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Colombian mystery!

A buddy of mine married a Colombian girl, and any more they end up travelling back to the Homeland a couple times a year. He came back recently and left her and the kids down with the fam for a couple extra weeks- we got to talking, and I got him to hit up his old lady to bring me back some seeds. She's not a gardener he says. She doesn't eat hot stuff he says. Doesn't matter I say- just ask her to head down to the market and buy a couple fresh raw chiles that she'd think I'd like, cut the seeds out, wrap 'em in a paper towel and bring them back. Seemed simple and harmless enough, right?
Let me reiterate- this woman considers calling ahead for reservations 'making dinner' and just because someone is from South America does not mean they are genetically predisposed to enjoying chiles.
So a week or so goes by, and he tells me she's WICKED pissed at me and her entire family in Colombia hates me. Great- there's another country I can't go back to. I ask him what the hell- he says she'd gone down to the market, bought 2 different chiles, brought them home and her and her mother went to cut them up in the kitchen. He said they were both still MFing me and him on account of them all getting burnt up from this ordeal. Not having talked to Olga, I have no freaking idea if they were wrestling in the chiles or what.
So another week or so goes by and I get an airpack in the mail from Colombia. YAY. I rip it apart with wild abandon only to find two ziploc baggies full of the nastiest wadded up paper towel, all stained brown and black with some seriously funky looking slime mold fuzz scud growing on it. Space alien dead raccoon vomit looking nasty. Bless her non-gardening heart, and beggars like I was can't be choosers, so I gently pulled the funktowel out of each baggie so as not to upset any flesh-eating spores that may have been germinating in there, and placed them in the basement over my lights where there's negative humidity- hey, who knows. After a couple days drying time, I spread the towels apart to find what was left- it looked like she had skinned the chile, leaving not only the placenta but a ton of the meat as well. Again, bless her heart for the work! I got to digging around and managed to pick out a few seeds that weren't black and hairy, soaked 'em a little overnight, tossed 'em in some Rapid Rooter plugs, and 2 weeks later-
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BAM!
I got me some fresh strain Colombian Mysteries growing good and healthy strong! :cheers:

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I'm still not sure exactly what they are, but I've managed to get all 4 seeds I planted to germinate! :onfire:
I've since transplanted all of them into seperate 5" squarepots, and when I left for work last week they were all doing great. Each of the freakbaggies had a chunk of a label in them, written in spanish of course- but they both had 'Aji' in the title. We shall see, we shall see!
 
That is a great story, hahaha... I love mystery peppers too. Will be cool to see what they turn out to be!

Be careful w/ the Colombians!
 
I think you might want to keep your distance to that woman once she gets home...

Hope you get some nice pods from those plants!
 
A quick update with a kinda crappy pic. I can't ID them in the pic, but since I don't know what the damn things are anyways I guess that doesn't really matter. I'll take some closeup glamour shots when I get home, but here they are- they're in 4" square pots.
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LOL, that's a funny story! When my uncle goes to Peru this year I have already asked him to do something similar. He likes to grow the Aji's and Rocotos but by the time he gets back the season will be much to late.

Good luck with whatever they are going to be. Can't wait to find out what they are. Kind of like Christmas for you ;)
 
S_S-
The first two varieties she sent are a complete mystery to me- she didn't have a name and didn't remember what they were called. She's also completely and blissfully ignorant to peppers, so asking her what they looked like would be like asking her what sort of car she saw- 'it was green.' So yeah, in a couple months I'll be posting pics asking everyone to make a guess :lol:
 
LUCKYDOG said:
Were the seeds black and hard or were they black from their travels?
They were black from the creepy furry slime mold that covered them and the paper towel, not necessarily because they are C. pubescens.

chillilover said:
What lights you got on them? 10 000K?
Sun.
They were started from seed under a mix of half purple grow/half daylight white T12 shop lights. When the cotyledons showed, I added 2 each 3 watt 455nm LEDs. Then after they showed a few sets of true leafs (as in the first pic) I added a 42 watt 6500K Feit CFL. After a couple weeks of that, I tossed 'em out in the greenhouse.
 
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