Growing Organic Chilies in New Mexico with Regenerative, Sustainable Farming

Keisuke Kuroiwa Sep 10 2008

Last week I made it out to Deming and met with some REALLY excited farmers. This year they learned about EM•1® and decided to put it to the test. As you can see, Zack is pretty happy. His chilies are about a month early. In addition to that, the seeds, which are hybridized by a local grower, normally have one stalk and push buds from there. We walked about 5 acres of plants and I don't think I saw any 1-stalked plants. What I saw were plants that were 4-10 stalks, with dense budding and beautiful canopies.

The more leaves you've got, the more sun that can be absorbed and pull nutrition to the fruits being produced by the plants. We tried a few pre-mature chilies and they were absolutely delicious. You can see the extra stalks in this photo on the left. Zack and his father, Kevin, are growing on about 3,000 acres in Deming, New Mexico. They have been involved in a crop rotation program and incorporate crop residues between each crop. They are not growing organically and do use herbicides and synthetic fertilizers.

We are working with the fertilizer provider to develop programs that will incorporate EM•1® in their production and are already seeing some great results. Some of the indicators are the beneficial insects on the plants and the root development of the plants treated with EM•1®. This photo to the right shows a plant (on the left) not treated with EM•1® and (on the right) a plant grown with EM•1®. In about three weeks we should start getting in some yeild data. They are shooting for 20 tons per acre in an average year. If the weather holds out, and we can figure an extra month of picking, who knows what the end results will be. I can say that we are all excited about this.

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