I mean vegetables. So far this year my garden has been a success. All of the plants have survived and are producing a bountiful crop for me. The heirlom tomatoes are suffering from leaf wilt and over watering, but have filled the basket in my pantry none the less. Zucchini, Summer squash, cucumbers and of course a selection of herbs make sure my dinners are not lacking summer freshness. The only group of plants that have me waiting are my chilis. The Poblanos, Serranos, and Trinidad Scorpions are taking forever to ripen! I only had one Poblano this season and it had very little heat in it. I am a chilihead and can't wait to try the Trinidas. They are over a million scoville. Insanely hot!
Most of the plants were started from seed with the exception of the tomatoes. I ordered them direct from Burpees and they arrived the first week of May. The plants are grown in a raised bed and several large pots. Water is supplied from a rain barrel that feeds a drip irrigation system. In this system I added an inline fuel filter, which I use as a means to fertilize the garden. I just put fertilizer in the filter as if you were making coffee in the morning and it "perks" away. A deoderized dried fish slurry is utlilized. It might sound complicated, but it is simple and efficient. This year I decided to put some effort into growing my own because food prices are high and what you get has no flavor. Any other gardeners enjoying themselves?
Oh man, do I ever grow my own. I haven't done it for a few years because we live in a townhome and I was using the plot of land where my parents lived. Once the deer got into it, nothing would keep them out, so I decided to wait until we got our own townhome.
Also, I have an interesting story about the Trinidad Scorpion, which might seem like a bit of a stretch, but it's true. About 7 or 8 years ago I did a seed trade with a guy in Maryland. I've been a chilehead for a long time and do grow my own, and I save and isolate seed. I've got a seed bank with about 200 different types of habaneros, scotch bonnets, etc. I favor the capsicum chinense, which is one of the 5 species of peppers. Anyway, this guy wanted to do a seed trade for some seed that I had, chocolate habaneros I believe. He e-mailed me and told me that he has got seed for a pepper that he believes is the world's hottest pepper, and that he picked it up from a small mom-and-pop type of nursery in Maryland. I didn't believe him, because I had gotten seed before that people had hailed as growing the world's most brutal peppers, and they turned out to be Biker Billy jalapenos or something.
Anyway, I sent him his seed and got an actual pod back from him. I was hesitant to eat some random pepper pod, so I dried the seed, saved it for next year, and grew it. I was happy when I first saw that it was ripe, and in my excitement I took a nibble right there in the garden. What happened next was unbelievable. I really thought that someone had shot me.
I tried to get back in touch with the guy who sent me the seed, but couldn't. No one else that I talked to had heard of this pepper at the time.
I immediately started pulling some pods to save seeds. I was involved with a group of people called the coast-to-coast pepper company, one of whom was a guy named Chris who lived in Michigan. I wrote up a review of the pepper, along with everything else that I grew, and the link is here:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/pepper/msg1101073022916.html
When I started raving about the pepper, Chris was probably the only person who initially took it seriously. I sent it to him, and he grew it the following year and immediately shared my excitement about it. I sent it to a bunch of folks, one of whom is named Butch Taylor. 'Butch T' is the guy who grew out the strain that was sent in and confirmed as the world's hottest. There were several substrains, one of them was called the Mouruga strain that Chris isolated. I believe Chris also isolated a yellow one, along with one called a Douglah strain. Another guy got a chocolate variant in his garden, I believe. My finger hasn't been on the pulse for a few years, since having no garden and two kids. About a year ago, someone contacted me and told me that the T.S. came in as the hottest.
Anyway, something interesting about the T.S.: I know that Trinidad and India have had trade for ages, and the T.S. has a very similar morphology to the Bhut Jolokia and Bih Jolokia, and they have all come in as the world's hottest with over a million scoville units. There is another Trinidad pepper called the Trinidad 7-pod, that is absolutely brutal, like the T.S. These all seem to be a strain of the pepper called Naga Jolokia. Before these jolokias and the T.S., the Devil's Tongue was the hottest, but IIRC it came in under a million scovies. Actually, I believe that these tests are all done with HPLC now, not the traditional dilution test.
I could go on and on, but one thing that I think was interesting; there was another pepper that I sent around at the same time, and I thought that it was going to become popular but it didn't, was a pepper that I called the Scotch Bonnet, TFM. There were two things that were exciting about the TFM, but then again I'm a pepper nerd. The first, was that the TFM had a very correct morphology for a Scotch Bonnet (so named because it looked like a head with a 'Scot's bonnet' on it). The next thing, was that it was probably the best tasting pepper that I have ever had to that point. I have to say that there are plenty of great tasting hot peppers, and the yellow chinenses seem to be the best tasting, but this one had a really sweet, hot and fruity flavor.
If there is ever a planned meet-up or a hike or something, and you know that I'll run into you, let me know if you'd like to try seed for any of these, or if you would like me to hook you up with good seed suppliers. The seeds don't always grow true for some suppliers, I never got a Red Savina hab that grew true. Good luck growing this year!!