Mini Jalapenos and Red Fire hot pepper

Very nice, it looks in really good shape - not a bad leaf in sight.

What beautiful plants, Beth! I think peppers and chard and zucchini are the most ornamental vegetable plants. So few of the others stay pretty over the long haul.

Oh, hey - you had those midget mohawk peppers, didn't you? How did they turn out?

I love little pepper plants visually, but we're tres wimp on hot peppers. I grew "super mild" mariachi peppers last summer, and pretty much gave away the first harvest and cut down the plant. Spending an evening with my hand burning from capsaicin before I figured out how to make it stop also hastened that plant's demise... Not that I'm vengeful or anything. It just really hurt.

Oh, well, re the mohawks. My mini bells were pretty good - nothing too exciting flavorwise, but very cute. I tentatively plan to grow some more outside this year.

Did you retire the prepara mini? I was thinking the mimulus might work well in there.

Beth - yeah, I've had a lot of trouble with my home tap water and plants - they really prefer rain. But all our moisture has been falling in Maryland, lately. Winter tap is apparently less lethal to them... The let-the-chlorine-evaporate-off-first dodge also helps, I think. Well, and the water's been tasting better lately. They fixed a water main a couple blocks up, twice. Though we're at the top of a hill, apparently there are two springs on that block that play mischief on the pipes.

Maybe your management will consider having regular work-at-home days. If you know ahead of time that you have, like, Tuesdays and Fridays at home to concentrate, you kind of arrange your work that way. Very efficient, having talk days and concentrate days.

Sure! Shall I toss in some of my spare Park Seed freebies as well? Have a fairly good Hungarian banana pepper that turns scarlet - almost as good as carmen when red, and very productive. And razzleberry tomato. (Made multiple orders, so got multiple freebie packs. And pepper seeds are only good for two years.)

I also saved seeds from the mini bell peppers, if you want a few of those. And bambino and twinkle small eggplant, of course.

Beth - OK, will put in the mail.

FWIW, I noticed razzleberry is fusarium and verticillum resistant. All three years I've ordered from Park, they've sent along freebies I would never have chosen. But the last two years' offerings were good - the white cucumber pearl enough so that I bought more. So I shall try razzleberry this year as suggested by Park.

I'll take you up on the Lipstick pepper, thanks.

I can definitely sympathize. I had peppers nearly that bushy when a water pump went, and I needed to replace it. And an aphid infestation - had to wash the plants a few times. Not Very Convenient. And the plants weren't any more amused than I was.

The air pump should do fine. Though the pumps get awfully loud before they go, and sometimes can be salvaged if you get them out sooner. Or replaced under warranty, time-dependent.

Do you use the nylons-over-pump trick to help keep the roots out of the pump? Not that anything will truly keep roots out of pump with plants that long-lived and lush.

Beth - I've never replaced the spongey filters, though perhaps I should. What I do with the nylons is essentially bag the pump inside them, as a second layer of defense behind the filter. Quite a lot of roots work their way around the filters. Not much can get through the nylon pores, and the few that do are very fine roots.

These look really good, you've done a great job with them.

Beautiful, Beth! Too bad I can't take jalapeños.