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Yemtol's First Grow: Nhu's Peppers Ripening

I'm a new gardener starting with a challenge. I received 34 seeds from a pepper plant that was brought over from Vietnam a few years ago. A client from work gave them to me after a discussion about gardening a few weeks ago. His wife brought them with her when she moved to the states. He has described the pods as looking a little like a cayenne you would get from a plant you bought at Walmart but shorter, broader, and a whole lot hotter. After reading a while on this site, It became clear he may not know much more about them then I do. Will they they be Vietnamese Tearjerkers or something more common? I don't know. It's a mystery. I know I got a very late start, but i have high hopes for overwintering.On 4/18/12 I planted 24 seeds in soil from the garden in a styrofoam egg carton. I cut off the top of the carton to use under the plants for drainage and lined it with paper towel to stabilize the liquid so the plants could draw it back as needed. I also made sure to pierce the bottom of each section to allow drainage.24 seeds waiting to grow by Yemtol, on FlickrOn 4/21/12, after further research suggested the fertilizer I put in the garden soil for my tomatoes might be potentially toxic to by new peppers, I decided to try to germinate the last 10 seeds using the paper towel and glad container method I read about in the forums. I started these earlier today. 10 more seeds, paper towel method by Yemtol, on FlickrI'm currently keeping everything warm by putting it int the desk cabinet with my computer. I plan to make a growbox out of a frozen food bag from GFS. I figure its reflective material and insulation should be helpful once I figure out how to make it rigid and mount a light. I'm thinking small PVC pipe be inexpensive and effective. If it works I'll post pics of the build.Keeping them warm by Yemtol, on Flickr
 
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Unbelievable good fortune if these peppers are as they were described to me.

Day 5 in soil, I've got four sprouts for 17%

Addendum: 8 hours later the growth is visible and two more sprouts in soil. :dance:


3 Tiny sprouts by Yemtol, on Flickr



Big boy by Yemtol, on Flickr

Day three on paper towel, I've got 7 sprouts for 70%. They're small enough i probably wouldn't see them in the dirt yet, but they're growing



Paper Towel Sprouts by Yemtol, on Flickr
 
Day 7 in soil, I've got eight sprouts in the soil. Some of them started stretching in search of light, so out of the womb-like confines of of my makeshift germination box (otherwise known as the computer cabinet). The fish aren't happy, but it's the best I've got until payday. I was expecting the seeds to take longer, so I hadn't got that far in my purchasing.



Sprouts need Light by Yemtol, on Flickr

Sometime in the next day or so, I'm going to move the paper towel seeds to their own tray with some seed starter "soil" mix. They're getting an experimental air pot knock off egg carton tray. Hopefully it will do as well as some of the professional knockoffs I've seen in the glogs. I'm hoping a good start on the root structure will make them more resilient when it comes to my clumsy attempts to transplant later in their lives.



Smart Pot Egg Carton 1 of 2 by Yemtol, on Flickr



Smart Pot Egg Carton 2 of 2 by Yemtol, on Flickr
 
All ten seeds on paper towel successfully germinated and were planted in a seed starter mix in the air pot knock off egg carton along with two twins from the soil germination. That brings us up to 22 out of 34 germinated. If they survive as well as they've sprouted, I'm going to have to find homes for the extras. Interesting note: All ten of the sprouts from the towel were down right fuzzy with tiny hair like roots coming off the main tap root. However, the two pulled from the original soil in an egg carton with only a single whole at the bottom of each cup for watering had straight smooth tap roots at least as long as the cup is deep.
 
Pay day has come and gone. My little guys now have their own lights. They're just $11 Lights of America grow lamps from Wally World, but hopefully they'll be sufficient for my limited needs. I had everything else for the grow box lying around the house, old Rubbermaid tub, 1.5" foam insulation on the bottom, and aluminum foil. The block is made of left over PVC pipe, coat hangers, and hot glue and was originally intended to be the frame for a mini green house.



Rubbermaid Growbox w/ 1 light mounted by Yemtol, on Flickr



Rubbermaid Growbox w/ lights on PVC Block by Yemtol, on Flickr

Day 11: The last of the seeds germinating in soil has cracked the surface, barely but it's there. With all ten of the paper towel seeds kickins roots, that's 100% germination, 34 out of 34, on my first try. Yay for me and beginner's luck. The two twins I transplanted earlier seem to be doing pretty good, so I'm going to go ahead and move the rest of the twins into their own jiffy strip. As small as the egg cups are, I'm afraid they wouldn't stay friendly for very long. Of course, I'm new enough at this I still haven't figured out how to tell when the ones that stay put will be ready to be moved to something bigger.



last one to germ by Yemtol, on Flickr



Twins abound by Yemtol, on Flickr

All but three of the seeds germinated on paper towel have sprouted out of their mix. That leaves me with 31 out 34 sprouting.



Airpot knockoff w/ sprouts by Yemtol, on Flickr

Not quite sure what is going on with this one. The color is good. The stem all but laying down, but it doesn't seem limp. I'm guessing it was trying to point itself at the light that had dropped lower in the box. Hopefully, now that both lights are moved down, it will straighten itself out.



Seems Tired by Yemtol, on Flickr

As of tonight, all my plants are now being watered exclusively with water from the fish tank. I figure these plants evolved to grow in dirt. If the seedlings can't survive filtered fish water, they're too delicate to keep anyway. As soon as I can find sufficient storage at the right price (forty+ gallons/free), I'm going to start holding onto the waste water from periodic cleanings which will have the solid wastes as well. Once the plants move outside, exclusivity will collapse due to rain, dew, and the inability to reclaim water after its given to plants in the ground. Not exactly aquaponics, but it will save me money on water and fertilizer and the plants should enjoy it.
 
In less than a day after transferring the twins to Jiffy pots, I saw significant improvement in the leaves and the drainage of the soil. After seeing how well the transplanted twins are doing in the jiffy pots, I've gone ahead and transplanted everything out of the egg cartons. Even with the airpot knockoff egg carton, the surface soil always remained a little damp. It might have been alright had they been paper cartons, but the foam just didn't seem to let the soil breath.
 
Day 19: My sprouts have true leaves. (I'm wondering at what point we stop calling them sprouts.) Only one pair of new leaves each so far. Of my 34 germinated seeds, I'm down to about 27 viable plants. Five of them either never sprouted or didn't survive the transplant. Two of them are in a state of arrested development due to severe helmet head. I'm leaving one alone to try on its own because I accidentally decapitated the other one. It's just kind of a green stick poking out of the dirt. I haven't gotten rid of it yet because I had a tomato plant come back from a similar injury though it was much further along than this pepper. As I was digging the hole for it, my three year old son ran by and stomped it leaving a two inch stem attached to the roots. Three weeks later, I've got a short bushy tomato plant.



Sprout w/ true leaves by Yemtol, on Flickr



Sprout w/ true leaves by Yemtol, on Flickr



Sprout w/ true leaves by Yemtol, on Flickr


Time for more research. I'm having trouble figuring how much further along I should let them get before I start hardening them off.
 
hardening off should be done before they are put outdoors, after they have been repotted into their individual pots. Currently just let them grow and veg until they have a strong root system and canopy.
 
Here's their future home to be shared with a variety of veggies, freshly tilled. With most of them going from Jiffy pots straight to the ground and all of them pushing roots out the bottoms, I'm going to start trying to harden them off later this week. The problem i'm going to have to watch though is that with my schedule, most of the work is going to have to happen in the evening hours. Everything I read says to start them with morning sun, but I'm usually gone before morning sun gets here. Well, we'll see if it works.



IMAG0847 by Yemtol, on Flickr

My little pretties getting second set of true leaves along with their fast growing new friends, asparagus. It's a little off topic but these asparagus are kinda wild. They first broke free of the soil Thursday night. It's now Sunday night, and some of them are at least 6" tall. One of them has grown an inch since this morning.



IMAG0848 by Yemtol, on Flickr



IMAG0850 by Yemtol, on Flickr

This pic is mostly bragging.



IMAG0852 by Yemtol, on Flickr

The decapitated plant is attempting a come back. It never even when limp. Now it's sprouting a couple of leaves from the tip where it broke off. They're thin and too small to get a picture with my cheapy camera, but they're there. The other one finally kicked off the seed coat and has begun growing again.
 
It's been 6 weeks, and I've been busy.

Since I last updated, I moved everything into 4" pots, hardened them off, gave away nearly a dozen, and lost couple to poor management or bad genetics. I got down to eighteen mystery peppers and added a habanero when I went to the nursery for more potting soil and the four inch pots (pots were free, yay.) By the time the peppers were ready to move to final locations, my garden plot was full. So, I decided to keep them in containers. I'm glad I did. I've had far fewer problems with pest and weather damage with the containers than with the garden plot. I'm relatively sure this heatwave would have done a lot more damage if I hadn't been able to move them to where they could get some shade during the worst part of the day.

The five best mysteries and the habanero, I moved from their 4" pots to 4 gallon containers.


6 candidates for overwinter by Yemtol, on Flickr
These are my overwintering candidates. I've been told the topside growth slowdown is likely caused by the plants rooting into the much larger pots. The bush is the habanero, which was in a gallon container prior to moving to the four gallon container.


