Where did that go?

Time waits for no man and I'm afraid this blog has been a little neglected of late.

I blame myself.

However, the chilli year marches on, albeit in fits and starts. The weather has been cold and wet (April was ok, but May was poor and June has been mixed so far).

Well, lowlights so far:

A lot of the seeds didn't germinate. I suspect the heated prop is too hot, in the end I had to fit a timer and oscillate between on and off. Major hassle. I did a second sowing and this has resulted in most varieties coming up - but these plants are definitely behind the first batch.

Nothing survived the over-wintering process. I have no idea what happened, but zero survival rate is unheard of. I will have to try something different next year.

After a month in the greenhouse, nothing much had happened and the early leaves were looking shabby - I suspected red spider mite, but couldn't see any evidence, but gave the plants a quick spray anyway.  They do seem to have perked up in the last weeks or so, but the new generation of leaves are smaller (and greener) than the ones they replace. Hmm.

Generally the plants are a lot smaller than last year, but here's hoping for a bit of catch-up

I tried to get my usual supply of Chilli Focus - but was quoted £20 a bottle (I usually pay £15) so I refused on principle. This year I am therefore using Chempak 4 instead. I hope I wont regret this.

Highlights:

Well, not many.

I have a few pods on 7-pod barrackpore and on bunte mischung, with flowers appearing on a few more plants.

Some of the varieties are looking better than others - I'll endeavor to do the camera thing at some point - hopefully a switch in the weather will help. Come on sun.

Last autumn I took a Peruvian Purple into work - I have a very warm office area that  hits thirty degrees in the morning when the sun is on it. The plant loves it. It struggled through the winter, but now the light levels have got better the plant has just gone crazy. The only downside is the lack of flower pollination (despite my best efforts) means not too many pods. However, as an experiment you have to say it's been a great success.

Ok... so that's the update for now. Hopefully pictures and more commentary to follow.

Germination Progress

Interestingly I've had a fair few germinated seeds, but they all seem to be at the edges of the propagator. This seems to suggest that the prop is running a little hot, and the cooler outer edges are better.

To compensate for this I've set up a spare timer on the prop - 15 mins on and 30 mins off repeated throughout the day. This will give the heat a little boost without the risk of cooking the seeds. Hopefully this will help.

So far the following are up:

Bido Tacana (2/3) 1/1 and 6/1
Butch T (2/3) 4/1 and 6/1
Bunte Michung (2/6) 3/1 and 5/1
Trinidad Perfume (2/3) 31/12 and 3/1
7 Pot Barrackpore (2/3) 2/1 and 5/1
7 Pot Primo (1/3) 7/1
Black Naga (1/3) 4/1

(2/3) means 2 out of the 3 sown have germinated, the figures following are the dates they come up, e.g. 6/1 = 6th January. 

No shows yet on the other varieties (it's only been two weeks, so plenty of time yet).

There are also subsurface hoops visible tonight for one Prairie Fire and one Wahaca Serrano. I only count the plant once the hoop has broken the plane at the top of the cube, so maybe these will be up tomorrow. 

First one up

31-12-12

First signs of life from one of the Trinidad Perfumes, and a hint of life from one of the Bido Tacanas.

It's been a long week to get any germination and I suspect that the prop may be running a little warm, so I've turned the heating off for now. We shall see what the next few weeks bring.

Sowing

24-12-12 the seeds have been soaked for 24 hours and are planted out in the propagator. I've had the prop on for 24 hours to raise the heat levels ready.

I've sown two seeds in some of the Rootriot cubes - the serrano, prairie fire, bunte mischung and CAP 253-C have two seeds each in a domino pattern. This reflects the age of the seeds and/or likelihood or germination issues.

Seeds in Soak

Propagator prepared

Everything sown and labelled

2013 season starts

23-12-12 and the seeds for the season are put into soak for 24 hours. This year I've picked a few varieties from semillas.de along with some other bits and pieces.

Nothing really remarkable, but a good mix never-the-less.

I've over-wintered four plants, but I suspect two haven't survived. The mini rocotto and CGN 21500 are the survivors, the Naga Morich and Marouga Yellow appear to be the casualties.

Varieties for this year:

• Prairie Fire
• Pimenta De Neyde
• Criolla Sella
• Inca Red Drop
• 7 Pot Primo
• Santa Rosa Blanco
• Ecuadorian Brown
• Serrano (from Wahaca restaurant, Kensington)
• Cap 253-C
• Bunte Mischung*
• Fatalii
• Bido Tacana
• Trinidad Scorpion Butch T
• Black Naga
• Trinidad Perfume
• 7 Pot Barrackpore

* Bunte Mischung - this is a freebie mystery mix from semillas.de - I prefer this name to mystery plants, so am using with name for now. 

The End

My 2012 season was bought to a premature end at the beginning of December when the heating system failed. I was thinking about closing the greenhouse down around that point anyway, but this gave me no options.

In all the season had been very tough - the wrong weather at the wrong moments in time meant I had low crop levels with some varieties just not pulling their weight.

So a last few photos and then it's time to draw a line under 2012.

 

 

 

Been a bit busy

So I've been a little busy over the summer and so updating the blog's been a bit of a struggle. However, I thought I'd better put up a few of the highlights and lowlights of the last few months.

It's been an awful summer in many respects. May to July was cool and wet, and although I had good growth rates from the plants, flowering was very poor and so was the setting of pods.

In fact, where as I would normally expect to be harvesting from July onwards, not a lot seemed to happen on the pod front until August.

Late September finally started to produce a few ripe pods - certainly enough for my own needs, but nothing like I was hoping to see. The images below show how well things grew, just a shame there weren't any more pods. The lower photo is the fatalii - not a single pod to be seen.

This was the September harvest - heavy on the Marouga Yellow and a few other things, but not exactly the piles of pods I was expecting to see.


October demonstrated that a few of the varieties were doing something, but some were not, so I took out the secateurs and anything that didn't have a pod on it at that point was cut back. The mini-rocotto, despite it's many flowers had no pods, the fatalii similarly and many of the others had a hair cut. it was a shame that such large plants were unproductive, but that's that.
 
Mid-october also saw the re-introduction of the heating. With a few cooler nights forecasted I set the thermostat to 6 degrees and this seems to have extended the season as usual.

Today (1st November) I've just been down for a tidy up and harvest. There's still much more to do, but hopefully I can spend some time over the next few days getting back on top of things and getting ready for the winter. 

Here are the photos from today:

PI260560 has been quite prolific later on in the season, producing many medium sized red pods. The plant is quite busy and tangled, so would be best well staked and tied in for better results.

CGN 23258 has produced a good head of small round pods, but only a few have ripened so far.

Probably the most productive of all my wild plants this year, CGN 22871 has produced many pods like these and is continuing to do so. Only issue is that they do not seem to store well - best to dry or freeze these fairly quickly.

Habanero Cristina - small pods trurning creamy yellow as they ripen. Quite productive, but struggling with the poor weather this year.

PI 260504 is covered in these tiny yellow pods. I haven't tried any yet though, but picking could be a tediously slow exercise.

CGN 21500 was billed as a spectacular plant, and I can see that (kind of) but for me it's not been that productive. Maybe next year.

Fatalii red has done quite well this year. Not massively productive, but better than last year.

A few 7 pods have started to ripen. Better than last year, but not amazing. This wont get grown again.

The harvest today (mostly the species shown above with a few Nagas and Marougas thrown in). There's still more to come.