Final Report for FNE94-070
Project Information
Note to readers, attached is the complete final report for FNE94-070.
Results of the project were stastically significant by a greater margin than I had expected. "Roots Plus for Tomatoes", amended with a combination of liquid seaweed and fish emulsion, yielded the largest number of peppers, a total of 14,494 peppers from the 48 plants in the treatment, with an average yield of 302 fruits per plant. The compost tea solution, also amended with a combination of liquid seaweed and fish emulsion, yielded 10,417 peppers and plants had an average of 217 fruits each, while the Roots mixture, also amended with a combination liquid seaweed and fish emulsion, yielded 9,854 fruits with a plant average of 205 fruits. The standard deviation of the mean for these totals was 2,067 fruits while the difference between Roots Plus and the other treatments was more than 4,000 fruits.
While I certainly can't claim to have met my goal of developing a bagged culture system that both met the standards set for organic certification and still produced as highly and for as long a season, as the chemical control I used, the project was worthwhile. Thanks to the results, I now feel confident in growing the bulk of the hot peppers for the CSA in bags on the greenhouse tables. Additionally, I believe that I now have more information with which to carry the work forward. I greatly appreciate having had the opportunity to conduct this experiment. Without the funding, I would never hve been able to justify the time it took to count and weight the nearly 35,000 peppers we grew in the experiment and without that data, I could not have been as certain about the directions we should now take in developing this cultural system.