The title says it all and isn’t that a lovely breakfast thought!?! I noticed that a few of my green peppers had a moldy/fungal/disgusting/gross/ewww it sickened me black rot growing on the side. What is this? Is it some sort of disease? Will it spread? I checked the rest of my peppers and it seemed to be limited to those few, which promptly got tossed into the compost pile. Any thoughts? I need to hit the books (errrrr, Google) ASAP! This brings me to composting (nice segue, huh?). What is the deal? Do I need to cover with soil or no? Right now it’s just a pile of rotting kitchen scraps laying over a parfait of dirt and more rotting vegetables. Can you mess up compost? I’m working hard at doing nothing with the pile — is this a mistake? HELP!
In other news, I have some red tomatoes! So far they are only the cherry tomatoes but it’s still pretty exciting. I need some good cheery tomato and Roma tomato recipes because I have about 10, 000 growing. What is a girl to do with 10,000 tomatoes? Anyone out there in blogville have a good homemade tomato sauce or tomato soup recipe?
Check out my recipe page for my latest cake!
🙂 Farmer Ran
Our caterer for the wedding makes her salsa from cherry tomatoes, and she makes some pretty fantastic salsa. I bet you have all the right ingredients for it in Dred Pirate Roberts!!!
On the compost issue, my mom has this giant barrel thing in which she composts. We bought it at a local nursery; it is a huge bucket with a screw-on lid that sits at an angle, and you unscrew the lid, dump in your offerings, screw the lid back on. The nursery told us to put some worms in there, it’s like Worm Paradise. Then, you just rotate the barrel. No tilling, etc. Holds a lot so you can accumulate as much as you need, and it’s portable (if you find yourself in a situation where you need a portable composting barrel). I will try to procure a picture for you! Love you! 🙂
Hey Randi! Be careful of the compost – it can attract critters. We have composting bins in my community garden and last year, the giant city rats really took a liking to it. Also, you are suppose to layer browns with greens. Browns are things like old newspapers, dead leaves, etc and greens are the live stuff (kitchen scraps, etc). You may not want to throw the peppers in there until you find out what is growing on them in case it is a disease. You dont want your compost to get infected.
The rot is most likely a form of blossom rot and is a function a of missing nutrient. This time it is most likely calcium. Tomatos will suffer this malady as well. This can be avoided by planting the peppers with egg shells in the soil. This will also help eliminate cut worms and slugs. If it looks like those rotten spots may be the result of a marauding insect, get some Sevin Dust. That stuff is the CHRONIC. Kills most anything.
Thanks for all the feedback! The compost pile has a large poultry net around it, and unfortunately for where I live, critters are here no matter what! Luckily, no rats/mice yet!
As for the “rot” So far the tomatoes have been spared and it’s been limited to one plant… although I’m starting to see some black on the jalepenos. It doesn’t look like anything bad yet. It’s actually on the stalk of the plant in this case. I’m going to keep an eye on it. I’m trying to avoid Seven Dust because I’m attempting to keep it pesticide free — but we’ll see how that goes!
Alicia — I didn’t realize you could compost newspaper!
Dr. Pangloss — thanks for the tips, I’m going to look into the calcium issue!
HMMM… I am Anonymous — not sure why my name didn’t pop up!
I also recommend using some urine around the base of the plants. When the cellular structure of a plant begins to falter, it is usually a nutrient deficiency. In the mornings, I void my bladder around the around the base of the plants. The results are phenomenal. Sometimes, I’ll have my boyfriend come over and do the same.
Dr Pangloss, you had me up to the urine part. Very funny….