Alright this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Today we're going to plan out the fava beans.
So you saw the other video the other day of us pulling out, or I was pulling out all the
fava beans and then basically left the root masses in the soil.
Next we're going to plant this bed out.
We've basically weeded it, took out everything that was growing in here.
There was a couple of random tomato starts that were growing so we pulled those out,
put those in pots, we're going to plant those.
Those are the mystery tomatoes, so we had a lot of good varieties in here last year.So
this has been a total crop rotation.
The first bed that we had in here was basically tomatoes with some parsley, then we did the
fava beans and now we're doing the peppers.
So we, let's see the soil had sunk down, you can kind of see the level over here, it had
sunk down a little bit, probably about an inch or two and what we did was we re-enriched
this soil with about, I don't know, three quarters, no probably about half a bag, little
bit less than half a bag of rock dust through the whole bed as well of one cubic foot of
worm castings and then we just topped it off with more organic compost on top to bring
it all to level.
Now we're going to plant this bed out.
So what we're going to do is we're going to plant peppers in this recommended square foot
gardening spacing for peppers are about twelve inches.
So we basically space everything out twelve inches.
So we're going to, basically this bed is four feet wide by ten feet long.
So we're going to plant one plant every twelve inches.
That's going to basically give us ten plants in one row and then we're going to do a middle
row and we're going to offset.
So instead of the plants being right across from each other, they're going to be offset.
So we're going to have two off set rows and then three rows of ten.
So we're going to have forty-eight plants total.
So I'm really excited, we're going to show you the plants in just one second.
We have over twenty varieties of pepper plants.
So just like Noah's ark they took two of each animal, we're planting two of each pepper
and one plant is going to be on one side and one plant is going to be on the other side.
Why is this?
Well I like doing experiments and we're going to put the money where the mouth is on that
guy's guerilla grow and also the mycorrhiza, the mycorrhiza is definitely, probably a proven
nutrient that's another fungi that helps the symbiotic relationship with the roots too.
So the plant will absorb more nutrients and be healthier.
So half this bed is going to get some mycorrhiza in the hole with the plant and then the other
half of the bed is going to get the gorilla grow that I had another episode on and then
in addition each hole is also going to get the dinogrow, which the fulvic acid and the
humic acid supplement as well as another scoop of rock dust because it is so good.
Actually it could be like pixie dust, look at that.
Alright, so let's go over and we'll go down the line and we'll tell you all the different
varieties of peppers.
So we got all these peppers laid out.
We had to go through all the different varieties I bought.
I just buy so many plants and we will plant these out at another time.
But we're going to also now, we're going to go through the line and share with you what
we're planting out.
So we're going to start down over here and we have two jalapeno peppers.
Next we have, actually we have more jalapeno peppers.
So we have four jalapeno peppers, I like jalapeno's they're definitely good.
Next we have two Anaheim peppers, two chili rellenos.
Some of these are different, all bought at different nursery's so some are taller than
other, some are even actually flowering now.
The next ones we have are red cherry bomb peppers so these are small peppers that are
hot and spicy.
So we're planting a variation of, you know, spicy and sweet peppers.
This is another, two more red cherry bomb peppers.
I like the smaller peppers because they seem to yield more per plant instead of the big
bell peppers.
You might get a couple big bells on there and then you're waiting for them to ripen
up.
Unless you like the green unripe peppers, and the green, unripe peppers, they don't
digest too well for us.
So I encourage everybody to wait until their peppers fully ripen up and then they're the
sweetest and they're going to be the best for us.
So these are in the solanaceae family, the nightshade family.
So we're not supposed to eat unripe nightshades because it can maybe not be so good for us
but people do it all the time because they eat the green peppers.
One of the interesting facts I heard is that if you did pick a pepper and it's green, you
know, the plant will continue to make more.
But if you pick them when they're fully ripe I don't know, it might not.
So maybe that's why green bell peppers in the stores are always at least half the price
or less than the reds, orange, and yellows.
So let's go on.
Let's see, over here we have yellow bell peppers, two of those.
Go down here we have two more yellows and down over here we have some pimento sweet
peppers.
I really like the pimento's they're a nice, smaller sweet pepper and they seem to ripen
up really quick.
Let's see, two more pimentos.
Here's another one, it's a hot pepper musalato, is lito [00:04:59] [?]. Let's say we have
two more red hot cherries, Santa Fe Grande peppers.
