A Kaleidoscope of Cultivars
Plant Notes: 2024
Not much from this year, but it's when I started gardening with more deliberation and purpose!
Purple Beauty Pepper
The First Pepper! Picked up on a whim. Like many darker pepper varieties, it has a more bitter and robust flavor than a standard bell. As the name suggests, it starts life a dark purple-black.
When ripening, it sometimes passes through an interesting chocolate-brown piebald on its way to being bright red.
I believe that this Pepper Geek article is describing the same pepper I grew.
This pepper grew well and I had no issues with it.
Miscellaneous Plants
I got a beautiful crop of carrots this year!
... and never since. My soil tends to be a little hard-packed for tubers, and all my attempts at repeating this success have resulted in tiny, tough, woody carrots. Sigh.
Fertilizer
This is the year that I learned that the nitrogen need is real! As my tomatoes grew their lower branches started yellowing and shrivelling from the edges inwards. Cutting off effected branches just sent the issue up to the next-oldest set. I bought blood meal and buried it next to them, which almost immediately fixed the issue. However, using blood meal that way can be annoying; I discovered that animals frequently dug up the blood meal! Presumably the scent of the nutrient-rich blood meal is compelling. It didn't seem like that were able to get at enough of the fertilizer to change its effectivity for my plants, but having their roots dug at isn't good for them. It's good to fertilize with blood meal at the beginning of the year, but water-soluable fertilizers might be better for upkeep.
Wildlife
This is also the year that I stopped bothering with squash. I'm tired of feeding the squash beetles. There are possible solutions, like eternal vigilance for the beetles, pesticide treatments, and netting, but I can't be bothered.