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Stefan_W's 2013 Pods A-Ripenin'! Glog

I am going to start the new glog for my upcoming growing season on a bit of a personal note. One year ago tomorrow (January 3rd) is the one year anniversary of the day that my daughter was diagnosed with a tumour that is lodged in the middle of her brain. The past year has involved treatments and hospital stays, and there were at least three different points when we were pretty sure she was not going to make it. But she is a fighter, and nothing could keep her down for long.

Sofia has personally planted every pepper and tomato seed that I have started in the past three growing seasons. She beat the odds last year to help me, and once again she is defying what medicine has to say to help me out this year.

We started a jalapeno plant about a week ago just for the sake of watching it grow, because we both love it so much. One of the jalapenos grew to the point that it had its firt couple of leaves, so we transplanted him into a bigger pot. While we were at it I decided to put in some aji lemondrops, partly because they take a long time to fruit up and I wanted to give them a huge head start.

This is the jalapeno plant. I pulled the second one out because we did not need it, and discovered that the roots had grown all of the way down to the bottom of the cell.
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My daughter personally doing the transplant.
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Her aim is better than mine, and so it turned out perfectly.
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Next up was taking out the lemondrop seeds from peppermania.
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I need a few extras of this type, so I asked Sofia to plant two seeds in each of the four cells. Two plants will be for us, and whatever else grows will be given away to good friends.
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Two of the three tiers in my lighting stand are currently being used as toy shelves, which is cool for now. The lights are adjustable, and moved down to get close to the seedling.
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The heating pad works extremely well, and once the cells are covered the top clouds up in no time.
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A happy early jalapeno seedling in his new home. I thought I heard "feeeeeed meeeeee" coming from that direction, but I'm not sure.
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That's it for today, folks! Welcome to my new glog :welcome:
 
I have no new pics to put up because nothing else has germinated yet.

In the meantime, as we wait, I decided to share a little story about an experiment I was going to do. There is a lot of discussion about which seed sellers are best, and which have the best germination rates. In the fall I came up with a plan to buy 120-150 fatali seeds from four of the top sellers in two separate orders per seller. My idea was to do a double blind where I don't know which seeds belong to which seller, and run some tests of significance on diffrences in germination rates. Once the number were run I would do a reveal to find out which seeds belong to which sellers.

My plan to to lay out all of the limitations of the study before even starting. There are several, and the biggest one is clustering in some of the samples. What this means from the perspective of gernerating an accurate population estimate of the seeds from a particular seller is that when buy seeds from a variety of growers before re-selling I could end up with a packet of seeds that does not at all reflect the germination rate of the same type of seeds grown by a different seller. I could control for that if I knew the different numbers of seeds from each of the sub-growers, but in reality I would never be able to get this information.

Anyway, time is sometimes still hard to come by with all of the medical needs of my daughter, so I put this idea on hold for this year. Maybe if all goes well I will put my plan into action next year.
 
Stefan you're thinking too much about your Fatalii seed test. Just plant four or five seeds from each packet, make sure you identify the vendors they came from, and off you go. Just show the germination rates in a later thread.

Vendor A planted 5 and four came up
Vendor B blah blah blah

Give people a little bit of info.

There are so many factors involved it really isn't much of an experiement unless your sample number is in the hundreds, possibly thousands. That means work. Growing peppers is supposed to be fun and relaxing dude!
 
Haha! The number I picked was not random. With the number of seeds I would have planted from each vender I would have a 95% probability (8% margin of error) of my germination rate reflecting the germination rate of all seeds of that specific variety from that vendor. It would be accurate within that threshold even if the vendor had 500,000 or more fatali seeds. A part of the design way to rotate the trays and move them from one area of my grow stand to another so they are all exposed to the same conditions to the highest degree possible. Of course that is limited because no two seeds can occupy the same spot at the same time.

It is a way of getting past conflicting stories about germination rates, which are interesting but don't ultimately give any hard answers.

Believe it or not this is how I have fun :)
 
I tried out the yellow ghost pepper powder from Joyner's tonight, and it was awesome! My favourite part of it was the really cool lip burn I got while eating. Definitely recommended.

I know I normally post more picture of the things I cook, but I have already posted lots of photos of wings cooking so I just cut to the chase :)

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Oh man those look good. I'd rather have that kind of fun then counting germinated seeds. You fry those in your oil less frying machine? May have to look into getting something like that. Been watching the intake a little more lately.

Stefan I think you're the first person I've ever heard say they like the lip burn. I'm not a fan of it. I can take any place else much better than the lips.
 
Oh man those look good. I'd rather have that kind of fun then counting germinated seeds. You fry those in your oil less frying machine? May have to look into getting something like that. Been watching the intake a little more lately.

