This is a gorgeous pepper plant with spicy little peppers, and beautiful purple flowers. It clocks in at 50,000 Scoville, the same as Cayenne Peppers. The colorful flowers are a nice change from the standard white pepper flowers, and when the sun shines through the leaves you can clearly make out the drops of nectar…
Category: Gardening
Outdoor Lettuce in Containers & Sweet Alyssum for Aphid Control
I have grown hydroponic lettuce successfully and really enjoyed it, but that was all indoors, and while I found the lettuce acceptable, it was a not as crisp as I would like from not having the normal stresses of outdoor life to toughen the leaves up. I had a fan blowing over them once an…
Onions grown in small, individual containers
In my latest new venture of San Francisco urban gardening I’ve decided to try growing onions; specifically Cortland and Ruby Ring. I’m intentionally growing them in very small containers as a trial run to see what’s possible. Onions are shallow rooted vegetables, so as long as they get adequate water & nutrients I expect them…
Beaverlodge Slicer Tomato, this time outdoors in San Francisco
This is one of the first tomatoes that I grew in San Francisco, but I grew it indoors, and it did great, but given that you have to hand pollinate tomatoes indoors, and the tomato size is small and plentiful, it was a lot of work. I was skeptical about how well it would do…
Serrano Peppers – Round 3
Also see the previous Serrano post: Overwintering Serrano Peppers I have so many Serrano Peppers in my freezer, I may have to start giving some away, and the plant just keeps making more (~160 fully grown and counting). Triggering the new growth is not automatic, once the plant is done producing its fruit, you have…
Gaviota & Red Sails Lettuce, Kratky Method
I am really happy I started growing lettuce with the Kratky method. I really like good, clean lettuce. You just can’t get it from a store anymore. What you can get from a store is “triple washed”, bruised, sad looking, sometimes decaying leaves. No matter how hard I examine a bag or container in the…
Kratky Method Lettuce Update
Three months ago I first posted about doing Kratky on a small scale of one container per plant. A short time afterwards I got a whitefly infestation in my indoor garden, and had to cut everything down. It was a shame, since the lettuce plants were just starting to get big. It’s been six weeks…
Overwintering Serrano Peppers
I started this plant late in the season from seed – September. Despite the late start, it produced 80 2.5″ pods, which is great. Then in December my indoor garden was infested with whiteflies, and they loved the serrano plant. There was no way to salvage the plants, so I harvested what I could, moved…
Small Scale Kratky Method Hydroponics
I tried to grow lettuce in soil in my indoor garden once, and failed miserably. I haven’t tried again since. It seemed a waste to dedicate a full pot for such little return, and it was easier to buy. Bulkier greens like Swiss Chard are an exception as they are great for continuous harvest, and…
Growing Tomatoes in San Francisco & Disease Control – Update
This year, I got a late start to starting the tomatoes. I was optimistic about the grafting, but poor germination with the rootstock and uneven stem sizes lead to failed grafts, and I had to start over a couple of times, eventually deciding to grow the traditional way, from seed, in July. Azoychka, which had…