Sources of Inspiration

Dead Leaves and The Dirty Ground - The White Stripes

Permanent Housing

Pepper plants can be grown indoors, and for certain I will be growing mine indoors.  I know I will need at least a pot with an 8 inch diameter, and a cage for the plant to grow tall.  I want to continue to use the dead leaf method, as well as the idea of combining business, into it as well.  I am experimenting with different ways of using the leaves, as well as different ways of attaining sunlight and warmth.  I am starting my own composting pile so that the plant will get the best soil possible.  

Temporary Housing

    With the peppers growing, I needed a more temporary housing, until I can transplant the plant to a bigger pot.  While researching, I found that China was the largest producer of peppers, with crop production exceeding 14,000,000 in one year.  This inspired me to thinking about global agribusiness.  While looking around my room, I saw a box from Amazon.com, from which I purchased books.  I though about the ways that this website has used the name of one of the most important ecosystems in the world, while at the same time, its world wide sales are sending planes and trucks all around.  I decided for my temporary housing, I wanted to use the idea of business and nature, and how the world has become so relient on it, to the point where Amazon boxes among the college student room, is  natural.   After sketching the watering system and placement of the plants I went around to many dumpsters to find the materials i was looking for, such as different sized boxes and sponges.  I also started to collect dead leaves, to use a moisture control agent within the container.  From a previous time of working on a farm, I put dead leaves atop the field to stop keep the soil healthy, and well maintained during the winter.  Using this idea, I wanted to use a natural paper mache ( flour and water)  and place the leaves in the box.

Housing without plants

   I took my amazon box, and coated it with dead leaves and paper mache.  I then cut holes into the bottom of the box, so that the plants could soak up water from the sponges beneath it.  I took a thrown away popsicle box, and cut it into thirds, then place it inside my box, using more paper mache as a glue.  Once the paper mache was dry, I cut the top off of a shoe box, and cut sponges in half, then glued them together.  I had to wait about a day, till everything was dry enough for the plants to be placed.  I wet the sponges, and placed them on the shoe box cover.  I then placed 6 starter seeds in the planters, in the box.  I then covered the amazon box with plastic wrap, so that the green house affect would take shape and the plant would get the desired warmth.

Planting the pepper

I took my cup and my peet moss and made short-term temporary housing. The plants will take 7 - 8 days to germinate and see growth

Research

I found myself in the stacks researching all things I could find on peppers.  I ended up finding a book, that was all thing peppers. Peppers, by Jean Andrews.  In this book I learned about how the pepper, ( capsicum annum)   was originally grown in Central and South America.  It was the famed explorer Christopher Columbus that brought the pepper to Europe, and gave it the name, pepper.  Peppers are not a fan of being transplanted, this will affect my design for my final and temporary pots.  They like warmer climates, with plenty of water for its roots.  The Chinese Sweet Pepper that I am going to grow, is a pepper that will grow to about 24 to 36 inches high.  The pepper itself will grow to be about 4 x 6 inches.

Drawings Of Pepper and Sketches for Temporary housing for Bell Pepper

I picked the peppers

Having my option of many plants to grow, for this project I decided to grow a pepper plant.  I have always been a fan of peppers, in particular bell peppers.  I originally started off with a bag of them, though the expiration date of 2011, had me watching an expired seed try and grow.  Though I was able to choose another batch of seeds, and this time got the Sweet Chinese Giant Pepper.  Luckily, most of the research I did on the bell pepper, I am able to use with the same research I did for the bell pepper plant.