From the hot and spicy Univest Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, it is time for another dangerous episode of chemical free horticultural hijinx, You Bet Your Garden.

A listener's Carolina Reaper plant keeps dropping its pungent peppers much too soon.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

And on today's show, I'll reveal the most common causes of premature pepper drop and deliver a warning about trying to eat peppers that top a million on the Scoville scale.

Plus, your fabulous phone call questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and intrinsically intuitive invocations.

So keep your eyes and/or your ears right here, cats and kittens, because it's all coming up faster than you turning down a dangerous dare.

Right after this.

- Support for You Bet Your Garden is provided by the Espoma Company, offering a complete selection of natural, organic plant foods and potting soils.

More information about Espoma and the Espoma natural gardening community can be found at... - Welcome to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden from the Univest Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA.

I am your host, Mike McGrath.

Coming up later in the show, the Carolina Reaper may well be one of, if not the most, hot hot pepper in the world, coming in at a monstrous 1,600,000 Scoville units, enough to take the paint off your car.

We're going to talk about these peppers, the really hot ones, and how you really do need to be careful with them.

And we're also going to address a listener's question about pepper drop, when the young buds fall off the plant.

But before that, and before we take the first of your fabulous phone calls, I got a couple of notes from some of the last shows.

As you may know, our mystery tomato contest turned out to be the variety Atomic Grape.

And all of our listeners who wrote in, called in and identified it, said they got their seeds from Baker Creek Seed Company.

I got the Baker right.

I forgot the Creek.

It's not Baker.

It's Baker Creek, Creek, not Creep.

And the winner, the first person to identify it is Cara Landolt.

And as soon as we get her location and her address, she'll receive a signed copy of my tomato book, which I consider a consolation prize, quite honestly.

All right, time to delve into your fabulous phone calls.

Billy, help me out.

Welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hi, Mike.

Thanks for taking my call.

- Well, thank you for making it, sir.

How are you doing?

- I am doing well, enjoying the weather up here in Medina, Minnesota.

- What can we do you for, sir?

- Well, I just moved into a new house, - and I built these raised beds.

They're like these galvanized steel raised beds.

They're eight feet by four feet by four feet in length.

- Excuse me... - And I put a post on... - Billy, does that mean they're four feet high?

- Yes.

They're kind of deep.

OK. Well, there's nothing wrong with that.

And I also want to mention to our listeners that I'm seeing and hearing about more people using steel or another metal to frame their beds because they know, no matter what else may happen, it ain't going to rot.

- So, proceed, sir.

- True.

So I put a post on my local Facebook gardening group and just kind of asked them, where was a good place to get some local soil?

Because I was going to do your recommendation of a mix of compost, topsoil, and I was going to get some bags of pearlite to mix in.

A lot of people mentioned, since it's so deep, that I should consider putting like a bunch of cut-up tree...like tree root... Not tree roots, but cut-up wood in the bottom and branches and leaves in the bottom of the raised beds and then putting my soil mix in on top of it.

They said it was like a form of this thing called hugelkultur gardening, which apparently is like German for mound gardening.

But I want to talk to you and see what you thought about that.

- Well, hugelkultur is a form of permaculture, so it is kind of a more permanent planting than many of us perform.

And although I don't advise people put rocks or gravel or anything on the bottom of their raised beds, there is a big hugelkultur fan club, for lack of a better word, out there.

And the idea is that you're going to lay these logs and branches, you know, just fresh wood, not mulch or any kind of old lumber or anything.

You're going to lay that down.

If you got four feet, man, you could come up to two feet.

And the idea is the wood is so far down that it's not going to interfere with...not nitrogen fixation, but the plants having access to adequate nitrogen.

And over the years, perhaps even the decades, that wood will slowly rot away into good soil.

So I can't think of a single reason to say no.

- Well, Mike, I love your show.

I listen to you just about every week that I can.

So thank you so much for taking my call.

It is a pleasure talking to you today.

- Pleasure is mine.

Thank you very much.

And good luck.

Carol, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thank you, Mike.

Hello.

- Hello.

How are you, Carol?

- Enjoying fine weather here in Lebanon Township, New Jersey, Hunterdon County.

- All right.

What can we do you for?

- I was interested in the caller who was talking about her Indian meal moth infestation last week.

- Right.

- And you very, very rightly told her about cleaning out her cabinets.

Not with bleach.

Thank you.

But I also wanted to alert people to the fact that the birdseed that we're all buying at this time of year to feed the returning winter birds can be infested.

The only time I had a problem with Indian meal moths.

I traced it back to a bag of sunflower seed.

And so you need to check those.

Make sure that you store the seed well.

I only buy small quantities, so I'm able to store it in clean, dry plastic jugs from milk or water or juice.

And that seems to work fine for me.

But be careful about bringing them in because sometimes you bring in an infested bag and don't realize it.

- These meal moths, pantry moths, grain moths, they have been around for untold millennia.

