Monday, July 6, 2009

Another cool pepper trick

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Garden expansion via large pots or why scrounging stuff from your neighbours is good. All my mini and hot peppers are growing in pots that were donated by my neighbours who put in a cedar hedge.

Early in the spring, a terrible thing happened: Cutworms ate through the stem of my variegated pepper. The previous fall I had resuced the seed for this pepper from a fruit dropped by a 'Fish' in their demonstration vegetable garden. I patiently dried the pepper and separated the seeds wondering if it would come up variegated like its presumed parents. It did beautifully until one fateful day.

In a desperate move, I stuck the broken stem back into the soil and kept it watered. My theory was because it was related to tomatoes, maybe it would too would easily root along its stem.

It took!

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Fish pepper plant working on life 2.

My pepper plant survived. No, it will not produce peppers for me this year but as I commonly overwinter my favourite peppers, I have hope that next year, I will see the fruit of my labours.

Just a reminder that gardening is for the patient.

3 comments:

Stefaneener said...

Patient and hopeful/resourceful! Good for you. That's a truly lovely pepper.

Can't wait to see the fruit next year. Does it vary like the foliage?

Sigrun said...

I didn't think peppers would do that. Congratulations. Nah nah na na nah, to you, nasty cutworm.

Mary Soderstrom said...

Gardening is indeed for the patient--and it's always good to remember that a garden is a work in progress. What doesn't work this year, may well succeed next year.

Mary