AHayastani's ГЛΟГ

I have an urban "garden" on the roof of a house in tropical Chiapas, Mexico. It's the first year that I'm growing plants - mostly Capsicum - in this location. I lived in a temperate region of Europe before, and the adaptation to different growing conditions is not without setbacks. Another issue is that not all material that I would like to use is commonly available here, so at times I have to be more creative than I actually want to be. That being said, it is also unbelievable (for me, at least) to see how some plants manage to grow in this climate even in adverse conditions (despite my bad treatment, that is).
 
I have obtained seeds from various sources (abbreviations in parentheses will be used in this glog): White Hot Peppers (WHP), Towns-End (town), Jayrseyshore Peppers [FB] (jay), Vertiloom (vtl), Badskin (bad), Juan GA [FB] (jga), Semillas La Palma (SLP), Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (rareseeds).
 
I arrived at this house in january and started my first sowings in february. This glog, however, begins in early June and I will just treat this as "the beginning".
 
 
I re-sowed a few cultivars end May since most or all of my plants of that specific cultivar had perished... My 3 plants of Jay's Peach Ghost Scorpion seem to have succumbed to a virus infection, which might have been seed-born. I will soon find out... My Brazilian Mango and Aji Mango Long plants looked depressing, so I sowed the backup seeds. Serrano... I had forgotten to sow them    Trinidad Beans Chocolate, because two out of three plants seem to be reluctant to grow and enter adulthood... Takanotsume is old seed I purchased on ebay, and I'm surprised that anything gets up. Pimenta Moranga and Monster Gum Multicolor (jga) are two cultivars that I was going to sow on March 20, but I somehow lost the seeds... but they recently resurfaced Germination is still OK, even though the seeds were "stored" outside 
 

 
 
I sourced some pequin/chiltepin from the local market, one fruit per tray:
 

 
 
A box of failures... The seed is already old though and has not been properly stored. Cumari Pollux (SLP) is an exception though, and I will await its germination to officially declare the rest as "lost".
 

 
 
Sowed today: Capsicum galapagoense Long (SLP).
 

 

 
 
I had some fun with tomato suckers as well... I put two suckers in water to make them grow roots (cultivar Madagascar) and gave them a baggie of dirt today and placed them with the rest.
 

 
 
I removed some more suckers and put them in water. Hopefully they will make it to tomato plant Three are Midnight Tiger and another Madagascar. The three shoots in perlite below are Aji Tapachula.
 

 

[PaulG]

Loving your efforts, Dieter! Good on ya for diving
in to a new geo climate with the capsicums and
tomatoes. Noticed you have some Semillas la Palma
seeds. They are a favorite source for me along with
Refining Fire and The Hippy Seed Company. And of
course, THP forum members! Lots of trading goes
on here!
 
Good luck getting on with your grow season in Chiapas.

 

[Bhuter]

I wasn't gonna click to come in here because I wasn't sure I'd be able to read it. Quite the contrary.

Nice to meet you, Dieter! And I must say, you use fantastic English and punctuations! I guess that's a big deal for me. I seem to bring it up a lot. But great grasp on English! (I was thinking this was going to be in Russian. Lol)

But great job on your grow! Yes, I will use that.....the sucker cloning. I have thought about it while breaking them off, but never fully thought out: "why plant more than one tomato seed of a variety? Just clone this one when transplanting." Brilliant! Thank you!

Local pequins, you say?????? Yum yum yum

Great stuff and I'll be following and learning!


-Adam

 

[The_NorthEast_ChileMan]

 

[ahayastani]

Thanks all!
 

Loving your efforts, Dieter! Good on ya for diving
in to a new geo climate with the capsicums and
tomatoes. Noticed you have some Semillas la Palma
seeds. They are a favorite source for me along with
Refining Fire and The Hippy Seed Company. And of
course, THP forum members! Lots of trading goes
on here!
 
Good luck getting on with your grow season in Chiapas.

 
I bought ~100 different cultivars from SLP when still in EU and brought them with me when I made the move. SLP packs their seeds airtight and I store them per their instructions in the fridge. Apparently, they don't ship to MX (anymore). I wasn't sure what kind of situation I was going to encounter in MX, so I wanted to play safe... Once settled, I made several test purchases abroad and concluded that the situation here is not as dramatic as I anticipated. Letters from the US and EU actually arrive (!) and take 4-6 weeks. I test-ordered from Australian Hippy as well, but it took a full four months for their letter to arrive. For that reason, I won't order from them again, though it admittedly is not their fault. If germination is bad, who will be to blame?
 

I wasn't gonna click to come in here because I wasn't sure I'd be able to read it. Quite the contrary.

Nice to meet you, Dieter! And I must say, you use fantastic English and punctuations! I guess that's a big deal for me. I seem to bring it up a lot. But great grasp on English! (I was thinking this was going to be in Russian. Lol)

But great job on your grow! Yes, I will use that.....the sucker cloning. I have thought about it while breaking them off, but never fully thought out: "why plant more than one tomato seed of a variety? Just clone this one when transplanting." Brilliant! Thank you!

