Friday, August 17, 2018: Too much water

Earlier this week, I sent an email to John (landscaping) telling him my beech was dead and the boxwood along the west fence are dying. Today he stopped by. He looked at the beech and the boxwood. His hypothesis is that they are getting too much water. He pulled one of the dead boxwoods out and said "yep, too much water".

We looked at the irrigation settings. There are three areas programmed. The "A" area includes all the shrubs zones (1 through 8), "B" is the grass zones (9,10,11,12) and "C" includes the two raised beds (zone 13).

Zone 1-8: 10 minutes M, W, F, Sat
Zone 9, 11,12: 10 minutes T, T, Sat
Zone 10: 5 minutes T, T, Sat
Zone 13: 1 hour M, Th, Sat

He suggested reducing the number of days on the shrubs (Zones 1-8) by one day, so I eliminated Saturday. He also suggested completely turning off the system for a couple of days, so I did that and will leave it off over the weekend.

As for the boxwood, there are still five or six that look healthy. John suggested he has another client that he could offer these to and replace them with more Yews. He will also replace the beech.

Tuesday, August 14, 2018: Santaka Peppers

I was noticing progress of my peppers today, especially the Santaka. I grew these from seed and planted them too early this Spring. I had six plants growing inside and with one plant surviving the move to the garden outside. However, this one plant is bearing a lot of fruits. This is my first experience with Santaka, which supposedly has a Scoville Heat Units (SHU) of 50,000 (essentially the same as cayenne, but 20 times that of Jalapeño and 50 times that of Peppadew).

Capsicum annuum. Open Pollinated. Plant produces good yields of 2 ½" long by ½" wide hot peppers. Peppers grow upright in clusters and turn from green to bright red when mature. Plant has green stems, green leaves, and white flowers. A variety from Japan. They are cone-shaped, bright red when mature, and the skin is thin and wrinkled.

Santaka plant

The peppadew and bell peppers are also doing well. I have two peppadew plants and three bell pepper plants.

Sunday, August 12, 2018; Brugmansia

Back on June 12, I decided to "wound" the brugmansia to see if I could stimulate new growth. Today, I noticed the arrival of new growth at the site of the wound.

June 12, 2018 fresh wound

New growth on August 12, 2018

The technique works!