Miraculously, we managed to succeed in a few of our fumbling attempts to grow veggies and herbs earlier in the year.  While still considering it a learning period, it’s nice to have had some good results.

The most notable of the victories (so far… there’s still time to screw it all up!) are our pepper plants — jalapeño and bell pepper varieties.  We sprouted six of each, and all but one jalapeño seedling made it to the final potting stage.  After much research we found that pepper plants would thrive for years in a 4 – 5 gallon pot, and shooting for economy over aesthetics (planning on a dozen plants, dontchaknow) we opted for simple, cheap at $2.50 a piece, 5 gallon buckets.  With drain holes drilled in the bottom, they make the perfect planter, and they’re easy to move around the yard for repositioning.

Once the seedlings acclimated to being outside and living in a good sized planter, they took off and grew like mad!  About a month ago we started seeing flower buds appear on the jalapeño plants, and soon after a few white blooms popped open.  One by one, the entire bloom and stalk would wither and drop off (aka “blossom drop”).  This could be from a number of things, most notably a lack of pollination.  Peppers (and tomatoes) are self pollinating plants, needing little help from outside influence, but if the plants are in a sheltered area with little wind and there are no wandering insects to lend a hand, then pollination more often than not won’t happen.

After a little research I found that one can apply a q-tip to the inside of the bloom the spread the pollen about, and it actually seemed to work.  After faithfully diddling each new bloom every day (henceforth know as “plantsturbation”)  I had two jalapeños starting to grow and very little blossom drop.  After a week or so of no new peppers appearing I did a little more research… I had a sneaking suspicion that the q-tip method was a little heavy handed.

Turns out, there is a much simpler method (actually, two, but they amount to the same thing).  The consensus is that a vigorous shaking of the plant and/or flicking the bloom with your finger is more than sufficient to shake the pollen off the stamens and onto the stigma.  It also takes a hell of a lot less time.  I even found a helpful video, too.  Now, we have a bunch of jalapeños growing on several different plants, and a ton of flowers all around.

The bell peppers are being shy… only two of the dozens of buds have opened, and one of them has dropped off (this was before I learned the shake/flick technique).  I feel that they are gonna start popping any day now.

Our biggest failures from the beginning have to be the herbs.  We planned on having eight or so different varieties, and as time went on they just didn’t fare well.  I estimate that the problem was two-fold — first, the craptacular starter kits that we bought that just kept the environment far too wet, which resulted in a lot of mold killing off seedlings and hampering root development, and second, that we didn’t transplant the seedlings soon enough after their initial growth in the seeding trays.

The only survivors were a few really stunted chives, parsley and basil.  Not ones to give up, we went ahead an planted them anyway and did what all good parents do when the family hamster dies… we bought replacements from the store before the kids could notice the missing rodent.  The store-bought plants took off while our gimpy herbs just sorta’ survived.  Gradually, though, we noticed that our herbs were actually starting to grow… the lone basil seedling grew into such a large bush that it overtook the sweet basil that we bought.  What the parsley lacks in abundance, it makes up for with strength and the chives, while sparse, are frigging gorgeous.

Next year, we’re hoping to use what we learned and bring our herbs up to full strength and numbers.