Let's see here's a hot banana pepper.
Another hot banana and a Pablo ancho pepper.
Now these are two Italian sweet peppers, Fresno chilis.
Going back, two serrano’s, hot pepper or chilis, then two gypsy pepper.
Let's see, two yummy bell peppers.
Now we have some ones that we don't have matching sets of.
So we have a sweet banana, so we already have the hot banana and this is actually called
the sweet pepper giant marconi, then we have two red beauties and a sweet artist pepper,
a sweet banana bill pepper.
Then we have a pepper pemintina red hot cherry.
Then we have this other one, it's actually this is my first pepper that's actually flowering
and actually making a fruit here.
Check it out, this is so early.
So actually this is one that over wintered in our greenhouse and come up and is now fruiting,
so hopefully we're going to get it in the ground and it'll continue to fruit and I don't
know what variety it is.
So those are all the peppers that we're planting here.
I really love peppers.
The other question is John, what are you going to do with all those peppers?
Well that's a good questions, I'm glad you asked.
What I like to do with the peppers, especially the hot peppers, what they're really good
in, is of course use them fresh in salsa and salad dressing and, you know, everything else,
you can dehydrate them.
But what I like to do is actually, I like to dehydrate my hot peppers and even some
of the sweet peppers, you know, if I have extra ones that I'm not eating fresh I'm going
to dehydrate those and then save them much like I would save my sun-dried tomatoes and
I use them in the winter.
So usually when I make something in the blender like a salad dressing that I make fresh in
the blender, I'll put just like one hot pepper without the seeds, because if you put the
seeds in there too that's actually the hottest part of the pepper, it'll really just be too
hot.
So I take out all the seeds and then I'll dehydrate them and I'll have sun-dried peppers.
Those are great to use in recipes for a hint of flavoring.
So you'll get some very intense and unique flavors with the different peppers by adding
just one in.
I mean, it'll be a really complex flavor that you can't get just by adding seasonings in.
What you could do is if you dry a whole bunch, you know, chili peppers for example, you dry
the chili peppers then you could dehydrate them and powder them up and then you have
your own chili powders.
Cayenne, you can make your own cayenne powders.
So there's many things you can do with peppers.
I love the peppers, I'm glad we're getting them planted out.
So our last official day of frost is April 15th and today is April 15th, but you know
what, we still, there's a small probability because the record lows have actual been in
the frosting.
With global warming and everything I think that's working to our advantage and we're
not going to get too cold, but we're going to use a frost protection blanket.
So we'll show you at the end, when we have it all set up, what it looks like.
But this is basically a frost protection blanket and it's polypropylene floating row cover.
So this protects basically about four extra degrees.
So this will give us a margin of error so if it does even get fairly cold this will
protect it just a little bit more, so I think with the protection I think we're going to
be fine.
Hopefully within sixty to seventy days I'm going to be eating some good peppers.
Okay, so we got all our pepper plants planted out the other day.
We don't yet have the drippers set up to drip on each plant so I'm actually just hand watering
and we are officially past our frost date here, although, you never know if we're just
one day past our frost date you never know if you're going to get frost still.
So what we did was we're using this fabric cloth that you saw.
We basically, all we do is we're just laying it out over the tops.
So we put this bamboo stakes and some wood up just to kind of keep it so that it doesn't
crush the plant.
This stuff is really light.
This will give us about four extra degrees of frost protection.
So basically just drape it over the top there and then all we do is we're just taking some
of these paver stones, some extra pieces, and we're just securing it down.
Now this, I like this stuff because it gives you as I said a four degrees extra protection
but also it's permeable.
So the sunlight like 70% of the sunlight can still get through and the water can still
get through, because it still, it's still been raining here.
It's probably going to rain in a couple of days.
But yeah, still lets the water through and the sunlight through.
So it won't really burn your plants unless it gets above eighty degrees, which I don't
think it's going to be above eighty anytime soon.
So we might keep this on a couple weeks to make sure the plants don't frost and in case
there is any leftover frost, I'll still have my bell pepper plants or pepper plants.
So we planted, you saw the different ones we planted, over twenty varieties and they're
mixed sweet and hot peppers.
This also helps to reduce bugs from getting in there as well.
Alright so I'm just going to finish putting this back up.
So this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
We'll see you next time.