I find it is more important to have the spot be the most sunny and air circulating; the relative importance of nearby trees is less important. I have two major stands of peaches with 100' separating the two, and they all get the same diseases but the one in front has much better sun so there is overall less disease there. So my main advice is allocate the most sunny most airflow spots to stone fruits since they have the most disease problems in our climate. It can help a bit to separate the individual trees I would guess but on the other hand it makes it harder to spray etc. since you can't just hit a whole stand if they are together. Scott

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Hi all. I really should have been better about updating this thread. Thanks to the advice I received from Underground I currently have two HUGE pepper plants in full bloom right now. These things have leaves much larger than my hands, and have 10-15 peppers of varous sizes set on each plant, with more flowers emerging daily. As the thread title indicates I am growing California Wonder peppers. The plants are approximately 15-18" tall and stout. They are currently under a 400W Sunmaster Warm Deluxe( which they are getting prime lighting from), and a 250W High Pressure Sodium (getting excellent side lighting, nearly primary lighting from this lamp as well) hung side by side. Of course I do have a question. I am not sure what the appropriate amount of food to give pepper plants that are fruiting profusely. Once the plants started putting out flowers about 6-7 weeks ago I started using the GH 3 part bloom formula of 3-2-1 Bloom, Micro, Grow. I have worked my way up 650 ppm fertilizer strength, which is what they received yesterday. I fertilize every other watering, occasionally every third watering. However, I only give them what I would assume to be small amounts (in volume) of fertilizer. I am anal about overwatering and even fluid distribution so I water with a shot glass. When I feed I usually give them 4-5 "shots" of my pH'd RO water, then 4-5 shots of fertilzer, then another 3-4 shots of pH'd RO water to wash it in. I typically keep my peppers on the dry side, not bone, but let the top layer dry before I water again(typically 2-3 days). So my question is am I feeding them enough in ppm? in volume? The reason I ask is that one of the plant's fruit is not enlarging at the pace I figured it would (They are getting larger, just not that fast). Do I need to flush at all? I am trying to avoid flushing. After flushing the plants seem to take forever to dry out, and sometimes attract fungus gnats. The plants are in 3-4 gallon pots, so it would take a considerable amount of water to achieve runoff. On the days the plants receive plain water I typically water relatively deeply (probably about 15 shots) to soak in any fertilizer that may have accumulated on the top layer of soil. If you all are interested in seeing my plants I'm sure I could figure out how to post pictures in the next day or two. So far I'm amazed at how well they are doing, much better than my typical effort outdoors. Sorry about the longwinded post, just wanted to be thorough. Thank you for all your help, any further input would be greatly appreciated. Ballplayer

Some varieties I would recommend (because I like them) include Edna Slaton's Candelabra okra, some kind of prolific Armenian cucumber (I like Metki Dark Green Serpent), an edible gourd, Dark Star zucchini, Shark Fin Melon squash, Sasha's Altai tomato, Neapolitan pepper, Marmande tomato, Tatura tomato, Sweet Orange Cherry tomato, Ha'Ogen melon, Ananas D'Amerique A chair Verte melon, Santo Domingo Winter watermelon, Verona watermelon, Blacktail Mountain watermelon, Bowling Red okra, Aji Dulce 1 pepper, Ring of Fire pepper, Pink Berkeley Tie Dye tomato, ground cherries (and other seed-grown berries), Crimson Forest bunching onion, garlic chives, Long Island Cheese pumpkin (or similar), some sweet sorghum (I grew Mennonite sorghum this year), George Detsikas Italian Red tomato, Amana Orange tomato, sunflowers with large heads and edible seeds (e.g. Mammoth Gray Striped, Dwarf Sunspot, Mongolian Giant, Titan, etc.), Spicy Globe Bush basil, Aswad eggplant, Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, Cisineros tomatillo, etc. Some varieties I would recommend (because they're popular and might sell well) include Cherokee Purple tomato, Brandywine tomato (and Brandywine variants), Green Zebra tomato, Pink Berkeley Tie Dye tomato, some kind of honeydew melon, a habanero (orange), Carolina Reaper pepper (world's hottest pepper), a Ghost pepper variety (Bhut Jolokia), a yellow sweetcorn, snow peas, container-worthy varieties, dwarf varieties (dwarf tomatoes from the dwarf tomato project are pretty popular), Stupice tomato, Italian Large Leaf basil, Aunt Ruby's German Green tomato, Charentais melon, Aunt Molly's ground cherry, Pineapple ground cherry, etc. Anyway, I'm not suggesting you add all of these, but you might look into them.