• Blog your pepper progress. The first image in your first post will be used to represent your Glog.

A Pepperhead glog: Pickling, Saucing, and Powdering

Okay Chiliheads,
At the end of the month I will begin my crop for this season, as it seems the hard core chilis take a while to germinate. Then it got me thinking...Why not run a few experiments to see what germination method works best. People seemed to have some issues with the Reapers so I figure I'll start there and do the same with some other superhots and compare the results.
I'm going to try three methods of germination: Overnight soaking in a solution, scarifying the seeds then overnighting in a damp towel, and for a control just straight into the dirt.
For the solution I'm going to experiment with a vinegar base, I'm thinking equal parts vinegar and water and a little H2O2. I'm trying vinegar off the animal digestive tract transportation and deposit theory. Let's see if the vinegar acidity breaks down the shell a little.
I'm going to use a matchbook to scarify the seeds for the damp papertowels.
I will do my best to post temps, soil conditions, water amounts, etc.
All results with some pictures and colorful graphs will be posted.

I know this forum is full of smartypants, many with much smarter pants than me, so I actively encourage ideas and constructive criticisms to make this as scientifically accurate as I can make it. Perhaps a recommendation for the vinegar solution?

What this Glog is: Hopefully fun and educational for the Glogger and the reader.

What it is not: A forum to whine about the seed suppliers. Even the slightest grumble about any of the suppliers of my seeds will get you reported. My Glog, my rules.

So give me some ideas and the last week of January I'll be ready to go! Enjoy!
 
Click to expand...
So I have made the leap and have removed the bigger leafed stuff from the artificial lights inside the cabinets to the natural light from the window. Some of the leaves were getting yellow and even almost white. I suspect sunburn, so felt it was neccesary. Most of the tomatoes have also moved to another room into the window. Tomatoes are growing way faster than peppers. Anything that's still in coty stage stays in the cabinet until it gets more advanced, generally. There are still a few slightly more advanced peppers under cfl's, but they don't show signs of sunburn yet, so hopefully they'll manage until I have more window room, or spring comes.
 
Here are my current numbers as they stand:
  • Reaper 4 1 with a leaf issue
  • Dorset 6
  • 7 Pot 5 2 kinda scraggly looking
  • Bhut 7 1 with the same leaf issue as the reaper
  • Primo 3
  • Orange Hab 3
  • Carribean red Hab 3
  • Jonah 1
  • 7 pot bubblegum 2
I have some brain strains and butch ts in the germinator, but that'll be the end of my sowing this year.
 
So I was closing down the germination tank for the season today, and a few weeks ago I had already pulled some of the cups out with seeds in them and left them off to the side while I left the ones still most likely to germinate in the tank. I was about to empty the old cups into the trash when I looked in the Reaper cup and lo and behold a sprouted seed complete with coty! I was so excited I popped it into some dirt before I could snap a picture of it in the cup. I checked the others and found a sprouted Primo as well, only not so far along. Popped it into dirt as well. Hopefully I can get a good season out of those late starts. Got 4 Brain Strains sprouting as well, one with a hook.
 
Looking good! When's dirt day?

Hey I used to live in Manassas, Bull Run was in the back yards of the people across the street. Got darned cold there!

Scott
 
Probably 2nd week of April, that's after the last frost (hopefully). Everything except habs are going into drywall buckets. I'm not sure my tomatos can wait that long, they're all growing like weeds.
Oh and I lived in Texas for a short time when I was watching the Border. I lived in Harlingen and McAllen .
 
So in keeping with the theme of nature finds a way I present to you an example with some potential:

lilprimojpg.jpg


This little guy accidentally had his cotys torn up during a botched seed shellectomy. Now there are 3 tiny leaves where there were barely any. So never give up!

When I started this glog part of the experiment was to do a side by side comparison Primos to Reapers. Here is a current picture of one each of my (from left to right) Primo, Reaper, Bhut:

comparejpg.jpg


I started all my seeds on January 25th and the first of these three to come up were the Reapers. Due to my lazy record keeping, I'm not sure of the exact sprouting date of each of these plants, but the Reaper was easily sprouting four to five weeks earlier than the Primo. The Bhuts are also at least two or three weeks older than the Primo. See how the Primo is almost the same size given the time difference. Same soil, same water regimen. The bhuts in general, along with my dorsets, are the most numerous in number of surviving seedlings even though I germinated 5 to 7 more seeds of Reaper than any of the others. And that Bhut is wider and leafier than all my other pepper plants.

7 pot regulars are all raging bi#%*es for me. Small, yellow, or scraggly. I'll be lucky if one gets into a bucket this year. I do have the last of my sown seeds hooking though, 4 brain strains and a Butch T. Even have a couple of 7 Pot bubblegums which may make it to buckets.
 
So spent a few hours mixing dirt today. Got 3 bales of peat from Lowes and two 4cuft bags of perlite from Southern states, borrowed my neighbor's wheelbarrow and had at it! Took my used, gritty topsoil dirt that I used last year, dumped one drywall bucket into the barrow, one bucket of perlite and one bucket of peat. Gave it a good mix then added some lime and some rabbit food (yes, rabbit food) as a fertilizer, then filled three buckets and added a half cup of Jobe's tomato and vegetable fert to each bucket and mixed. Five buckets of old, nasty dirt into 15 buckets of new fresh fluffy dirt. Just 10 or so more buckets to go!
 
I have quite a few decent Dorsets (although I lost one to underwatering recently) but have no room to put them anywhere. They could easily leave the grow cabinet and take daylight, but my one good window is full. Come on spring, hurry up.
 
Pepperhead said:
I have quite a few decent Dorsets (although I lost one to underwatering recently) but have no room to put them anywhere. They could easily leave the grow cabinet and take daylight, but my one good window is full. Come on spring, hurry up.
Click to expand...

I just hope we get a spring this year. I don't want another later-winter-directly-to-hot-and-dry summer.
 
The way winter has been jumping back into things here, perhaps you will have a spring.

We had another front come in and it's way late for that here, down to 48-50's the next two nights.
 
right now the day temps are almost there but nights are still way too cold. 21 degrees F this morning. My tomatos are getting huge and I still have other veggies to start before plant out.
 
So I put the babies out to harden off, and hopefully the wind doesn't pick up too much. The sun was brutal and it was pretty hot today, I'm hoping for not too much sunburn.. I'll keep them all out until Wednesday because we're expecting rain and that usually brings wind. Lost 80% of my stuff last year due to too much wind too soon. Wish me luck!
 
Good luck, I put the little ones on the Southeast side of the house, blocks most of the wind. But some wind is good as it helps strengthen them.

I've placed wind screens on the North and East sides of the garden, got em for free, did a little dumpster diving at work. Heck it was like new, came up with a 8x50' piece that had a center seam, cut that so I had 100'.
 
Alright, pulled everything back in today with a few sunburned white leaves, and a tomatoe succumbed to wind damage, but all in all it went well. Some of my bhuts look much bigger. I now have 25 buckets of nice fresh soil, and one raised bed full of onions and garlic. It's a lot like spring here and almost summery.
 
I think the weather is mostly beyond the low temp zone and we're gonna start transplanting tomatoes into the 5 Gallon buckets on Monday. Maybe some of my bigger Bhuts as well. Then we have to start prepping the melons and pumpkins and things for the raised garden. Time for the season to get underway!
 
Woohoo! Plant out is here! I'm doing mine next week. Being your neighbor to the north, our weather is probably about one week behind yours. Hope there are no freak cold fronts. I don't want to do any emergency frost preparation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top