Monday, September 24, 2012

FINALLY.


a brief, unscheduled update regarding emotional container gardening

My troubled, grouchy rocoto chile pepper plant has finally decided to get up off its plant-ass and make a pepper.

FINALLY.

 

Naturally the pepper came out while I was away on vacation. Now that I'm back in town it will probably shrivel up and fall off within a few days, or develop some sort of exotic mold or infestation. I think I've finally gotten the plant food thing down, at least, because its flowers are a deeper purple than they were before.

new and improved pepper plant flower

My other pepper plant, a serrano, seems to be making up its plant-mind as to whether it ought to make peppers this year. It appears to have recovered from the period of malnutrition I apparently subjected it to, but I can't yet tell whether it's a full recovery or merely an "I'm not dead" partial recovery: there are a ton of new flowers, but no fruit yet, and it recently dropped a bunch of leaves. Either I brought on a freak-out by giving it too much nitrogen, or it was startled by the sudden appearance of its neighbor's vivacious new pepper.

Previous posts about my container gardening are here, here, here and here.

Festive GIF from I'm Revolting.




4 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:04 PM

    And what a vivacious new pepper it is! Surely its arrival merits a celebratory tipple as well as a GIF?

    Might we see it next on a plate, in some form?

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    Replies
    1. I'll try to remember to drink to its good health.

      That is my problem now, how to eat it if there's only the one. I had a bountiful harvest in mind when I started the seeds, culminating in home-made hot sauce.

      Unrelatedly, I was just going to send you this article about the spotted antbird:
      http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/science/spotted-antbirds-feathered-freeloaders-at-the-ant-parade.html

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    2. Anonymous5:47 PM

      Now they are ants that would make a character in a story's skin crawl. The antbirds seem foolhardy to mess with them, but I guess grasshoppers, beetles, spiders and small lizards are a Panamanian avian gourmand's dream.

      I love the phrase 'mutually vocally ornamented' too. I'd not come across that before.

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    3. Those ants do sound like a terror. I wonder how often the researchers dream about being carried off by them.

      There were quite a few good bits in there -- the mutual vocal ornamentation, and I liked the "pie plate eyes" on the birds, too.

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