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...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

[ThatBlondGuy101]

This is a bloody great glog, and has been from the start.
Probably the most relatable one for me yet (even though I only started my first decent grow three weeks ago) I'm hearing ya on every level man!
 
Glad to see you've got some pods starting to roll in, judging by those flower pics, you'll be inundated in no time!
 
Keep up the good work - you've really earnt everything you reap! (+ more)

 

[Bicycle808]

This is a bloody great glog, and has been from the start.
Probably the most relatable one for me yet (even though I only started my first decent grow three weeks ago) I'm hearing ya on every level man!
 
Glad to see you've got some pods starting to roll in, judging by those flower pics, you'll be inundated in no time!
 
Keep up the good work - you've really earnt everything you reap! (+ more)

Thanks, TBG.  The way i see it, we all have experiences to share.  Even if i don have much to share in the way of wisdom, i can share my mistakes and what i´ve learned from them.  As rookies, we got a lot to share in terms of teachable moments and small victories, but i do hope to one day become one of these guys with colossal bushes full of pods all over my glog....All in good time, i hope.

 

[Bicycle808]

Update for the past week... pics below the blathering.
 
So, I´ve been confronted with some pests.  Hornworms are the WORST. I found one, maybe 3"long, on a Naga plant at the Community Garden about a week ago.  I guess I got to him pretty quick, as he´d eaten an entire leaf and was half-finished another when I found him.  Needless to say, I whooped his azz.  Little prick.  
 
Two days later, I was checking out my plants at home, and they all looked pretty good except this one previously lush TFM was stripped of most all of its leaves.  I figured it must´ve been a big vertebrate pest to have eaten that much.  In checking things out, I saw some big ol´ turds on the soil and figured, that must be rat turds or something.  They were BIG, and they looked like the Rootbeer Barrel hard candies I used to enjoy as a youth.  

Yeah, more or less, like that.  I went inside to try and regain composure, and came back out, hoping to devise a strategy.  When I came to the plant, there was even MORE damage to one of the top-most leaves.  I nearly shit myself, and immediately flipped the leaf over to see what´s up.  In so doing, I inadvertently and unexpectedly poked this BigFatHuge hornworm, might´ve been 6"long, but who knows?   He was BIG, and I wasn´t sure that I could take him in a fair fight, but I had to try.  I pried him off the stem with a l´il stick (no easy task) and, just then, my buddy Thoko showed up at my fence, and witnessed the murder.  It was a grim scene; a fat man with a beard, looking like a young Santa, stomping a John C. Holmes- looking Hornworm as a Zambian immigrant looked on in shocked horror.  I had to give him a tour of the Community Garden to take his mind off of the violence.
 
Since then, I´ve noticed (and destroyed) at least 3 tiny (1/2" and skinny) Hornworms on my plants, and recognized them as the same little caterpillars I´d been squashing on my seedlings months ago.  (The two ass-spikes and the color are dead giveaways, but it´s hard to reconcile the tiny ones as being the same critter as the mammoths they become.
 
The other pest I´ve encountered has been far less destructive, but is arguably more disturbing.  At the community garden, there are a lot of big signs instructing members and visitors: ¨If you did not grow it, DON´T PICK IT.¨ Despite these warnings, some low-life scoundrel picked one of my runty Paper Lanterns. bit it in half, and spit it out, right next to my plot!  I was incensed.  At least Hornworms have the decency to use the plants for sustenance.  This weak-heart scofflaw with a heart of scum just straight-up WASTED a perfectly tasty little chile.  I´m guessing that s/he couldn´t stand the heat, which makes sense b/c the Paper Lanterns are pretty mild (the ones I´m growing are, at least), but this scallywag´s tolerance is as pathetic as his/her principles.  
 
Enough of this negativity.  A lot of my plants are podding up; I´ve been eating all manner of runty homegrown peppers, and a few full-size, legit pods, too. At home, in the cloth bags, most plants are showing some flowers, and a few are podding up.  The Ecuador Sweet, I´ll have to snap a photo, but for such a small plant, it has a good number of pods and multiple buds/flowers at every node promising a decent harvest.  Which is good, b/c I only have the one Ecuador Sweet plant growing...
 
