You guys using pepper powder could easily wash the capsaicin oils out of the pepper powder with rubbing alcohol or another polar solvent. This would give you all the heat you need without the vegetative parts of the pepper clogging things.
If you’re making it from home grown peppers you can save some work and only harvest the white parts of the pepper for the hot oils. The placental material is what contains most of the capsaicin so you can save the outer skins by freezing them for use in cooking.
I have Jack Russel Terriers to scare away most pests, birds for insects, soap spray and my favourite insect eater Baldfaced Hornets. There’s an active hive that lives nearby which from time to time will send out raiding parties of 30-40 hornets. Which can pick an entire tree clean in an afternoon.
Taking out the placenta seems like lots of work in itself. You could also cut in half and steep in a large pot then run through fine strainer. make lots of extra so you have some to freeze for early next season before peppers ripen.
If you have super hots I can’t imagine it would take more than a dozen pods to make a half gallon worth of spray. I don’t see that being lots of work tbh. The placental material with the seeds and all can be removed with a knife in two cuts.
I used cheap vodka, canola oil, soap, water and lots of hottest pepper that I have grown, ran through a blender, strain and then store the concentrate in a soda liter bottle for storing in the fridge and use when needed.
I’m certainly not knocking your method but I have cut and dried 10’s of thousands of peppers and for me cutting out the placenta seems like a lot more work than cutting in half and throwing it in boiling water. I think 1 superhot would make a gallon with no problem if not more.
I think you’re missing the point? I was suggesting that the placenta be cut out of the pods so that the rest of the pod is still good to be used. Boiling it would certainly work, but then you’re wasting the pods which can’t be used for much afterwards.
This is going off topic and into the weeds, so I will say to each their own.
It’s good to hear all views, it’s not off topic. I hit a roadblock, now I see a way around. I have hot peppers from 3 years ago, they are so prolific wasting them is not really an issue.
I guess dried peppers would work too. No need to store a product, just dry some to use to make fresh batches of this witches brew, however you do it.
I prepared 450 ziploc bags and I only have about 50 that are unused. I’m estimating that about half are on Goldrush. Four years in and the ziploc bags have worked well for me.
That is about how my first year went. I’m a slow learner but after a few year I only have a few drops. My biggest problem initially was bagging a little early and being able to select the best option in the cluster. The drops are still a problem but not as bad as my first attempts.
Make a slit right in the middle of a bag. Be careful not make it too deep, just enough for an apple stem to go through. Once you zip both sides of the top of s bag to meet in the middle, the lock is tight.
Does anyone use “trap” trees? I don’t recall where I read about the concept, but the idea is to encourage insects to prefer some trees over others, and then battle them there. I’ve got a chickasaw plum that has the typical small and sour fruit. I use it as a pollinator, it’s on the edge of my orchad. I’ve been picking the plum curculio strikes off it and disposing of them for a couple of years. I seem to have a lot fewer strikes this year. I was thinking about using surround on the trees I want to protect, further encouraging the curcs to move to the poor fruit trap tree, where I can deal with them using my current method or some insecticide. Does this make any sense?
In my orchard there’s an 8 year old Mount Royal European Plum tree that fruits reliably each and every year which we use as the trap tree for plum curculio. We discovered by accident that despite having all manner of fruits (Japanese plums, european plums, cherries, apples, pears, peaches, nectarines, apricots, etc.) the plum curculio always gravitate toward that one Mount Royal Plum tree each year and that’s the tree where I spray and fight them (been doing it that way going on 4 years now).
