Bike808's first GLOG

Hello.
 
So, i drug my feet doing this whole thing; started late for my zone (7a) but at least I got it going at all.  I have a bunch of little sprouts going on with cotyledons and all that, but DANG, i feel like i'm way behind, with the final frost s'posedly coming in the next few weeks.  So, I also ordered some plants from Cross Country Nurseries (aka chileplants.com) as a Plan B.  
 
I gotta get a bunch of pictures up, but all i have right now are some nondescript sproutlings in some dirt.  I also gotta build some raised beds and whatnot.  So, yeah, I'll take some pics once i have interesting crap to take photos of.  The plan is to put a few 8'x4' beds into my tiny backyard, and work a few beds over at the local community garden.  And, then I'll put whatever i don't have room for in buckets or grow bags or whatever.  
 
Enough babbling; here's the list of stuff i've successfully germinated, and hoping to grow:
chinense
-7 Pot SR CARDI
-Trinidad Scorpion yellow CARDI
-SBJ7 (reds and yellows)
-White Fatalii
-Cream Fatalii
-Orange Habs (seeds were sold as "organic" and those things germinated right away and are growing most quickly out of all of'm)
-Various Scotch Bonnets (special shout-out to Trident Chilli for some of the more esoteric stuff...) specifically, I got Schneider Farm,              Beth Boyd, Papa Joe's, Saraga, TFM (I got TFM seeds from Semillas and from pods i bought up at the Trenton Farmer's Market-          the latter had a very high germ rate, and are coming along better than anything but the Habs...), and some seeds i saved from              some tasty red bonnets i bought at a nearby Asian Food Market ( http://www.asianfoodmarkets.com/ )
-Frontera Sweet
-Ecuador Sweet
-NuMex Suave (reds and oranges)
-NuMex Trick or Treat
 
annuum
-Hot Rod Serranos
-"Early" Jalapeños
 
 
Shit I ordered from Cross Country Nurseries, in case i'm way too late and/or i otherwise fail:
-7 Pot Brainstrain (yellow and red)
-Naga Morich
-Congo Trinidad
-Yellow Fatalii
-Orange Habs
-Red Dominica Habs
-Jamaican Hot Chocolate
-Paper Lanterns
-Generic Yellow Bonnets
-Safi Red
 
Yeah, most of it is redundant to the seeds i started, but that's the kinda shit i want to grow, and the idea is to have a back-up plan for the seeds.
 
I started everything with paper towels, and transferred them to one of these plastic starters with the tray and the clear plastic high-top lid, with like 72 little cells... I tried to germ some Yellow Fataliis, but they're running far behind. I checked'm again earlier today, and just one has the beginnings of a little hook. I'm hoping they'll do ok in the end. I'm really looking at this whole project as a first year learning experience; even if the whole thing crashes and burns, i feel like i've already learned from the whole ordeal.
 
Advice is, of course, welcome and appreciated. Thanks for reading, and i promise to get some pics up once i start dickin' around with building these beds...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

[Walchit]

Let's see them pods

 

[Bicycle808]

Let's see them pods

Yep... took some pics yesterday.  Just gotta upload them.  Technologically speaking, I´m where most folks were at in 2006, so.... bear with me.
 
I snapped the shots yesterday... just worked like 2 hours in the garden, and some of´m were green yesterday but turning red today.... 

 

[Bicycle808]

OK, here´s the pictures of my modest collection of pods.  Forgive me; I´m a shitty gardener, and an even worse photographer....
Got some nice Fataliis on this plant...

One of the other Fatalii plants is just now starting to set some tiny pods....

A lot of Congo Trinidads coming in.... all green in this pic, but at least one was turning red when I was gardening earlier today...

That´s 3 different plants; I think I got 6 Congo plants at the community garden, and all are setting pods....
 
Jamaican Hott Chocolates, coming ripe.  This one particular plant is tiny, yet loaded.  Might be the single most productive plant I got right now... that, or one of the Congos.

Safi Bonnets....  

More to come...
 

 

[Bicycle808]

And now, some Brain Strain situations....
This plant has maybe half a dozen pods on it.... all green in this pic, but one is about halfway red as of tonight...

Some Red Brains....

And here´s some Yella Brains...  out of focus, but whatever...

This one is growing on a Red Brain Strain plant.... the pod is off-pheno, but the crinkliness of this pod´s skin has been giving me nightmares.

 
Not pictured, but still out there: I got some more Orange Habs, Dominican Habs (one is pretty red; prolly good to pick soon), Red Paper Lanterns, Naga Morich, quite a few other critters sportin'buds and/or tiny pods.  All the plants in that one bed at the community garden came from CCN; I got one Figaro Pepper plant from CCN at home; it´s got a few little pods on it.  My wife chose it and was stoked about it, but I googled it and apparently, itś just the Italian version of a Bell pepper or something.  I guess she can eat those.  We didn´t plant it at the garden b/c we thought it was gonna die.  My wife took it home and planted it in a container, and it bounced back pretty dang good.
 
