Canedog Offseason Season 2022/23

Well, shoot. I don't know that I should start a new glog with as poor as I was about updating my last one, but here it goes. My offseason season started late, with most of my plants being probably four to six weeks old now. I'll start by posting a few of the newer ones.

This guy is an Oxkutzcab/Oxkutzcabian Orange Habanero. I have three of these growing and a couple Caribbean Red Habanero that are smaller. The Oxkutzcab seem to be out-pacing the reds, but they've also been around a little longer. In this pic I particularly like the transition in the stem at the cotyledons.

@HeatMiser sent me some of his wild texas tepin seeds - what, a couple years ago now? - and I've been trying to grow the variety to production ever since. The seeds were collected off a wild-growing bush in 2014 and still sprout just fine. I have three of the plants growing that I've overwintered, but it's been a very long-season variety for me here in the pnw and between that and the impact of an aphid infestation last winter I haven't yet gotten any of them to ripe pods. I started this new one with the idea of getting it well-established inside and hopefully it will be mature enough to produce by next season. I may just keep it inside until it does.

Aji Guyana. I've grow this variety for a couple seasons now after Wiri Wiri shared seeds with me. I always end up topping it, so I got that out of the way early this time. I'm hoping once will be enough, but if it gets unruly it may end up seeing the scissors again. Great production out of these and pretty early for a baccatum.

This is a second generation (with me) ollantaytambo amarillo rocoto. I was hoping the parent's pods would be more pale that they were, but it produced great-looking yellow pods this summer, which I thought had great flavor. I'm curious whether this next generation's pods will be unchanged, plus it's likely getting crossed with one or two other rocotos I have growing now that are close to the same age.

Uvalde Pequin, from @CraftyFox - thanks man! It looked a little rough when it first came up, but it's looking much stronger now.

I'm working with several mexican culinary varieties, growing given varieties from multiple sources and in different variations to find out what I like best. Pasilla Oaxaca, Pasilla Negro Bahia, and Guajillo are among them. These guys are the most recent sprouts. The others have been growing a while and are more established.

Guajillo

Pasilla Oaxaca

Pasilla Negro Bahia

I'll close with this guy. I thought I'd run out of the orange arequipa rocoto seeds I'd acquired a couple years back, but I found one scraggly seed in the corner of a seed baggie and that scraggly seed has turned into this scraggly young plant. When it germinated I thought the roots might not be strong enough for it to survive, but I've tried to water it just right and it keeps getting stronger day-by-day. If it keeps improving like it has it might make a good match for the ollantaytambo amarillo rocoto.

 

[Ratatouille]

Smart thinking, using those corners. And I must say, reading your last sentence sparked a tiny bit of gardening stress here as well. Hahaha!

 

[CaneDog]

Smart thinking, using those corners. And I must say, reading your last sentence sparked a tiny bit of gardening stress here as well. Hahaha!

Haha. No stress here!

It seems to always be the same hustle leading up to June, when everything's been transplanted and suddenly there's nothing to do but water them and stare, willing them to grow faster.

 

[CaneDog]

I pulled this modest harvest from some of the solo cup plants. Hopefully, I'll discover a good number of isolated seeds for each of these varieties when I crack them open.

After harvest, I pruned each plant back and plan to pot them up to 5x5's in preparation to go outside in a couple months for what will hopefully be a much a bigger round of pods.

EJT = Er Jing Tiao. AAD = Antep Aci Dolma. ROF = Ring of Fire.

 

[ahayastani]

What do you think of Peachadew?

 

[CaneDog]

What do you think of Peachadew?

It's my first time growing peachadew, despite that I've had the seeds for a good while. I haven't tried the pods yet, but hear good things.

The plant germinated, grew, flowered, set and ripened just fine - and quicker than I expected. Interestingly, these pods have the stripey stripes/coloration, though it's not nearly as spectacular as some and doesn't come through well in the picture due to the flash. I plan to start a couple plants from the new batch of seeds to see how that might develop; likely as indoor plants at this point.

 

[HeatMiser]

I pulled this modest harvest from some of the solo cup plants. Hopefully, I'll discover a good number of isolated seeds for each of these varieties when I crack them open.

After harvest, I pruned each plant back and plan to pot them up to 5x5's in preparation to go outside in a couple months for what will hopefully be a much a bigger round of pods.

EJT = Er Jing Tiao. AAD = Antep Aci Dolma. ROF = Ring of Fire.

Hey CD!

Awesome harvest for a Solo Cup Grow! I have some seeds that I don't know if they'll grow true or not, so this is the perfect way of finding out without using a big pot. Will definitely give this a try to quickly cycle through some seeds...

Regarding the Peachadews - They are awesome. Growing them again this year and they are a candidate for one of the big 32 gal hydro tubs. We pickled some of them last year using ChilliChump's recipe and they were a great hit in family gatherings. Definitely recommend trying that out.

 

[CaneDog]

Hey CD!

Awesome harvest for a Solo Cup Grow! I have some seeds that I don't know if they'll grow true or not, so this is the perfect way of finding out without using a big pot. Will definitely give this a try to quickly cycle through some seeds...

