Hi!
In the last 6 years my pepper cultivation has always been ecological and spartan: no heating, no lamps, no fertilizers, no pesticides.
But this year, after starting with the usual setup, I decided to change on the fly and upgrade, at least with a radiator and LED lamps, given that the C. chinense and the wilds didn't agree very well with my natural choices, and I am always open to change. So I recovered a growbox from the cellar that I hadn't yet used for peppers.
I'm very late (actually I'm on par with other years, but being surrounded by professionals from two forums I feel the pressure
).At the moment I have 35 live cultivars out of 40: the failed ones are sterile interspecific crosses, problematic wilds or poorly preserved seeds. But I'm satisfied.
In total there are 119 seedlings: 64 under the lamps (one for each variety, those to give as gifts and a few crossbreed phenotypes), and 55 as probes out in the cold on the balcony for which I will have to invent something.
I have a bit of everything, the 5 domestic species, some wild ones, some crosses of mine, but I like a moderate spiciness so many peppers are under 100k SHU to be able to balance them in cooking and also invite friends without them dying.
Well, they actually die every year anyway, even with C. annuum
But let's invent a goal!I have never used fertilizers or pesticides in any type of past cultivation, in order to obtain clean organoleptic profiles and respect the life of insects. I therefore expect healthy, but very slow, medium sized plants, and daily battles with various insects with which I will try to coexist in harmony. Except with the damn aphids!! Which I will crush by hand daily.
Some pictures:
Indoor plants
Outdoor plants
C. baccatum with 3 cotyledons (a classic)
C. rabenii with 0 cotyledons (I decapitated it during surgery, but waited patiently for the true leaves to come out anyway)
C. pubescens with butterfly cotyledons
Rocopica (also half decapitated, but recovering)
C. cardenasii
Chiltepin
A few more mixed shoots or crosses
Well what can I say, the bulk of it is done now, I just have to be patient! I hope to harvest at least a few C. annuum in early summer to start making sauces.
See you soon!
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lol