Stefan I think you're the first person I've ever heard say they like the lip burn. I'm not a fan of it. I can take any place else much better than the lips.

I totally hear you about watching what goes in nowadays. These were cooked with my ActiFry, which along with BBQing are the only way I'll cook wings. I added no oil to this batch and they turned out great. Definitely recommend this little kitchen gadget, but I have to warn you that it does not cook very much in one batch. For wings it doesn't matter so much because the cooking time is only 20 mins so it is easy to do another batch if needed. But with fries the 40 min cooking time means we just get less fries rather than fighting to get another batch done before the first goes cold.

Before I got the ActiFry I bought chicken breasts and baked then with hot spices and sauce, and that was pretty amazing too. I find I don't miss the fat at all after a while.

And yes, I do love the lip burn :) I don't care much for throat burns, and I really hate the ones that keep killing you as they sit in your gut.


Absolutely!
 
Hey, Stefan. Your grow experiment will be great to watch.
Hope you have a stellar kick-off. with your daughter planting
the seeds, it will be hard to miss!

Nice foodies, bro!
 
Hey, Stefan. Your grow experiment will be great to watch.
Hope you have a stellar kick-off. with your daughter planting
the seeds, it will be hard to miss!

Nice foodies, bro!

Thanks Paul! I love having my daughter help out :)

those wings look fantastic......

Thank you very much, they certainly were. Trouble is they don't last very long when they are this good!

Wings look awesome, do you care if I share your food photos on our FB page explaining the powder used? The Yellow Ghost is in my top 3, hence my drive to grow many more yellow types in 2013!

Sure thing, feel free to use any pics that include your powders! The yellow ghost is definitely a keeper in my books.

I was not planning on posting pics of supper tonight, but seeing as Chris wanted some photos for his Facebook business page I decided to snap off a couple. On the menu this evening wa fajitas, and I jazzed mine up with the cherrywood smoked superhots.

The powder waits to meet sauce. At this point I'm going mmmmm, cherrywood!
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Of course while I was focusing on the "cherrywood" and "smoked" part I did not fully grasp the "superhot." As a result, I drenched my fajita.
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I think I have a new favourite out of the Joyner's collection. Very rich flavour, and it hurt in the ways that I love best. Only a touch of lip burn, the "hole in the middle of your tongue" burn, and I could really feel it in my gut in a good way. Yes, I went back for seconds. And thirds (but by the thirds I was down to jalapeno powder).
 
... ... I came up with a plan to buy 120-150 fatali seeds from four of the top sellers in two separate orders per seller. My idea was to do a double blind where I don't know which seeds belong to which seller, and run some tests of significance on diffrences in germination rates. ... ...

I commend you, I've been doing audio for years and double blind is the only way to fly when testing anything IMHO. Hope to observe your plan when you get her going :)

I tried out the yellow ghost pepper powder from Joyner's tonight, and it was awesome! ...

Are you sure it was the powder or was it your awesome cooking ;) BTW I'm hungry now, heh fortunately I'll be cooking some Mahi Mahi soon :)

Edit: No offense Mr. Joyner, lol
 
Nice fajitas, Stefan! Nothing like that hole-in-the-tongue feeling!
 
One week to the day after we planted the aji lemondrops, the first three sprouted!

I'm a proud pappy again :)

Looks like one may end up with helmut head. Hopefully the husk falls off on its own.
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Nice fajitas, Stefan! Nothing like that hole-in-the-tongue feeling!

Thanks Paul! Yup, I agree that the hole in tongue and the lip burn the best.

I love those peppers on fish!

If you have a good one I'd love a recipe. This is my first time growing them and I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do with all of the pods yet.

Update: Before I shut off the grow lights for the night I lifted the dome and took another quick peek, and it looks as though a fourth lemondrop is starting to poke its way through. I only need 2 for myself and 2 for friends, so I'm probably going to stop the germination at 5 or 6. I can't believe how well these fellas are germinating :)
 
Looking good. Them lemons are very prolific. I had so many last year off of one plant that i didnt even have anything to do with em all.
 
Thanks Paul! Yup, I agree that the hole in tongue and the lip burn the best.



If you have a good one I'd love a recipe. This is my first time growing them and I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do with all of the pods yet.

Update: Before I shut off the grow lights for the night I lifted the dome and took another quick peek, and it looks as though a fourth lemondrop is starting to poke its way through. I only need 2 for myself and 2 for friends, so I'm probably going to stop the germination at 5 or 6. I can't believe how well these fellas are germinating :)
Lime zest, salt, pepper and a diced lemon drop, put that on a filet of fish for 30 minutes before grilling and it is money!
 
Ah, the Lemondrops. .......Great tasting, especially for those folks that never tried them before.....

I actually just stopped back here to see that "Wing" photo again.................ok, now I'm really starving.
 
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