Tomato Patch at Alejandro Farms

Phase 2 of Alejandro Farm is now complete with a tomato patch for early 2013. We installed some nice pave stone to help keep area clean and free of weeds and easy to access  to plants. We also reconfigured our irrigation system to make room for the expansion of tomato patch and also phase 3. The irrigation now has 3 manual shut-off valves to allow targeted watering throughout seasons. As before, we feature an auto distribution of liquid plant food to our Peppers, Tomato's and Strawberries.

 In our first year of Bonnie tomato plants we are growing Roma's, Celebrity, and Bush Goliath's.

 The mixture of soil we used for this years tomato patch.

Alejandro Farm now consist of Peppers, Tomato's, and Strawberries. Phase three will be coming in spring. 

First Pepper at Alejandro Farm

Our first pepper at Alejandro Farm, Sweet Heat Pepper. Our pepper plants have expoded with growth these last few weeks. Pictured below is the pepper farm right after a thunderstorm. The got beat up a little but will be fine. The umbrellas we added provided a nice protection. We adjusted our automated irrigation down to twice a day.

First Pepper Blossoms for 2012

Our first pepper blossoms are coming out. Very exciting stuff as these pepper plants settle in their new home at Alejandro Pepper Farm. We gave them a shot of fertilizer and we can see a noticeable difference in their growth rate. Below is the first evidence of a blossom from the burpee sweet heat pepper plant.



Our irrigation system seems to be working out very well with a occasional blow-out on the tube connections. Hey, we've got 50 psi coming through these lines. Guess I'll have to get the zip ties out. Still watering 4 times a day with 2 minutes per cycle.

Planting Alejandro Pepper Farm

Last Saturday we finally planted our peppers after nursing back the plants purchased from Burpee and our Serrano's we germinated from seeds. We lined the base of each 20 gallon pot with gravel and a secret ingredient you don't often find in this mixture. Look closely and you might see it...

Yep, those are sea shells my wife and I had gathered from several walks on the beach! After each walk we would place them around our mail box on top of the landscape rocks. Then recently we removed the rock and replaced it with hardwood mulch. So that's how we ended up with sea shells in our nursery pots. Who knows, it may be the reason we have a great pepper yield! Time will tell.

We used Miracle-Gro potting soil and mixed with organic choice. Hopefully we'll have great results from the growth of our peppers over time with this soil/compost mix.

After planting all of our peppers we setup a drip system to automatically water each plant. Since we have very warm/hot weather we decide to start out watering 4 times per day for 2 minutes. We'll make adjustments as we go.

Our auto drip irrigation system allows us to make precision water at preferred times and not worry to much about it. Patti and I get a kick out of watching our peppers several times a day. ;o)

Texas Orange Tree on Alejandro

While we're working on building up our pepper garden we provided a little TLC to our one and only Texas Orange Tree. Yep, we planted her in the ground finally after several years living in a pot. We installed a new automatic irrigation system for our landscape and transplanted our orange tree to a much better place and fresh water to drink on a regular basis.

The picture above is our tree last fall as she produce some nice citrus in spite of our lack of consistent watering. About a half dozen nice oranges for the first time last year.

After transplanting our orange tree in the ground you can see she's much happier with a drink of water every other day for a bout a half hour. Unfortunately, now that shes in the ground she's exposed to different kinds of creepy crawlers that enjoy feeding off the leaves and leaving eggs and so forth.

I stopped by our local nursery (Turners) to inquire about something for the trunk to keep ants and bugs from climbing the orange tree. They recommended Tree Tanglewood which is an insect barrier and the banding material that goes with it. In the picture above you can see the banding guard wrapped around the trunk of tree and a plastic tie to hold it in place. Then spreading the sticky goo on the banding material. This stopped the ants in their tracks. Then I used can of compressed air we have for our computers and blew off the ants on tree. The guard band gets replaced every so often as needed. I still have a few issues with others types of bugs that I'll address later. Hope this year we produce several more oranges then last year.

Irrigation and Garden Design

We modeled our pepper farm after my father in laws blueberry farm operation. We used 20 gallon EG 10000S Econ-Grip nursery pots from John's blueberry farm and realized we would need a few more. I tried stopping by our local nurseries to see if they would sell me some of their used pots and I had no takers. I was actually surprised by there unwillingness to part with them, even to sell. So I found a place online called Great Western that sells them for about $5.00 each. But they sting you in freight.

We tied into our automatic irrigation system with 3/4 inch PVC and added an "Add-It" device that makes it easy to add fertilizer as needed automatically as we grow our peppers.

This particular device is not meant for constant pressure and was meant for use with a garden hose. However, this is setup with the auto irrigation system after the station valve and is not under pressure continuously. The PSI max is listed at 60 and our water pressure measures to about 50 PSI. So we improvised.

We are just about ready for planting. The irrigation seams to be working great and after some calibrations we should be ready. Starting to look like the blueberry farm setup? Nice to be able to put some space to use on the side of our home. Hope y'all come back for our next post.