Local pequins, you say?????? Yum yum yum

Great stuff and I'll be following and learning!


-Adam

 
I do academic Spanish > English translation as a side income, so it better be acceptable The sound of "glog" makes me remember my time in Armenia, so I twisted it into ГЛΟГ... Nothing to fear here, Comrade
 
I'm trying to grow full-fledged tomato plants from suckers for various reasons:

• My first reason was commercial: I could grow plants from seeds and sell plants grown from suckers on the local market. It won't make me rich, but it might help to cover for my garden expenses. Also, they only know three kinds of tomatoes here: round tomatoes (bola), salad tomatoes (salad), and cherry tomatoes. Many locals are unaware of the vast diversity of cultivars (and their wildly varying tastes) available...
• My second reason was to always have plants available of a particular cultivar, and sucker cloning is easier than sowing. This motive is gaining importance now, as I'm learning that growing tomatoes here is not easy... Nights are too warm and plants drop their flowers, so I have a lot of plant and not a single fruit    Currently, my idea is to continue growing tomato plants and clone the suckers, and learn during which time of the year the plants will form fruit. I guess October/November should be fine...

 

[Uncle Eckley]

I wasn't gonna click to come in here because I wasn't sure I'd be able to read it. Quite the contrary.

Nice to meet you, Dieter! And I must say, you use fantastic English and punctuations! I guess that's a big deal for me. I seem to bring it up a lot. But great grasp on English!

 
+1  մի լեզուն երբեք հերիք չէ 

 

[stettoman]

Aw man, this is gonna be fun, climatic transference is always most entertaining: just read the SkullBiker's glog, from the ice planet to the rain forest in 9 UHaul trips!! 
 
And then he grows stuff to boot!
 
 
Viel Glück!!

 

[skullbiker]

Aw man, this is gonna be fun, climatic transference is always most entertaining: just read the SkullBiker's glog, from the ice planet to the rain forest in 9 UHaul trips!! 
 
And then he grows stuff to boot!
 
 
Viel Glück!!

It’s your turn, make that move!

And by the way, it was only 3 trips(with the biggest trucks and trailers U-Haul had).
hahahahaha Definitely an experience!

 

[Devv]

Welcome to the THP Dieter!
 
Good luck with your grow this season, it is certainly a change from the EU. I'm not familiar with your new climate, but as far south as you are now things will be different for sure.
 
I'm in deep south Texas, one could go deeper, but it sure is hot and dry enough here! March 1st is my typical "dirt day".
 
Gotta love the ease of tomato cloning, I used to just take a cutting and stick it in the dirt, keep it watered, and boom!
 
I grow Early Girl here, they do well in the heat for us.
 
Enjoy!

 

[ahayastani]

 
+1  մի լեզուն երբեք հերիք չէ 

 
Since my native language is a minority language, we are kind of accustomed to learning other languages. Armenian, however, was difficult for me, and I quickly switched to Russian, which I found considerably easier to learn and all Armenians of age seemed to be bilingual anyway (in 2008, that is).
 

 
 
The change of climate is quite a challenge... All my life, I saw how people exposed their plants as much as possible to the sun, and now suddenly they seem to do the opposite 
 
I didn't do much in the garden today, just went to check if all were still alive    The poblano is setting fruit now. I found two peppers which I believe/hope are going to make it The plant has so far dropped most of its flowers, even small fruits, but the plant has not reached maturity yet and continues to grow. I'm still not worried The white PVC tube is ~1m, from ground level to top (I cut a 3m tube in 3 more-or-less equal parts).
 

 

 
 
The small poblano in front has the same age as the bigger plant... I got dengue and could not take care of the garden for a full two weeks, during which time the plants were overtaken by aphids and red spider mites. The later proved to be devestating. I initially had four poblano plants grown from seed (rareseeds), and all but one (the large plant) were affected. The diseased plants never seemed to recuperate, and in an impatient and irrational frenzy I "decapitated" them. I didn't throw them away, however, and noticed a few days later that new shoots began to form. Still, two died but one is surviving... 
 

 

[Devv]

I had to read about Dengue fever, no fun at all. I'm sure there are many more Mosquito's there too?
 
Stay safe

 

[ahayastani]

I had to read about Dengue fever, no fun at all. I'm sure there are many more Mosquito's there too?
 
Stay safe

 
An awful lot of mosquitoes here... There is a large park with lush vegetation nearby, and now that the rainy season has begun... No funny disease, but mortality is quite low. I was much more worried of getting COVID on top of it, that would certainly have been problematic.
 