Regarding the Peachadews - They are awesome. Growing them again this year and they are a candidate for one of the big 32 gal hydro tubs. We pickled some of them last year using ChilliChump's recipe and they were a great hit in family gatherings. Definitely recommend trying that out.

Hey HM!

Thanks. The plants in the solo cups have done well enough that I plan to do more micro-grows for proving varieties and getting easy isolated seeds in the future. They were pretty sensitive to the initial higher temps and humidity though, so I'll try to get that dialed in right away next time.

It'd be cool to see what a peachadew can do in big Kratky. Those cans seemed like winners for you last season. I'll check out that CC video, too. Perhaps I'll have enough peachadew pods from this fall's harvest to pickle up a batch.

 

[Tinkerbelle]

it's a good idea CD - saves using big pots, compost and space for experimental peppers.

 

[CaneDog]

it's a good idea CD - saves using big pots, compost and space for experimental peppers.

Thanks, Tink! Since I seem incapable of reducing the number of plants I grow, perhaps I can reduce the space some of them take up!

 

[Tinkerbelle]

that's my problem as well. I've started off so many different varieties and no idea where they're going to live
After your genius master stroke they'll be going into smaller pots to see if I like the peppers and to grab seeds for next year if they pass the test.

 

[Ratatouille]

Can you both explain in detail how you plan to reduce space? (Or have done in the past?) I think this might be worth a topic of its own even: 'How to handle the aftermath of sowing fever'.

 

[Tinkerbelle]

so many varieties so little space
or alternatively, greedy little fingers plant too many seeds

 

[CaneDog]

Can you both explain in detail how you plan to reduce space? (Or have done in the past?) I think this might be worth a topic of its own even: 'How to handle the aftermath of sowing fever'.

Sure. It might be a little more wishful thinking than any proven plan, but mainly I'm focusing on reserving most of the ground spaces and big pots to the proven varieties (grown it before, true seeds, etc.) when I want a volume of those pods. When I'm not confident the seeds will grow true, if I'm determining whether I like a new variety, if it's more of an ornamental or wild variety, and with backups (AKA wimped out and failed to cull extras), it 's more likely to get a small container.

I suppose I'd consider a 2 gallon container to be about the top end of smaller containers and 3 gallon being a bigger container, but different varieties seem to need different minimum container sizes to perform well. For many varieties I can get reasonably good performance in pots as small as 1n (.66 gallons = 2.5 liters), 5.5" square, and "1 gallon" fabric. I just won't be reaching the full pod potential.

Also, I have good indoor capacity, so I think that using the indoor space in the offseason to evaluate varieties and collect isolated seeds will help me to be sure I'm dedicating the quality space in my summer production grow to varieties that I truly like and am confident will grow true.

 

[ahayastani]

For me personally, growing peppers in small containers only works if my only purpose to grow a variety is to obtain seed stock.

 

[Ratatouille]

It might be worth trying this season, for the ones I need to collect seed from, as I really, really 'oversowed'. I'll probably do the same again next year.

I did give 17 of my plants to a friend yesterday, but that didn't even make a dent in my current collection. (And I got four new plants in return. It's not fair.)

 

[CaneDog]

I had first hooks this morning from this chiefly annuum bunch, with serranos hidalgo and huasteca leading the way at 4.5 days. All in this round went forward sans presoak, because they're mostly annuum and, frankly, there were so many of them

I saw a pasilla bahia negro poking up too, but just barely so I'll check back about extracting that one later this afternoon. Anyhow, looks like CD's next week or so should be full of christmas mornings

For those not familiar enough with these varieties to tell them apart at this stage, that's the hidalgo on the left and huasteca on the right.

 

[Bou]

That feeling we get seeing those tiny little wanna-be hooks, soooo satisfying! If you know you know. If you don't...

And thank you for teaching us how to distinguish C. annuum seedlings from each other, very helpful

 

[Alex_K]

Cool CD I see you chose traditional varieties for this season... Sometimes I end up planting varieties because of the hype, realizing later that they don't have much use in kitchen!

 

[CaneDog]

Cool CD I see you chose traditional varieties for this season... Sometimes I end up planting varieties because of the hype, realizing later that they don't have much use in kitchen!

Yep. My grow is more concentrated on the practical peppers this season, particularly Mexican peppers and "Thai" types. I'm hoping it will help me establish my staples, which should then create space for the following season when I'll probably swing back toward more cool stuff again.

 

[CaneDog]

I rearranged my plants last night, moving the chinense, a couple wilds, and some others to a new table by a south window with an HLG 100 LED over top for supplemental morning light. Getting those bigger plants out of the way allowed me to segregate my two T5HO tables into a mature (but smaller) plants table and a nursery table.

Here's a pic of the nursery table. 20 of the 40 in my first mostly-annuum sowing were up by day 7. Another few came up this morning, leaving 17 currently AWOL at 9.5 days. I know some of the remaining varieties are slower, but it still makes me a bit nervous to have a substantial number remaining at almost 10 days. I also have a second mostly-annuum planting at 3.5 days now, but none of those has yet shown its head.