Geez, my mind is blown...so you just paint over each flower and the contact with each pepper pollinates the next one you brush?
Yes that is exactly right. I may be doing mulitple plants of the same variety at the same time, but when I go to pollinate a different type of pepper, I wash off the brush real well and prepare it for the next variety. There are many times that I am brushing about 300 flowers each morning (multiple plants)and it takes about 10 minutes to do it all. Even for pepper types that seem to self pollinate well on their own, I have noticed that I am still getting many more peppers to set by doing it by hand, and when Butch T seeds are going for $1 each on the internet, that means that every extra pepper you get is worth and extra $40 to $50 each, even if you throw the pepper part away. (which I would never do, I love the little babies too much )
EDIT: and maybe dumb question, can you paint through the same plant or do different plants have to pollinate each other?
If all you care about is setting peppers, then it is fine to mix plants like you mention because the peppers will look like what they should be whether they are self pollinated or cross pollinated. However, I want to take the seeds from these peppers and plant the seeds, or sell the seeds sometime. If you cross the plants, you will have hybrid plants from those seeds, and may look totally different and produce a wide variety of peppers, no matter what the mother pepper plant looks like.
Also, I have a 7 pot producing about 13 peppers...is that a low yield?
I had the same problem with my plant, it did good last year, but this year i have gotten 6 peppers off it and its been outside and transplanted since feburay. It had a ton of flowers on it but they all dropped, but i did read that once its gets over 90F they don't like it that much. I know it just finally getting now where the high is 88ish so I am hoping they will start producing. All my other plants have done great, just my ghost peppers are the ones that are little slow.
Yep, I use Alaska brand fish emulsion. All of my plants love it. Good stuff.With all this talk about miracle grow I thought i'd throw in ny two cents. You all should check out fish immulsion (sp?) It's basically ground up fish, it'll be a brown Goo that smells like death. You put about a tablespoon in a quart of water and water your plants with it. The place I bought my jolokias from swears by it and it work perfectly on my plants.
Beautiful plants! Yep, I'll definitely be transferring mine to a bigger container. Thanks for sharing.
Bleh... who the hell cares about "organic?" That's just a way to gouge people of more money for no real benefit.
Increase the pot size and get rid of the Miracle Gro. It isn't flower or pod friendly.
Good luck.
Miracle Gro works just fine compared to not fertilizing at all. Sure there are better things out there, butthere's a reason it's the most popular fertilizer available.
Don't believe me, ask Gorge
Ohh NO I DIDN'T!
BTW this last pic isn't breaking the rules, i checked
http://thehotpepper.com/index.php?app=forums&module=extras&section=boardrules
Hey Guru, you should charge for every time that guys shows off your fatalli plant I must have seen him post it in 6 different threads.
A little extra cash could buy you that 200 gallon smart pot in no time.
thats what she said!at the risk of invoking the classic "thats what she said" responce...
wow that thing is huge!