Today was a nice day to work outside. Temperatures never higher than 31°C and the rains arrived late. I sowed a few peppers: (1) the seed content of three chiltepines/pequines (the variety that is locally traded here on the market), (2) Black Monster (SLP; I found them a few days ago cleaning up my stuff... I don't know why they are not in the fridge, and how long they have been on my desk...), and (3) Jalapeño (the commercial seed packet you can find in every Mexican supermarket for M$ 20). I placed the seed content of each pequin in a seperate pot and put the number of seeds on the label (7 + 7 + 10). I didn't do that at my previous pequin sowing, and the number of germinated plants does not agree with (is higher than) the number of seeds stored in my memory    I didn't care to count the number of Jalapeño seeds, I just thew in an eyeballed amount that should do it...
 

 

 

 

[PaulG]

Fun grow log, Dieter. Looking forward to seeing
how those local annuum v Glabriusculum develop
for you.
 
How many plants are you thinking of growing when
all is said and done?

 

[Siv]

Based on my experience, two things to combat mosquitoes:
1, Make sure there is no standing water (e.g. empty buckets, plant saucers, drains etc
2, Plant a ton of lemon grass in pots or restricted areas - I have a huge lemon grass bush in my court yard and we get no - zero - mosquitoes. Lemon grass is like a weed and will dominate your land if you let it run wild. But it's magic at keeping the annoying bugs away.

 

[ahayastani]

How many plants are you thinking of growing when
all is said and done?

 
I currently have 14 seedlings from 2 pequines; add whatever will come from these 3... For personal play and consumption, I hope to have five plants - 1 plant per pequin, that is. However, I will also need some more plants as "PR gift"
 

Based on my experience, two things to combat mosquitoes:
1, Make sure there is no standing water (e.g. empty buckets, plant saucers, drains etc
2, Plant a ton of lemon grass in pots or restricted areas - I have a huge lemon grass bush in my court yard and we get no - zero - mosquitoes. Lemon grass is like a weed and will dominate your land if you let it run wild. But it's magic at keeping the annoying bugs away.

 
Option #1 is really out of our hands    In general, many people follow basic common sense rules to limit the number of flies and mosquitoes, but as you know, you only need one *#@^% in the neighbourhood to screw things up for the rest...

 

[ahayastani]

I gave some of the plants a larger pot. I haven't been able to buy more dirt for my potting mix since Corono arrived and I have been delaying the repotting way too much... It's a good thing plants can't speak a human language   The pictures show Coyote Zan White and Trinidad X-Strain (seeds: WHP). So far, every mistreated pepper plant has responded well to the repotting treatment
 

 
 
I have five plants of a pepper that is locally known as pico de paloma. I believe it is a C. frutescens. I bought a small portion on the market of San Cristobal de las Casas which contained red, yellow and white peppers. After a few days, I had only red and yellow peppers and saved seeds from each type and sowed them seperately. It still remains to be ascertained, however, whether the yellow and red peppers represent two different types, or whether the yellow is an intermediary ripening stage of the red. Anyway, I only have two plants of the red type and one got affected by red spider mites. The large leaves appear to me as if they are diseased, but its stem is covered with fresh and reasonably healthy looking shoots. I gave the plant some new dirt and removed the old leaves. Fingers crossed...
 

 

[ahayastani]

I have had a few tomatoes of cv. Surender Curry (seeds: vtl), a bushy tomato type. Vertiloom describes it as: Juicy with a strong acidity and little sweet. Ideal for really spicy sauces. I therefor wanted to try this tomato to prepare Mexican-style salsas. The plants have not yielded well, mainly for two reasons I think:

1. Plants dropped most of their flowers due to high day and night temperatures > will try at other times of the year.
2. Not enough light at their current location > a miscalculation of my part; I let myself to be fooled by my own eyes (the roof terrace is covered and light falls in from the sides)

Since the plants have passed their most productive time, I removed some suckers and will attempt to grow new plants from them. I made a trial for this cultivar two weeks ago and it formed roots nicely...
 

 

 

[ahayastani]

I intended to put everything in one large post, but for some reason the board did not allow me to   Trial and error indicates something (character?) in my text makes/made the board go bananas...
 

I selected the four best seedlings and transplanted them. The remaining seedlings were recycled as green food for a baby pineapple   I hope to end up with two plants for personal consumption.
 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

[PaulG]

You have been busy, Dieter! Looks like everything
is under control except being able to get more potting
soil! Can't wait to see those pequins loaded up with little pods!

 

[ahayastani]

Can't wait to see those pequins loaded up with little pods!

 
Same here, if only to attempt to compare my pequines with what's available on the seed market.
 
I bought a habanero plant from a street vendor, but its fruits are somewhat different. I still don't know which cultivar it is, but it comes quite close to Petenero (cv. from Guatemala).
 
Rocoto peppers from local producers do not resemble the typical Mexican manzano or perron-shape, but have a narrowing at the fruit's stem. Their shape resembles quite a lot the cv. Rocoto Guatemalan Orange shown by Atlantic Pepper Seeds.
 
It could well be that the pequines bear more resemblance to Guatemalan types than to the better know cvs. of Northern Mexico. We'll see
 
 
Petenero image of SLP:
 

 
Rocoto Guatemalan Orange from Atlantic Pepper Seeds: