MANZANO PEPPERS! Please provide input!

I live in South Texas, and I attempt to grow them here, which is a real challenge. I have a few Red Manzano plants I hope produce this winter here. They don't like our heat, but excel during the cooler months. I can't ever put them in full sun here until after October. From what I understand they are a high altitude, cool climate pepper. The Northern growers seem to do really well with them.
 
Good luck!

Cool, I grow Manzano/Rocoto up in Sonoma. Look forward to watching your glog.
 
Welcome to THP from your neighbor up north 

Good to hear form a few growers already. Awesome. 
 
LOCATION: I am in Southern California Ventura County area and we have pretty consistant temperatures throughout the year. We have had a couple hot spells in the last few months, 80-85, with an occasional 90 degrees. It has been hotter toward the back half of the afternoon this year down here. Temps have been averaging 70-5 degrees. It has been some really nice growing weather.
 
THE GROW:
This grow is a trial to compare soil grown green and red bell peppers with the same varieties grown in pots in the semi-hydroponic media coconut coir. The pot size is 11 L. The system is on drip irrigation with automated irrigation and fertility injection. The timer runs irrigation 8-10 times per/day with fertility. The fertilizers are in stock concentrate tanks injected with dosatrons at ratios 1:200 - 1:128. There are two stock tanks to separate non-compatibile fertilizers making it an A + B program. I also run sea kelps/plant hormones with micro organisms through a third dosatron.
THE MANZANOS:
I reduced the number of plants in the trial so I through in some manzanos for kicks. I think they are orange or yellow, I'm not sure! 
 
I will put dates on all the photos for reference. I will also put days post transplant below the plant photos; it will look like PT-13, meaning 13 days post transplant.
 
Here are the photos , with some captions. 
 

JUNE 18 2016 setting up the manzano area and filling/flushing the coir. It has an initial high Na content so it needs to be flushed to a lower salt concentration before you can plant in it. 
 


JUNE 22 2016 Transplant day. The transplants came in a little lanky, but all in all they looked really nice.
 


JULY 16 2016  PT-24
 


AUG 13 2016 PT- 52  AN OVERVIEW: a shot of the total grow out and a more close up of the manzanos. You can see them in the back upper left in the first photo

AUGUST 26 2016  PT-65 I was unable to make it out the field for 7 days and this is what I find to my surprise when I return; Iron deficiency. My dosing mechanism for the fertilizer became plugged and so the plants where on no acidified water for 7 days at a Ph of 7.8 at this alkalinity my DTPA iron that was still in the pots was not highly available. In addition to having the pots leached of fertility with clear water for 7 days, iron is usually one of the first symptoms to appear due to its great need in the photosynthesis process. 
 
I am also dealing with quite a bit of blossom drop due to such a heavy flower load .... more photos to come. I upped my phosphorous from 55 ppm to 78 to help the flowers set and injected some additional iron to help recovery. We will see how they recover.

hello and from a northern 'Pube'-lover and grower 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

GIP

That is an epic Pubescens grow op! I grow several Pubescens varieties in Northern Virginia with success, but not on your scale, of course. I'm looking forward to seeing your updates on this project.

Thegreenchilemonster said:

That is an epic Pubescens grow op! I grow several Pubescens varieties in Northern Virginia with success, but not on your scale, of course. I'm looking forward to seeing your updates on this project.

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Nice peppers on your 2016 glog! You have quite the pepper collection; that's awesome! Do you save seeds?

socalpepperfarm said:

Nice peppers on your 2016 glog! You have quite the pepper collection; that's awesome! Do you save seeds?

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Thanks! Yes, I save seeds. I put out my peppers so that no like species are overlapping each other, to keep crossing to a minimum. I also use rocoto plants as barriers in between my other plants, since they can't cross with any of the other peppers species.

Here are some other hot peppers I have in the same system. I'm actually not sure what they are, maybe someone could help identify. I need to look through my seed orders to narrow the search down to a selection.



August 29 2016 PT-68 
 
 


August 29 2016 PT-68 
The Manzanos seem to be growing out of their iron deficiency. Time will heal the plants with the fertility going strong. I am tracking an individual meristem to note the changes. Another 10 days and we shall see what comes of the plants.
 






August 29 2016 PT-68

Just amazing! And a ton of work there!

Some overview shots with a close up of some nice pods on some other hot peppers.  They could be ghost peppers? I am not sure... I lost 11 red bells due to heavy fruit load and a trellising collapse.



September 2 2016 PT-72  
 
Below are some more photos from September 8th.
 


September 8th PT-78
 
I have gotten some first orange fruits. It's awesome. I will post pictures when I can.
 
Well come to find out I was wrong about the iron deficiency. After corrections were made for iron uptake, the problem persisted. But as you can see above, the chlorosis is fixed. It was due to a manganese deficiency. Iron and manganese deficiencies are almost indistinguishable without a leaf sample, and I incorrectly assumed it was iron. Interestingly, the bell peppers showed no problems what so ever, but both the manzanos and mystery hot peppers showed the chlorosis.
 
I was making Mn, Zn, Cu injections every 5 days. I then decided to stretch the time between injections to 8-10 days and I began to see these symptoms on the week of August 26th after not being out to check on the plants for 7 days. Little did I realize it was not iron, but from stretching my minor injections our a few more days than usual. 
 
Below is the photo from August 26th. 13 days later on September 8th, the plants are almost fully recovered from resuming 5 day injections on September 1st. 

Till next time...

 
some shots of the grow and fruit. Much more fruit ripening on plants
September 14th PT-84

I was working in up the coast at a blueberry field yesterday and I came across these 2-4 year old overwintered manzano peppers.