Also not pictured:  all the plants I started from seed in the bags at my house.  They´ve put on some size, been beaten up a bit by storms and insects, and some of them are far bigger than I ever thought they get.  (Still small for July though; I suppose.)  Last I checked, of 23 plants, 20 of them have nothing.  No buds, no flowers, no signs of production at all, beyond just being big as shit, with some leaves bigger than my hand on a lot of the TFM plants and a few other Bonnet plants.  I got a Cream Fatalii plant with a few buds, an Orange Hab with a good number of buds, and an Ecuador Sweet with some rather pretty white blossoms.  Those should be easier to photograph, as I can move the bags to a prime location.  Maybe I´ll take some pics tomorrow...
 
Thanks for reading; sorry if it´s boring but I spent hours reading Glogs like this last year with great interest, b/c I had a crazy appetite for chile knowledge. Maybe, some day, some other neophyte will find this Glog and take heart, knowing that even gardeners who eff everything up end up getting a few pods anyways....  
 

 

[Walchit]

Those are decent pics and plants don't be such a butthead to yourself! Keep up the good work, I like the looks of that Jamaican hot chocolate, the brains are always cool too

 

[Bicycle808]

Those are decent pics and plants don't be such a butthead to yourself! Keep up the good work, I like the looks of that Jamaican hot chocolate, the brains are always cool too

 
Well, thanks.  FWIW, being a butthead to myself is part of my strategy for maximizing my awesomeness.  Sometimes, it makes me seem humble to folks who aren´t too discerning, and it almost always sets some low expectations that i can possibly exceed... but, mostly, it pushes me to try harder, and keep on improving...  
 
That one Jamaican HC plant is pretty awesome  I got another one that some critter has been eating all the leaves off of it, but leaving the pods.  By ¨critter,¨ i mean itś gotta be a vertebrate of some sort.  Like, a danged rabbit.  
 
But yeah, the Brains have me most stoked right now. To be honest, it was while ogling pics of Brainstrains on the interwebs that i decided I wanted to grow chiles as a hobby. Of course, now that i´m actually growing them, I´ll be hard-pressed to actually use them.  They´re too hott to be used for most recipes... I mean, I´ll do it anyway, but it´s not like I´ll be sharing´m with ¨normal¨ ppl.  The fact is, I was watching pod reviews two nights back, and got ¨inspired,¨ so I decided to just straight-up eat a 7Pot Jonah... bout nearly killed me.  I was spazzing out for close to ten minutes, and the tingling/stupidity lingered for a while even after i was able to outwardly regain composure. Maybe these Sevens ain´t for me... 

 I think my grow, next year, will be all Poblanos. 

 

[Walchit]

Ya, if it weren't for Mrs renfros ghost pepper salsa I probably wouldn't be on this forum. I don't think I will be able to eat any of the reapers or ghosts I'm growing now, maybe a piece of one lol. I saved some seeds from some pablanos that i got at the farmers market the other day, mainly to practice my seed saving skils lol.

 

[Bicycle808]

Ya, if it weren't for Mrs renfros ghost pepper salsa I probably wouldn't be on this forum. I don't think I will be able to eat any of the reapers or ghosts I'm growing now, maybe a piece of one lol. I saved some seeds from some pablanos that i got at the farmers market the other day, mainly to practice my seed saving skils lol.

I must have a natural skill for saving seeds b/c all the seeds i saved last year had killer germ rates, so i guess i did something right.  But yeah, I´ll be eating Brain Strain and cheddar omelets quite soon, for better or for worse.  I´m definitely looking forward to it, but i probably shouldn´t be. 

 

[Walchit]

Do you save tomato seeds? I guess the best way is to ferment those? I just tried some, seems to have worked.

 

[Bicycle808]

Do you save tomato seeds? I guess the best way is to ferment those? I just tried some, seems to have worked.

Haven´t ever tried to.... not looking forward to it, seeing as they´re so danged gooey.  Usually, when I wanna try something like that, I ask my mom for advice-- she´s a pretty badazz gardener.  If she doesn´t know, i just google it.  For something like that, she´ll most likely just tell me to order the seeds i want from a retailer...
 
I just started gardening, and i´m kinda pepper-obsessed right now, but surprisingly, my wife got into growing too.  She´s big into the ´matoes and tomatillos, but i bet she´ll want to just buy plants at a nursery and go from there.  She thought my seed-saving and subsequent germination efforts were annoying.  When we drove up to CCN and bought plants, she told me that i should´ve just done that from the start.... until she saw the total cost of our purchase.  