On to the pics from the Community beds...

Congo Trinidads finally ripening.  I had a few of these already, and wow.... I like the flavor quite a bit.  Nice sting to´m, too.... somewhere well above the standard Hab, but nothing too intense, and the way they taste is uncommonly good.

Jamaican Hot Chocolate..... this is a comically tiny plant, but it has as many pods on it as seems physically possible.  This is just the one side; there´s a bunch on the other side, as well..... can´t wait til they turn brown and I can make something rad out of´m.

So, this gnarly-looking pointy pod on my one Brainstrain plant is finally ripening.  I thought it looked cool and kinda like a mangled attempt at tye-die on a chile pepper... That thing is gonna cause me some pain when it finally turns red and I do something foolish with it.

I´m finally running out of runty Orange Habs; when I do, I think it´ll be a kinda sad moment, especially if I don´t perfect my Tom Smith Gaze before then.  My inspiration:

I can match his goofiness, but I just can replicate that burning intensity so evident in his eyes...  
 
Thanks for reading!

 

[MikeUSMC]

Bike, you're a trip, dude

 

[Bicycle808]

Bike, you're a trip, dude

I do my best... 

 

[hogleg]

Post #63 Is up there with the greatest glog post I've seen on THP. So glad I subbed this glog! 
 
Awesome stuff, 808 

 

[Bicycle808]

Post #63 Is up there with the greatest glog post I've seen on THP. So glad I subbed this glog! 
 
Awesome stuff, 808 

Thanks for the feedback; i´m having a great time with chile plants.... thanks so much for the support and inspiration....

 

[Guatemalan Insanity Pepper]

   lmao
 
 
 
fantastic update Rob 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

[hogleg]

btw
 
Nice shirt 
 
 
 
https://youtu.be/PkNlblUq_KI

 

[ThatBlondGuy101]

this glog is an Epic!
 
Keep it up!

 

[Walchit]

So how did those home grown root beer barrels taste?

 

[Bicycle808]

So how did those home grown root beer barrels taste?

Salty!! 
 
 
I feel terrible that i haven´t been updating my Glog.  When i started this, i´d post too much and forget to take pictures.  Lately, i´ve just been harvesting peppers, REMEMBERING to take pictures, but forgetting to post.  Sucks.  I been working like 12 hours today, but i´ll upload some pic and update this Glog at some point this weekend.

 

[Bicycle808]

Random photos, finally uploaded. It´s been a fun season!  I´ve been too busy picking/saucing/cooking/eating/chile-shit-posting to keep my Glog up the way i ought to; many of these pics are weeks old.

For awhile now, I´ve been at the point where I´d be getting a harvest like this every couple of days.  Which, TBH, isn´t much considering how many plants I´m growing, but it´s way more than i´d expected! Notice the big mug of milk in the upper righthand corner b/c, yeah, i was sampling.  =P

I tragically snapped a branch off of my one 7 Pot plant while trying to stake it.  Must´ve been 7 or 8 pods on there; i left´m in the garden, to see what happened.  Many of them ripened up most of the way, but they also got kinda roached-out, sitting there cooking in the sun.  I´m leaving´m; maybe they´ll be resurrected as Volunteers in 2018.

Weird lookin´ Paper Lantern with lobes and a tail...

My first ripe Bonnet from plants I´d started from seed.  (I´d gotten ripe Bonnets from plants i´d bought from CCN, but this one i started indoors back in March.) I was a bit perplexed by this one; it´s got that saggy shape, but other pods on the same plant look more Bonnetesque.  Mostly, though, it ripened to a pretty orange/Velveeta color.  Most yellow Bonnets do, but they go yellow first.  When this thing first started ripening, it was green/orange marbled.  Looked like a Hab.  I ate it, and the flavour was pure Bonnet.  FWIW, most all the pods i´m getting from my TFM plants are coloring up that way...

Ecuador Sweet plant.  This is a small plant, but it has been rather productive.  I´m really enjoying the pods; they have a lot of chinense flavor, but the heat is quite low.  There´s a bit of lingering low-level heat in the placenta, but if you scoop it, it´s got pretty much no heat in the flesh. I grew a few low/no-heat Hab types this year, but this was the first/only one to ripen up for me, so far.

