Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Waiting for Peppers to Turn Red

I have quite a few green bell peppers growing in containers.  They got so tall, they are actually falling over, which makes me want to pick them.  I see that a few are turning red, which I would dearly love (red bell peppers are approaching $7/lb in the Hilo Safeway), but with the plants falling over like small felled trees, I am wondering if that will ever happen.  Anyone have any experience with that? 

This weekend is the last non-cross-country weekend for a few months - so I am determined to do something with the rest of the jalapeno peppers.  Something, given the increased production of tomatoes (more, but still not enough for sauce), will probably be more salsa. 

The 8 month old ram lamb who was bit on the okole is doing great after three days of penicillin.  He wasn't as badly injured as Spot, fortunately.  He ran, albeit a little gimpily, to eat along with everyone else yesterday.  I will give him one more shot, just to be sure, and then let him be. 

The paint horse has been really ouchy these last few weeks.  I found some aspirin paste for equines that is helping immensely and the feed store got some beet pulp in, which for some reason works wonders on this horse.  It just seems counter-intuitive, because I have to keep him away from other high carb foods such as waiawi and grain, but hey, it works.  I need to grow a lot of beets.  Haven't had much luck with root development with the beets - I get a lot of beautiful leaves, but these sort of anemic-looking roots. 

I definitely need to start new seedlings to replace the peppers and the tomatoes which seem to be reaching their peak and will presumably start to die back.  I am still getting the timing down.  Unfortunately, I have some hibiscus branches in a 5 gallon bucket so they will start roots - and a huge batch of mosquitos have hatched and are using my visit to the greenhouse each day as the source of food.  I notice even the cat, who has loved the greenhouse since we built it, is avoiding the mosquito haven.  I am getting itchy just thinking about it. 

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Nancy, are your peppers dying, or do they just need to be staked. Tomato cages, maybe?

NancyDe said...

Could be they need staking. I do have some bamboo left over from when we cut some to make a fence. I should try it. On the other hand, they aren't producing more flowers, just growing the peppers bigger - and hopefully, redder.