For as long as people have stored grain, this nasty little insect has adapted to feeding on the grain and then metamorphosing into a moth and laying eggs.

Where?

In the grain.

So it is, you know...

It's a perpetual motion machine.

And like I said last time, you can only imagine what it's like when you've got grain silos and stuff.

- Yes.

I can't imagine that.

- It must be like they think it's the Garden of Eden.

I want to reiterate that I do not approve of feeding seed to birds.

But I'm also going to add that if you're going to feed seed to birds, the dead of winter is the time to do it.

You're not going to interfere with the hatchlings of spring being confused about where their food comes from.

The Humane Society, and many other organizations, are begging people to stop feeding seed when hatching is occurring because they want the baby birds to learn where the food is in the wild.

Also, as the weather warms up, bird feeders are a source of really devastating diseases on the bird population.

They get these eye infections because, you know, they're all clustered there and they're pooping on the seed as they're eating it.

And it's just a bad idea.

But thinking it over, I don't have a huge problem with feeding the seed in the winter, other than you're encouraging those servants of Satan, evil squirrels, who are attracted to bird feeders more than birds are.

And always remember, with sunflower seed, they are allelopathic.

Any seed that gets dropped on the ground is not only fodder for rats and mice and voles, but it can make that the soil underneath ungrowable for many other plants.

When the weather gets cold - I'm going to put mine out pretty soon - hang suet feeders.

Suet feeders have more fat and protein than sunflower seeds and they don't attract vermin.

And it's a great thing.

And you'll see just as many birds, if not more.

I had a pileated woodpecker at mine last year and that was amazing.

So you're still feeding the birds, but there's no downside.

But again, you want to feed some sunflower seed in the dead of winter, go ahead.

Just keep the feeder clean and stop feeding when nesting is over.

I will also reveal a trick that I learned helping people who were growing their own storage beans like pinto beans and navy beans and stuff like that, that you would make soups and stews from over the winter.

If you think they have been infested or attacked by weevils, you put the beans in the freezer for a couple of days and that kills the weevils.

So, same thing, especially with this.

If it's freezing outside or even just overnights when it gets colder, put your packaged birdseed out there and you may well kill the moths and the caterpillars and the eggs before they have a chance to wreak mischief.

- Thank you very much, Mike.

- My pleasure.

Bye-bye.

Margy, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hi.

Nice to talk to you.

- It's nice to talk to you, Marge.

How are you doing?

- Doing good.

- What's your location?

- In Bath, PA. - OK, go ahead.

Try to stump the chump.

- All right.

My husband and I are have been trying to grow loofah for the past two seasons.

And the first season, we had beautiful plants.

It got really big and tall.

It had nice fruit.

But then when it came time for the dry out, it was rainy, it was Pennsylvania cold, and they all pretty much turned to mush.

So then I brought like two of them in and I tried drying them on a shelf in our unheated garage.

It's actually a Quonset hut, but not many people know what that is.

So anyway, those didn't do well either.

They got nasty, moldy inside.

And so this year we tried starting the plants earlier.

- Good.

- They grew and they waited till the end of August, beginning of September to start pushing their flowers.

- Hmm.

- And then...

It was weird.

- That seems as usual.

- I know.

We had them in the same sunny, well-drained spot and just...

It just waited till as late as possible to start doing.

And then... - Guaranteed there's not enough time to mature the fruit, so... Let's back up.

Are we growing in raised beds or flat earth?

- Flat-ish earth.

But we've mounded it with compost and horse manure.

- OK. Ding, ding, ding.

Horse manure provides nitrogen and very little else.

Nitrogen grows big plants, but it inhibits flowering.

So your plant did not start to flower until a lot of the nitrogen had degraded.

What I would suggest is, yes, shred up all the fall leaves you can and mix in spent coffee grounds.

If you don't drink coffee, you can get them in the £5 bag at Starbucks or any other coffee shop.

It keeps it out of the waste stream.

And the combination of shredded leaves and coffee grounds makes the best compost.

And it makes it fast.

I would suggest, since we want to get these gourds, that you isolate the horse manure and use it on non-flowering plants - sweet corn, field corn, asparagus, anything that is not flowering where we want a fruit from it.

So if you want to just grow gourds, you just grow gourds.

To get a loofah gourd to get to the point where it changes into a usable sponge, and these sponges are great, it needs 120 days.

- OK. - So your idea of starting early is very valid.

Nothing can do if it rains at the end of the season.

Can you think of when that happens in a vineyard and all the grapes get moldy?

You've lost the whole year's crop.

Start them early.

Give them a flat raised bed to grow in.

No more manure.

And the odds are with you.

- OK. - All right.

- Yes.

That's awesome.

Thank you so much.

- My pleasure.

You take care and good luck next year.

- Thank you.

- Bye-bye.

- Bye.

- All right.

As promised, it is time for an especially spicy Question of the Week, which we're calling Carolina Reapers: Hot, Hot, Hot, But Somewhat Testy.

