Oh wow.. been a good while since I've posted an update!
As of the past couple of days I've nearly finished harvesting all the pods off my Brown Naglah and my Carolina Reaper... The Reaper pods were certainly late-growers and overall, since putting the plants outside around early July, I've gotten maybe 35 pods (with around 25 just harvested in the past couple of days). My Reaper is also my oldest pepper plant - having been planted LAST year somewhere around early summer - and this is it's first real harvest (kinda tells the rough life it's had, surviving the experience of me knowing absolutely nothing of growing to where I am now).
Overall, I think I've gotten somewhere around 270-300 pods off my Brown Naglah since putting it outside around early July.. A very impressive turn-around from only having gotten around 5-7 off of it in the time before that (it first poked through the soil the day before New Year's).
Many of my Naglah Jolokia that are in the basement (but not in my grow room) are still working on growing quite a few pods, which is great.
Here are some of the largest pods I've gotten off of my Naglah:
And this week I decided to take the latest pile of Naglah pods that I had de-seeded and dehydrated (around 50-70 pods) and try my hand at making a powder - the old-fashioned way - with a mortar & pestle.. To say the least, I ended up sneezing a whole lot and I apparently got a bit up my nose and had a dull heat in my nose for around 2-3 hours.. Here's the end result:
And here's a sample of how the labels are looking for my seed packs (in this case, my Purple Cayenne):
Now, for the bad news....
Since around a month after taking the plants back in from outside in late September the damn aphids have returned.. But this time around there seems to be two different types - the red ones that gave me so much trouble in the past, and now these pale, nearly-white ones.. And despite practically drowning my plants (especially my largest - the Naglah) over and over with soapy water with a pressure spray bottle, they seem to winning the battle and destroying my plants.
So now I'm considering a rather drastic plan I had in mind a short while before the summer hit (albeit, now I'm altering the plan) of taking the plants out of the grow room and starting fresh with all-new plants. My original plan called for simply killing off the existing plants, but now that I'm seeing that the Naga Jolokia plants that I've been keeping in the basement windows are doing just fine I'm thinking of just trimming the current plants (that are in the grow room) back, hosing them down and putting them out with the Naglah's.
In anticipation of that I took the time in the past few days to dig up some Jiffy pellets and plant some new seeds. My thinking is that I'll do my best to keep the current lot growing, for now, while I see if I can this new lot to germinate and safely grow. Once the new seedlings get off to a good start I'll trim back the existing ones, clear them out of the grow room, scrub the grow room down from head-to-toe (to hopefully FINALLY be rid of the damn aphids), and then move the new seedlings into the grow room.
With the existing ones trimmed back and put in the main area of the basement, I'll attempt to keep them alive so that when the Spring/Summer hits again I can put them outside and give them another go at growing & harvesting. By that time the new seedlings will hopefully be mature, producing and ready to spend time out in the nice, warm summer sun - meaning I'll have all the new ones, along with all the current ones.
My current grow list includes:
Brown Naglah
Carolina Reaper (HP22B)
Naga Jolokia
Trinidad Scorpion "Butch T"
007 Red
7 Pot Bubblegum
Habanero Red
Super Chili
Cayenne
Jalapeno
One Mystery type (provided by Gotrox)
Sweet Heat
Cayennetta
Sweet Pompeii
Pimento Elite
.. all of these have produced to some degree, EXCEPT: The Gotrox "mystery", 7 Pot Bubblegum, and Butch T.
The line-up I just planted includes some of same I already have, but will focus much more on the "super-hots" (in an effort to, well, live up to my business name):
(
PE - PepperLover,
BE - Buckeye Pepper Company,
PJ - Pepper Joe,
ME - my own seeds,
GO - (Gotrox, I believe))
Planted: November 11, 2014
ME Brown Naglah
PE Carolina Reaper
BE 7 Pot Bubblegum
PE 7 Pot Brain Strain (Red)
PE Bhut Jolokia (White)
PE Bhut Jolokia (Indian Carbon)
GO Trinidad Moruga Scorpion
BE 7 Pot Barrackpore
PE Wild Tepin
PE Datil
PE Trinidad Douglah
PE 7 Pot Brain Strain (Yellow)
PE 7 Pot White
PJ Naga Viper
PE Bhut Jolokia (Orange)
PE Bhut Jolokia (Brown)
PJ Trinidad "Butch T" Scorpion
PE Black Congo
PE 7 Pot Congo SR Gigantic
Planted: November 13, 2014
BE Fish Pepper
PE Elephants' Ear
PE Devil's Horn
PE Pink Tiger
PE Farmers' Jalapeno
(please note: I'm taking another chance on a couple of the varieties I got from Pepper Joe before discovering the forum and learning about him, simply because I really want a try of the couple varieties in question - Naga Viper and Butch T)
Here's to hoping that these germinate and take off! With my couple orders I've gotten from PepperLover I really aimed towards getting a variety of colors.. I don't particularly want to focus on growing Bhuts, but of the seed varieties I have, they have the most color variation. And I've thrown in a few ornamental & milder varieties, such as the Pink Tiger, Tepin, and Fish because I'm hoping to try growing a few outside of my grow room (if I can just keep the damn cats away, somehow!).
*super-crosses fingers!*
