of times. And I haven’t been watering them much either. This shock is their winter. Soon it will be back to 16 hours of light a day and endless summer. I wonder if it will be possible to get the plants to produce fruit continuously.