Back in early October, Gabriel in Ozark, Missouri, wrote... Well, first, I want to warn everybody out there that this pepper is not for eating.

As the comedy troupe Monty Python once said, it is for lying down and avoiding.

Coming in at a seriously scorching 1,600,000 Scoville units - they are a measure created to score the hotness of hot peppers - it was once judged to be the hottest hot pepper in the world.

But it is now being challenged by breeders who claim their new entries reach well over 2 million Scoville units.

This is madness.

In comparison, Tasty jalapenos measure in at 2 to 8,000 units.

Now that's a pepper you can enjoy without risk of chemical mouth burns.

The once feared scotch bonnet now seems mild at 100,000 units.

And the legendary hotter than Hades habanero is, quote, only 250,000 units.

Once you get up near a million, you're talking about stripping the paint off your esophagus.

I quote from a 2020 article in the journal Radiology Case Reports, which is a publication of the National Institutes of Health that is titled Fear The Reaper.

Now, I quote...

The Carolina Reaper is one of the spiciest edible peppers in the world.

Similar in size to the habanero, these bright red little peppers are commercially available in raw form as well as seeds, dried peppers and flavoring for sauces.

Hot pepper eating contests have grown in popularity and often feature ingestion of raw Carolina Reaper peppers as the pinnacle challenge.

While localized symptoms such as mouth burning and mouth numbness are the main risks of eating these peppers, recent case reports have revealed more serious complications of these potent foods.

Reversible cerebral vaso constriction syndrome, which is shutting off blood to the brain, myocardial infraction, heart attack.

and esophageal rupture have all been reported.

OK. You have now been warned.

We move on to address Gabe in the Ozarks.

Remember Gabe?

It was a while ago.

Aborted fruiting, meaning that the flower made it through OK, but it all went blahooey after that is surprisingly common with hot peppers.

Although we tend to think that hot peppers prefer Arizona-like weather in summertime, when mere humans have to dig deep caves and live under the sand for months at a time, they actually grow best at temperatures between 75 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit, and they despise temperatures below 50 Fahrenheit.

They don't mind drying out once in a while, but they hate being over-watered, which may be the number one source of the kind of stress that causes premature fruit drop.

That's right.

Plant stress.

Not an insect, not a disease.

As deadly to peppers as it is to us humans, stress can cause heart attacks, as can eating one of these little hand grenades, and other bad things and just make your life seem even more awful than it really is.

Of course, this depends on how awful your life is.

Individual results will vary.

Now, it's not that the plants are overly temperamental.

Remember that tomato flowers will fail to produce fruits when temps reach the 90s.

But stress is stress and plants don't like it any more than we do.

Let's get specific.

One of Gabriel's photos reveals a splendid-looking pepper plant, with the exception of having actual peppers on it.

As I always try to stress - that's the wrong word - remind you all - healthy leaves are a sure sign that disease, insects and/or sunspots are not to blame.

That leaves cultural conditions.

If, like Gabe, you have plants in pots, bring them inside before monsoon rains arrive.

If midday temperatures are predicted to approach the average on Mercury or Venus, bring the plants inside.

If the plants are in the ground, then you have advance warning of such disasters.

Pot them up now.

Do not have saucers under your pots, Gabe.

They are guaranteed to produce too much water stress.

Don't feed peppers or other fruiting plants with a lot of nitrogen.

You'll get big plants with lots of leaves and few fruits, and/or fruits that fall off early in the game.

In the same vein, don't go nuts on the phosphorus and/or potassium.

Plants fed with repurposed explosives like Miracle Gag will always be stressed by the unnatural growth these quote fertilizers cause.

If you grow in a cool-ish clime, give the plants all the sun possible.

Otherwise, try to plant where they will receive full morning sun and get a shady break in the afternoon.

Think about using some of those old beach umbrellas you got in the cellar if you can't achieve this shade naturally.

Well, that sure was some interesting information about hot peppers, now, wasn't it?

Luckily for you, the Question of the Week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website.

To read it over at your "leesure" or your "lesure", whatever, click the link for the Question of the Week at our website, which is still and will forever be... Gardens Alive supports the You Bet Your Garden Question of the Week and you will always find the latest Question of the Week at the Gardens Alive website.

You Bet Your Garden is a half hour public television show, an hour long public radio show and podcast, all produced and delivered to you weekly from the Univest Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in beautiful Bethlehem, PA Our radio show is distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

You Bet Your Garden was created by Mike McGrath.

Mike McGrath was created when a dying alien gave him a very special green ring that changed from Batman to Bruce Wayne when you turned it upside down.

Yikes.

My producer is threatening to rustle my reefers if I don't get out of this studio.

We must be out of time.

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Seriously, you can.

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I'm leaf-shredding Mike McGrath and I'll be shredding leaves and shredding leaves and shredding more leaves and shredding even more leaves and hoping that the lousy supercharged rechargeable battery that powers my leaf sucker-upper will run out of juice before I see you again next week.

What?

It still has three quarters of a charge?