Peppers are Gold, Tomatoes are Fading

The Jalapenos are doing wonderfully! I haven't picked any since the one about a month ago, but the time is drawing near. They are growing big and fat. There is a very minor stippling pattern on the skin of some of them, but I'm not too worried. It doesn't look like enough to affect the taste or texture. I am curious what the cause is though.

Meanwhile, the tomato wilt (or whatever problem it is) really slowed after I applied the baking soda solution a coupe weeks back. However, leaves/branches continue to slowly die. A couple of the main stems are also looking pretty sick. Therefore, in order to try and get just a few red tomatoes from this experiment I have seriously cut back the number of off-shooting branches, leaving enough green to maintain photosynthesis and a productive plant process for what is left. More importantly perhaps, I have snipped the top of all the shoots so there will be no more vertical growth. My hope is all the energy will go into ripening the few tomatoes which are on the plant. I have left some flowers on, but most of them haven't been bearing fruit anyway. Amazingly, (fingers crossed) since applying the CalMag supplement there has been no blossom end rot. A small victory perhaps. 

Lastly, the rosemary is dead and was culled Today. A very sad day. 

I will look forward to new experiments. A look through the Territorial seed catalog brings excitement for new possibilities!

This is an example of the stippling on the pepper skin. It seems to only show up on the oldest peppers.

Big and Juicy!

A butchered tomato plant with all my hope lying with a few tomatoes.

These tomatoes look a little better than the ones above. 

Poor Rosemary! After all that effort.

Not quite as jungle-like anymore thanks to the trimming of the tomato plants.

13.5 weeks Peppers / 11 weeks Tomatoes

Well, well, well. This week saw the unscheduled harvest of 2 Jalapenos. I noticed one afternoon that 2 of the peppers on one of the plants had this strange looking linear wound on the outside of the fruit. Upon close examination, it seemed too "perfect" for a scratch resulting from the mashing and twisting of the plants in the too-small growspace. As you can see in the picture below, it looks like a big dot, small dot, big dot, small dot pattern. There also seemed to a harder to see vertical line along the "spine" of the pepper near the bottom (barely visible in the first picture at the bottom). Long story short, I have not and still can't see any insects at all in the garden, but this sure looks like the work of some kind of little critter. So I still have no idea what might be causing it. Regardless, we ate it, and it was delicious. That brings the total harvested pepper count to: 4.

I've been much more aggressive watering the tomatoes this past week, and am pleased to report no new incidence of blossom end rot. I wouldn't say the tomatoes are growing significantly larger, but at least we're not going backwards this week! No wasted fruit!

The rest of the Jalapenos are growing and realistically could be harvested almost anytime.

Tons of glossy peppers!

Did I mention both plants are now tied upright, so as not to fall over?

One of the tomato plants also started to fall over this week, so I had to add some extra supports.

Looks like a forest

This shows how much the tomatoes are hanging out the "side" of the garden....there's just not enough space!

Peppers Galore! Tomatoes Null!

Grow Area. Peppers and Rosemary need some height adjustment to be closer to the lights since the tomatoes are notably taller. Since the last post a month ago I've added mylar on three sides. There is also bug tape to try and catch the many tiny buggers flying around.

My posts have been infrequent, so much to catch up on. It seems we have had frustrations with everything but herbs. After a period of lots of Jalapeno pepper blossom drop with few peppers, my plants have stabilized. There is still some blossom drop, but tons of buds and tons of peppers. These plants may not be quite as prolific as the Cayenne plants were, but it's close.

Meanwhile, my tomato plants were stricken with some sort of fungal or bacterial disease which affects leaves and stems of the plant. There are a bunch of possible diseases which produce similar symptoms, so I'm not sure exactly which one it is. I applied one broad solution for keeping it from spreading by applying a baking soda solution to the plant. Spotting and drying up of leaves has slowed since then, but not stopped. I also transplanted my tomatoes into bigger pots. Upon doing so I found that I had been underwatering - the soil lower in the pot was very dried out. Also, the plants were nearly rootbound, indicating the transplant was probably a good idea.

Note the yellowish-brown spotting on the tomato leaves.

