BOUQUET OF PEPPERS

On this post, while telling my tale of peppers, I said I would give an update on my bouquet of peppers if my readers were interested. A special reader expressed that interest in the comment section so here we go . . .

As you can see from the leading image of this post, my bouquet of peppers was doing lushly great . . . 😃

Until they struck. Who are they? A swarm of innocuous looking, tiny, white organisms popularly known as white flies.

They literally sucked the life out of my bouquet of peppers. I realised almost too late that they shouldn't be ignored when my pepper plants didn't flower in preparation for fruiting but rather began to have a wilted and stunted look. At first I thought it was as a result of the fact that I had several pepper plants in one place and so there was nutrients deficiency in the soil. To combat that, I introduced banana tea. It made a little difference for a few days because the plants started flowering. 

However, it dawned on me that the white flies didn't come to play when I inspected the back of the leaves on the pepper plants and was shocked by the load of white flies on each leaf. It was like the leaves where coated with white paint! 😅 

The plants looked like they couldn't make it but I was already too emotionally invested in them to give up on them just like that without making tangible efforts to save them. 

I did some research on Google and learned that one of the readily available plants in Nigeria with which to combat them was garlic. So, I planted some garlic cloves. As the garlic cloves grew near the bouquet of peppers, I started noticing the subtle change. It was so subtle at first that I thought my hopeful mind was imagining things. But after some days I realised that the improved look of the pepper plants was not a figment of my imagination. When the plants were touched, the quantity of the swarm of white flies that would fly around briefly before settling on the plants again, had reduced noticeably. My bouquet of peppers began to look lush again but not as they did before the white flies incident.

And then they started to flower! 😃This was exhilarating for me, a win!

From flowering, my bouquet started producing pepper fruits. Observing the fruits ripen gradually on a daily basis is like observing an artist at work adding splashes of bright red colour to a canvas of lush green pepper plants and fruits, at his pace.

Encouraged and having learnt some lessons from this bouquet of peppers experiment, I decided to plant some more pepper plants. 

My golden melon plant has hindered the full view of this small bouquet of peppers. 

I planted some garlic cloves before planting the pepper seeds. I don't want to go through the experience of watching the pepper plants suffer at the hands of the white flies again. It wasn't fun to watch. 🙁 

So, here I have the regular scotch bonnet peppers . . . 👇

I have the yellow scotch bonnet peppers here also known as the Nsukka pepper in Nigeria. 👇 

I decided to have a go again at some tomatoes . . . let's see how it goes . . .

That's the update. From my bouquet of peppers to you, have a bouquet filled week. 🤓

Stay beautiful, 

'Zibah.