Scorching the Garden 2020 Part 4
This is the third documented grow for us and we are introducing a lot of new things this year. We have more hardware, better software, and the same growing plan that has worked for many years. Summer is over and we are headed towards shutdown. This was a hard, hard year for the garden, but there is no giving up, especially now.
An every 3 year phenomena happened at the beginning of September called the Corn Moon. Normally, the September full moon is near the equinox, but since the moon’s cycle is shorter than our calendar months, they get out of sync. This year, the harvest moon will be on October 1st and October 31st, making Halloween a Blue moon as well!!
Historically, after the first full moon in September, everything starts to ripen. With how everything was delayed this year, we can expect the peppers to really take off ripening in the last third of the month.
We also grow a few experimental varieties such as Lemon drop, black jalapeno, purple cayenne, aji charapita, and datil. They dont produce as much as the other plants and can be a bit of a pain to harvest, like the aji charapita. We do this to learn lessons about different strains, cultivation techniques, and other little experiments. These may lead to new products or improvements on what we already have going.
The plants are indeed beautiful, but about a month and a half behind in their development. In 2018, the plants were easily 2x bigger. It was also a lot cooler and wetter that year. Although the harvest might be more meager than in other years, what we will get will be tasty and probably extra hot.
The herbs and aromatics thrived under the harsh temperatures. Pictured here is not one of them. This is actually spearmint. It can reproduce via roots and seeds. Its very pretty and wafts a pungent toothpaste smell when trampled. Its sort of a pain in the ass when it thinks it can grow where a pepper plant is, but other than that, we don’t mind sharing the space with it.
Another non-harvested resident are our sunflowers. Many grew rouge this year as did a few tomato plants. This is one sunflower that exploded with over two dozen blooms. They attract bees, birds, wasps, and other visitors that keep nature healthy and in balance.
Its been an especially hard year, all around. With COVID, politics, the economy, extreme weather patterns, and just freaking life being lived, hats off to anyone who has made it this far! We don’t look at it as one set back after another, we see it as testing our systems and learning what works, what doesn’t and why. 2020 hasn’t stopped us, only delayed things. 2020 hasn’t stopped you. You are still out there, doing what you do as best you can. 2020 can’t stop us and when we come back in 2021, just like you, we’ll be that much stronger, that much smarter, that much better. Thank you all, and keep following our updates. The best is yet to come.