There had been some blossom drop on the tomatoes as well, but not as much as on the peppers. Instead of dropping there were several buds that just sat there and never generated any tomatoes. At time of transplanting and baking soda application I had 5 or 6 pretty good looking tomatoes. A few days later, blossom end rot showed up on 3 of these. This was a week or more after Andy experienced this, but his fruit development was ahead of me. Since then I've had 2 more tomatoes come down with the same thing. Research shows that inconsistent watering and damaged roots (perhaps when I transplanted) may be the root cause(es). They can lead to a Calcium deficiency in the plant/tomatoes. Andy loaned me a Calcium/Magnesium fertilizer less than a week ago and I've got my fingers crossed that that will do the trick. I should find out this week because I have one tomato approaching the size that the others were when they experienced the blossom end rot.

Lastly, I was so focused on peppers and tomatoes that I neglected the poor Rosemary plant which completely dried out. I'm hopeful I can nurse it back to life.

Oh beautiful tomato, won't you please ripen without any problems! This was taken after the baking soda bath, thus the white residue on the tomato and leaves.  

Another beautiful tomato!

One of the two pepper plants, looking very green and healthy.

Look at those gorgeous Jalepenos.

I haven't counted but there are a bunch of very large peppers hanging from this plant!

Poor Rosemary! It's got some green left, but a lot of dead/dried out sprigs/needles.

12.5 Weeks Pepper / 10 Weeks Tomatoes

Well the peppers have passed the 3 month mark, and wow are the Jalapenos just dripping off these plants. As of this week, both pepper plants are now tied up since the volume of peppers was causing the plants to fall over! What a nice problem to have. It's hard to capture w/ the camera how dense and glorious these peppers look, but I guess you'll have to take my word for it. I tried to count, and there are between 50 and 65 lush peppers growing...more than half almost full grown. MMMM, I can almost taste the "Jalapeno Chicken" dish I'm going to try out repeatedly!...

 

 Now the bad news..... more Blossom End Rot. My new theory is maybe a Calcium and/or Magnesium deficiency? Though admittedly, that's a shot in the dark. I've been watering more consistently...and it seemed to take LONGER for these tomatoes to rot than the others, but still eventually went that direction. So I applied some good 'ole "Cal-Mag" during some waterings recently, so we'll see if that works. Several times this week I was close to destroyed the plants and simplifying this whole process, but for now, let the experiment go on! It's worth noting that in my reading I have read that it's actually fairly rare for the soil itself to run out of calcium/magnesium...but instead most CAMG problems arise from the plant inefficiently or unsuccessfully extracting it from the soil and moving it upwards in the plant...with the most likely cause for this inefficiency being inconsistent (and usually inadequate) watering. Regardless, I'll give them a little blast of extra because honestly there is nothing to lose at this point. I lost 2 more tomatoes this week :(

Still just the 2 plants....seen here sitting on the garage floor. How do these things PLUS the peppers all fit in 8 square feet of growing space????

BLOSSOM. END. ROT.

My hope for the future (blurry)...

11.5 Weeks Pepper / 9 Weeks Tomatoes

Another eventful week. Here are the highlights:

Continued massive blossom/flower drop from all 4 plants. I have no idea why. Possibilities: insufficient nutrition....dehydration....low relative humidity in the vicinity of the leaves....disease....??? I have no definitive information, but I am pretty confident I let the tomatoes dry out too much (Peppers do just fine, but apparently the tomatoes have a different temperament...) Another strong indication that the tomatoes got too dry was this picture below...the dreaded BLOSSOM END ROT caused me to lose the 4 best little tomatoes I had growing!

 

 So now I am trying to be MUCH more vigilant with watering those darn tomatoes. To balance out the negative of losing tomatoes, I harvested the first of many Jalapenos...YUMM!!!!

 

Kendra using them in a Mexican dish she was preparing

Booooooo

 So this week I also gave the tomatoes a big pruning. The canopy was getting super dense, and they were really crowding out the peppers....which is pointless if the dumb tomatoes aren't even going to produce any fruit! The other thing I did was put the peppers on top of 5 gallon containers on the grow table. The tomatoes were getting so high relative to the peppers that the pepper plants were seriously almost 18 inches away from the grow lights....and when one of the limitations of flourescent grow lights is light intensity/penetration to begin with, I wonder if insufficient light COULD be contributing to the pepper blossom drop. I have no idea, but putting the peppers closer to the lights can't hurt.The other good news is that the leaf spot noted on a few pepper leaves last week has not changed/spread.

New look to the garden...

Peppers growing well! (the ones that don't fall off before getting this far, that is...)

Had to tie up this plant because more peppers on the one side caused the plant to tip over!

5 gallon container stands

The latest and greatest (and so far blossom end rot-free) hope for the tomato plants

Hard to see, but here is a picture of pepper blossoms/flowers that have just fallen off the plants for no apparent reason!