The thirteen remaining mysteries were all put into a single topsyturvy pepper planter.


topsyturvy front by Yemtol, on Flickr


topsyturvy back by Yemtol, on Flickr
Whatever the science behind it, these things have exploded since being in there. They drink like fish, but they seem to be doing well. I pour in about a gallon of water every other day and it still ends up feeling like a bag of cotton by the time I water again.

Despite the recent heat wave and a lot of dropped blooms, I've got my first pods.



First Habanero by Yemtol, on Flickr
My first habanero. This guy set before any of the mysteries even bloomed. It's as isolated as I'm likely to get this season, so I'm hoping it makes it to full ripeness on the plant so I can use it for seed. Not to mention it will be the first fresh habanero I've ever eaten. I've cooked with them for years, but I've never just eaten one. I'm so excited! :woohoo:




first mystery pepper by Yemtol, on Flickr
This is my first mystery pod, still shrouded in petals.



2nd mystery pod by Yemtol, on Flickr
This is my second mystery pod, barely set. It's also the first pod from the topsyturvy.


I still have no definitive idea as to what kind of peppers these peppers are and probably won't until I get a mature pod. However, I'm beginning to think they may be some kind of pubescens.
I've seen good canna with less hair.


hairy little bugger 2 by Yemtol, on Flickr

For those interested in the decapitated pepper, it has survived and is now one of the best in the topsyturvy. I'm planning on saving some seed from it if it's pods are any good. I figure that kind of resilience is a good thing to select for in further propagation.

More will follow as the pods progress.
 
Alright so the growing pods look nothing like any of the pics of pubescens I've seen. So much for that. The mystery continues now with pod porn.


Topsy 7/14/12 by Yemtol, on Flickr


Pod Pornage by Yemtol, on Flickr



For Scale by Yemtol, on Flickr

The overwinter candidates were chosen because they appeared to be the healthiest plants. For that particular trait they are doing well. Unfortunately, they are not producing as well as the plants in the topsy. I'm guessing it has to do with the combination of tight clustering and nearly constant motion of the hanging planter. As of two days ago, I'm hand pollinating all the candidates. The bugs haven't been doing they're jobs. Unfortunately I waited until they had already dropped most of their blooms in the heat wave. Hopefully now that temps have come down for a while and they're back in full sun, I'll get another round of flowers. I'm now up to two pods on my five candidate mysteries.



Candidates by Yemtol, on Flickr


topsy 7/14/12 by Yemtol, on Flickr

I'm also now hand pollinating the habanero. So many flowers, but only one lonely pod. Fortunately, this pod was isolated by timing so I can save the seeds. This fruit set and has been slowly growing since about three days before any of the others even blossomed.


Lonely hab by Yemtol, on Flickr

Now I'm waiting for fruit to mature and ripen. Once I have one fully ripened, I'm going to put up my pics in the pepper ID board and see if the experts can figure out what I've got.
 
I'm still waiting for that first hab to ripen. It's been well over a month now, but as of this morning, I noticed a subtle shift in color away from green at the top of the pod. Also, I'm finally getting mor hab pods. Including this little guy trying to be a scorp.

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I'm also finally having a minimum of luck getting the mysteries to ripen. So far I've had three start to ripen. The first one got dropped due to the heat and the topsy's tendency to dry out. I let it hang out in a basket of tomatoes for a couple days to try to let it ripen further. The top half got to a very bright fire engine red before the tip started to shrivel. At that point I cut it open to look inside and give it a taste. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture. The inside was packed full of placenta. There was almost no room left inside. Where it was ripe, it was much hotter than a cayenne and very sweet. It was fruity but not citrusy.

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This is my most mature pod. I'm gonna wait to pull it until it gets that bright red. Then it goes up in an ID thread.

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She's a lazy little bugger. She's been lounging on that branch the entire time.
The last one I've got trying to ripen is on one of my overwinter candidates. It is just now starting to get that purplish red at the top. Hopefully the weather will cooperate for a while. I've got enough pods that I should be able to share some if I can keep them on the plants.

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Now we just wait. I hate this part. I never have been good at waiting this close to the finish line.
 
Yeah I plucked my first ripe habanero and mystery peppers. I still don't have anymore habs starting to turn, but the first set about two weeks prior to the rest. However, that first mystery started a cascade. I've got about a half dozen turning and think the rest will be close behind.

[sharedmedia=gallery:images:262]

I ate the hab on a pizza and it's proving to be more than I bargained for. It was delicious and hot, but my gut is churning.

Edit: Hab not pictured. It was gone by the time I found my camera.
 
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