Of the three original plants, two are still alive.  The one plant I had in the yogart container, I had taken out to put in the new born that I highlighted in the last post.  However, it since has died.  I have had an ongoing problem with spidermites and it did not make it.  That time, I had gotten real busy at work and neglected the plants for a number of weeks and I was not able to save it.

For the spidermites, I take the plants out of the WF and rinse them off under running water to knock as many of as possible.  After that, I spray them with a soap and neem oil mixture.  I repeat this procedure every few days til I see no more signs of them.

The berries have not fruited in many months now and finally have done so ago these last few months.   Here are some pictures to highlight various stages of ripening.  In the picture below is a poorly polinated berry.  Without polination the berries either do not develope at all or are very deformed like this one below.   I did not see them start flowering so this is what happens.  The rest of the berries in the picture I polinated by hand and you will see that they look normal.

Poorly Polinated Berry

Here you will see the newly opened flower.  To the right of it, is a newly polinated flower.  Within a day of a good polination all the white petals fall off.  The picture also shows a good progression from the small berry to the larger berry.

Ripening Stages

The first few berries of the plant are larger with the ones following being progressively smaller.

Berries Ripening

For the cat lovers out there….  Here are two of our four cats sunning themselves in the window with the plants.  In general, they don’t bother the plants at all.  The jalepeno that has some branches that hang down, they will nip at some times, but nothing serious.

Strawberries & Cats

So as they say, here are the fruits of my labor.  The above pictures produced this bowl of berries and a couple of larger ones that had ripened earlier and that I ate.  So overall, it was about a dozen berries of various sizes.

Bowl of Berries

P.S.  As the berries were ripening, I had another ourbreak of spidermites and have been fending them off again.  It had been about 3 months since the last sign of them.

5/26/2012  As an example of strawberries producing multiple harvests a year,  here are a couple more berries a little over a month later on the same little crown.

More berries on a skinny crown

It’s only been 12 days since my last post, but things got a little more interesting this morning .  http://our.windowfarms.org/2011/07/11/jalepeno-at-6-months-and-vacation-survival/

Big storms went through here overnight and we were awoken by our water sensor in the basement at 3am telling us we were taking in some water.  Nothing major.  Normally, I wouldn’t mention this type stuff, but it is such a strange coincedence that later in the morning one of the tubes between the levels on my window farm plugged up and I had a mini flood in my window.   I hardly ever clean out the algea so shame on me.   So, in cleaning up that mess looking closely at the plant I noticed that I had spider mites. 

I was not completely surprized by this because last week I had noticed that my strawberry had mites.  I dealt with mites on the strawberries last year.  http://our.windowfarms.org/2010/08/01/strawberry-5-month-update-spidermites-other-bugs/  Last year I only sprayed the leaves off outside with a hose every few weeks and eventually they went away.  This year though I have purchased some neem oil and soap.  I gave the strawberries a good soaking last week.  Today, I sprayed off the japaneno with the hose and then gave it a spray with the neem oil.  So 11 days ago I had not noticed any thing and today they were all over it.

This is actually the first time I had the jalepeno out of the WF so I got a picture of the roots.  I have noticed that some plant roots like to travel out of the net pot and other don’t.  The jalapeno, strawberry and lettuce roots had been very content in staying put.  Both the peas and beans tended to roam.  http://our.windowfarms.org/2011/03/29/green-bean-roots/ 

So far I have been very happy with the jalapeno and it is producing well with at least one a week.  A couple fell off while hosing it down today.

Enjoy the pictures!

Spider Mites

Neem Oil & Soap

Jalepeno Roots

Jaleneno Harvest

 P.S.  I just made some jalapeno poppers out of these for lunch.  Yum!