Buncha pods.  I think i sauced these right after i took the picture.

 

[Bicycle808]

I bought a plant from CCN labeled ¨Puerto Rican No Heat.¨ It had very little heat, but it wasn´t entirely absent.  Tastes like it´s probably a chinense/annuum cross.  This was the ONLY pod it threw out.  Not a bad pepper, but I´m not exactly stoked to grow it again.

I´d stopped at the Community Garden to check my plants out on the way to work one day; I hadn´t expected to pick anything, so i didn´t grab a bag or anything for these pods that just HAD to come with me.  There they are, sitting on the bench of my Taco.  The notepad they´re on top of is the labelled schematic for one of my beds at the garden...

I usually visit the garden by bicycle; i thought this Fatalii and Scotch Bonnet really complimented the colour of my cruiser, so i snapped this artsy-fartsy picture before I left that day.

A cool little Bonnet with a tail; i accidentally knocked it off the plant while staking it.  I ate it, but I don´t really dig on green Bonnets much.
 
Thanks for reading!

 

[Bicycle808]

Today´s harvest:

I wanted to let my Jalapeños turn red, but i just HAD to have a green Jala with my cheesesteak today.  This represents much of what I´d picked today, but I had also sent out a bunch of today´s pickins in an SFRB to a THP member, plus I gave a couple to my Mom...

Naga Morich are offering up plenty of ripe pods for me, finally.  A lot of´m are still on the small side.

Congratulations; it´s a boy!!!!!!!!

Yellow Brainstrains are coming in nicely now, too... previously, I´d had some problems with these getting funky little rotten splotches on them before they fully ripened, but I think we´re good, now.

Pretty little TFM Scotch Bonnet that i grew from seeds saved last year...

Side-by-side comparison with a TFM pod that my wife bought at the Trenton Farmer´s Market on Saturday.  Mine are coming out way more orange, as I´d mentioned above....

Cream Fatalii--- big ups to Cone9 for the seeds!.  I picked it today b/c it was ready, but i dare not eat it.  These are my wife´s favorite chiles....
 
Thanks for reading!

 

[Bhuter]

Very nice! I'm thinking about growing Naga Morich next season, but I might try the Caramel version...if PepperLover has it in stock. Maybe the growers of the TFM pod had more shade while growing. I don't know. It seems to me the sun darkens ripened pods. Yellow Brains look very nice! Are they productive? I know my Red Brains sure are. Got a lot off of that this year and might overwinter it. Great haul!

http://pepperlover.com/new-2017/caramel-naga-morich-pl-detail

 

[MikeUSMC]

Congratulations; it´s a boy!!!!

Looking good, Bike! Nice harvests!

 

[Bicycle808]

Very nice! I'm thinking about growing Naga Morich next season, but I might try the Caramel version...if PepperLover has it in stock. Maybe the growers of the TFM pod had more shade while growing. I don't know. It seems to me the sun darkens ripened pods. Yellow Brains look very nice! Are they productive? I know my Red Brains sure are. Got a lot off of that this year and might overwinter it. Great haul!

http://pepperlover.com/new-2017/caramel-naga-morich-pl-detail

I think the Sandy Acres guys grow out on a field with rows of plants.. Like a real farm. Maybe they use shade cloth though? I oughta ask. My plants in my yard get a lot of sunlight but not alllll day. I just thought it was odd that they went right from green to cheddar-colored.

I got three yellow brain plants from CCN. One is very productive. One had 2 nice early pods, then it took a break. Currently, it is loaded with tons of new pods that won't likely have time to ripen. The third one grew big and strong but is only now starting to set a few little pods. So I am thinking that they oughta be productive under ideal conditions but, this being my rookie year, conditions were not ideal. The Red Brains all did very well for me, though.

I will say that the Nagas did quite nicely for me. They took a long time to get ripe, which i had expected... But tons of pods, hardy plants. Caramel Nagas would be cool

 

[Bicycle808]

Thanks, Mike!

 

[Bhuter]

I just went back and was looking through your pictures and...I want your hat. I love it! My Vans shoes are suede and all black with orange here and there. Orange laces. Being from California, I grew up on Vans.