 
Seeds are cheap.  Plants are kinda cheap, unless you want a lot of´m.  Saving seeds is free, so i guess i´ll  be doing plenty of saving...

 

[Walchit]

I have two tomatillo plants, they grow like crazy, bought one off Craigslist and one from a nursery, guess you need two to pollinate right or something. Idk what I'm gonna do with them, I guess some kind of salsa.

 

[Bicycle808]

My wife makes some mean Salsa Verde out of Jalapeños, Tomatillos, garlic, cilantro, onions, vinegar, and whatever else she uses.  It´s the stuff in the Green bowl at the tacquería, except maybe hers is the gringa version.  Tastes really good.  You can grill up some chicken and just smother it in that green sauce with some beansńŕice on the side.  Quick, cheap, and easy dish....

 

[Bicycle808]

Here´s some more semi-random pics.  Not much to add in the way of updates, i´ve just been tending to my plants, and blissing-out about all the dang pods that are popping up; i got some generic Yellow Bonnets coming in, Naga Morich, more Fataliis, Mirasols, plus just more Orange & Red Dominican Habs, Paper Lanterns, Brainstrains, Congos, Safis, JHCs etc etc. Pretty much the same shit, but more of it.  Some stuff is actually ripening up, but mostly runt pods. Pretty stoked about it, regardless.  More and more of the plants i started from seed are starting to bud up.  I think things might work out.
 

 

Pics of the plants i put in bags 5 weeks ago...

Ecuador Sweet plant is doing pretty nicely.

It´s got more flowers  on it than any of the other plants i started from seed.  Seeds came from Semillas.  Sṕosed to be a low-heat Hab-type.

Cream Fatalii also has some buds on it... got seed from THP member Cone_9.

I got an Orange Hab thatś got a lot of buds, some blossoms, and a tiny pod on it...

A shot of my wife´s Tomtillo plants.  

Some ¨ḧarvest" shots... yeah, all fairly runty stuff, but i get psyched anyway b/c it´s all new to me.  2 Paper Lanterns, 2 Jamaican Hot Chocolates, and a Dominican Hab.  The JHCs and the Domincan Hab were pretty much on the smaller side of ¨normal¨-sized, and tasted great.

More tiny little Paper Lanterns, and some equally tiny Orange Habs.

Neo-Traditional Mike Smith shot with a Paper Lantern runt. 
 
Thanks for reading; Glogging has been really helpful for me so far.

 

[Walchit]

Lookin good! Did that package make it to ya?

 

[Bicycle808]

Lookin good! Did that package make it to ya?

I just checked the box now, and there it is.  Thanks!  Must´ve arrived yesterday.  I´m gonna type up that list for ya today.

 

[Walchit]

Awesome

 

[hogleg]

Dude! That ol' cruiser with the landing gear forks a fricken sweeet. Does it have 24" rims too??
 
Oh, and want your t-shirt, that is also fricken sweeet.
 
Bet those JHC were delicious.
 
Lookin' great 808! Keep up the good work.

 

[Bicycle808]

Dude! That ol' cruiser with the landing gear forks a fricken sweeet. Does it have 24" rims too??
 
Oh, and want your t-shirt, that is also fricken sweeet.
 
Bet those JHC were delicious.
 
Lookin' great 808! Keep up the good work.

Thanks, Hogleg. . . I´m just gonna keep trying and squeeze the most out of the season as I can...
 
The bike w/ the LG fork is rolling on some 26x2.35¨ Kenda Kiniptions.  That´s my main pub cruiser, but of course you can see that there´re pubs right across the street LOL.

 

[Bicycle808]

Well, I cruised up to the Community Garden to water the thirsty plants and take a peak around; I ended up picking my one Red Brain Strain.  It looked so violently red and ready for action; I just couldn´t resist. Here´s a snapshot of the pod:

I cut it open and was surprised to see only, like, 5 seeds in there. This was an early pod; it was quite small (maybe the size of a quarter, but laterally compressed... like, flat top-to-bottom)... The insides of the pod were coated with oil, and it smelled so friggin good, i just had to try a bit of the tail end.  Delicious, but definitely the hottest chile I´ve sampled yet.  Enthused, I used the rest of the pepper to prepare a Brainstrain, Muenster, and garlic omelet (with a bunch of beef bacon on the side) while I listened to 3 different versions of ¨Flex." Afterwards, I devoured the omelet wile I listened to the B-side (¨Yes or No¨).  
 
Growing chile plants is awesome.

 

[peppamang]

Awesome poddage man. Rad shirt. Keep up the good work