Quick Tip: Amend Your Soil With Perlite or Vermiculite to Adjust Water Retention

Changing the water-holding properties of your soil is easy: Mix in some perlite for better drainage, or vermiculite for better water retention.

Hot Pepper Update

Just a quick update on the progress of our hot peppers in Nyack.  We started these from seed back in August and they're coming along nicely (we forgot how slow peppers grow, definitely not the best crop choice for impatient growers...but, like with all gardening, patience is key).  They're currently under a Sun Blaze 48 T5 fluorescent fixture in a 3'x3' Ebb and Flow tray and we're feeding them with Canna's Aqua Vega, Cannazym and some of Strata's SOS.  The ones in the front row (and some are scattered around the back rows) are Chinese 5 Color, the one with broad leaves behind them on the left is a Chocolate Habanero and the skinny, bushy plants are the Black Knight Chili peppers.  Notice the tight internodal spacing on the chilis?  That's because we're using a T5 light for the vegetative stage...tight internodes means more flowering sights, which means more peppers!  We just saw the first signs of budding on some of the Chinese 5 Color's last week so we'll be switching over to a High Pressure Sodium light and the Aqua Flores base nutrient soon.  We'll keep you posted!

Hot Peppers

We're starting up a new project in our Nyack store, a hydroponic Ebb & Flow display of hot peppers.  We're starting our seeds today and we always start way more than we end up needing, so if you'd like some free seedlings from some great natural, non-GMO, heirloom seeds, stop by in about 2-3 weeks!  If you'd like some and you're a customer at our Queens store, just give us a call ahead of time and we'll bring some over.  What we'll be growing (all from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds):

- Purple Jalapeño - A large spicy jalapeño pepper that turns a deep purple before maturing to red.

- Black Night (sorry no link, these were from last year's batch) - A chili pepper that starts out black and ripens to bright red.  Produces very pretty purple flowers.

- Chocolate Habanero Pepper - A lantern-shaped habanero chili that starts out as green and ripens to chocolate-brown.  They're pretty hot, coming in at about 300,000 on the Scoville scale.

- Chinese 5 Color Pepper - Screaming hot little peppers turn a rainbow of vibrant colors; from purple, cream, yellow, orange to red as they ripen, so all 5 colors can be on the plant at once.