Cartz's 2013-14 Glog - Video update - Waaay overdue

Hey all, I find myself with a couple of free hours and thought I would finally contribute something to the forums that I've been lurking around for the last 12 months.
 
My motivation for posting a grow log this season is simple - I need to restore some pride. To be blunt, last summer was my first time growing and I sucked pretty hard. I did somehow manage to pull a few pods amidst the carnage of being double teamed by my own stupidity and mother nature, but I'm determined to be more successful this season.
 
Given that I am still very much a rookie, please don't hesitate to offer any advice or criticism you have if you see me doing anything dumb on here.   
 
Living in Brisbane (AUS), I wanted to get things off to an early start this season. I purchased my seed stock from a couple of local vendors (JungleRain and the delightfully half-mad folk at The Hippy Seed Company) in early June, together with a couple of small heated propagators. I decided on a 100% jiffy pellet based propagation this year, simply because sitting on my couch with a steaming kettle and a bowl seemed like a cosier option than sitting on the floor up to my wrists in dirt filling up seed cells. 
 
On 28 June 2013 I planted the following seeds (4 per jiffy):
 
Biker Billy Jalapeno
Mucho Nacho Jalapeno
Bulgarian Carrot
Aji Lemon
Tabasco
Hot Fish
Super Chilli
Kanthari
Goatsweed
Orange Manzano
Scarlet Lantern
Choc Habanero
White Devils Tongue
Fatalii
Bahamian Goat Pepper
Bih Jolokia
Bhut Jolokia x Mayan Red
THSC Naga 7
Trinidad Scorpion Moruga
Trinidad Scorpion Butch T
THSC Trinidad Scorpion Chocolate 
7-Pod Primo x Choc Habanero f3
7-Pod Jonah
7-Pod Brainstrain
 
The jiffys were kept in a heated propagator with all the air vents closed in the dank spare bedroom. I resisted my usual OCD urge to look at them every 5 minutes and only checked on them twice a day to try and keep the temp constant. The $2 thermometer told me it stayed between 28-30 degrees in there. 
 

 
Turns out the heated propagator was a good investment as I didn't have to wait nearly as long for some hooks as I did last season (when they just lived in a container under the sink). The next shot was taken 7 days after planting:
 

 
It was 10 days after planting, and 4 days after the first hooks came through that I learnt my next lesson - I probably should have taken those jiffys that had sprouted straight out into some light. But I didn't, and they got reeeeaaaally leggy, real fast haha:
 

 
10 days after sowing the seeds, and 4 days after the first hooks popped through, I decided to sow some more. There were a few different species I still hadn't planted, plus I was worried about the longevity of a few of the really leggy, pale seedlings. So on 8 July 2013 I planted the following (again 4 seeds per jiffy):
 
Biker Billy Jalapeno
Mucho Nacho Jalapeno
Aji Lemon
Orange Cobra
De arbol Blood
Blondie
Naga Morich x Tabasco
Bhut Jolokia
Pimenta de Neyde
7-Pod Jonah x Trinidad Yellow Scotch Bonnet (called a 'Nebru' by THSC)
 
I had pretty good germination rates for most of this second batch, with most species popping up between 7 and 10 days. However, by 23 July 2013 I decided what the heck and gave a few more of the slower varieties seeds a 24 hour chamomile tea soak before burying them. Interestingly, the only varieties that the soak reduced the germination time of by more then a day were the Moruga (from 9 to 6 days) and the Jonah (from 13 to 7 days). Don't know how typical this is?
 

 
Here's a shot of the seedlings warming up in a sunny window taken about 30 July 2013. They are mostly looking pretty good and their will to live seems to have overcome my early negligence in letting them get so leggy. There's already some nice variegation in the first true leaves on the Hot Fish, although I'm sure that's more to do with the quality of JungleRain's seed stock than anything I've done:
 

 
It was about the time of this pic that I had to start thinking about giving them some more room to grow. It's still mid-winter so there's no way they were going outside and I didn't have anywhere I could keep their feet warm yet. I started researching grow lights on the forums and was just totally overwhelmed by the amount of tech-jargon and seemingly contradictory information on there. I kinda gave up and just decided that any light would be better then none so I went to the local electrical wholesaler and picked up a couple of 38w fluoro's for only $20 a pop. I thought they were a steal compared to some of the prices I had seen. 1 trip to Bunnings and 2 hours of internet electrical wiring research later I had a very simple, rustic, but (hopefully) workable solution. They sit in the window of my north facing balcony so they get plenty of natural light already, and will hopefully appreciate just a little heat boost from the fluoro's until September when I'll move them outside.
 

     

 
All things considered, my seedlings all seem fairly happy and I THINK I'm off to an ok start for my second season. I should note that I still have 0% germination on the following varieties, which is bit of a downer:
 
Bhut Jolokia x Mayan Red
Brainstrain
Bih Jolokia
Bulgarian Carrot
 
Any recommendations on how long I should keep them in the propagator until I give up on them?
 
Well that's about it, apologies for this first Glog entry being retrospective, but I'll be keeping it current now that I've got it up and running.
 
Thanks for checking out my Glog and please feel free to comment/criticise/enquire...

 

[Cartz]

G'day guys. I've been wanting/trying to do an update for a couple of weeks now but have experienced technical issues with this website every time I have tried. Internet Explorer (I know I know...spare me your lectures haha) decided to become non-responsive each time I'd open the image dialog box to upload a photo to the glog, and I refused to do an update without photos as that's like choosing to listen to football on the radio instead of watching it on TV.  
 
Anyway after a couple of failed update attempts I gave up and downloaded a different browser (I won't say which one to avoid any further mocking of my obvious tech savvy )
 
So here we are, with more than enough preamble, so I'll get on with the update. The garden is going pretty well. There is still some evidence of broad mite activity but I seem to have got the plants to a point where they are strong enough and healthy enough to bounce back quickly from each assault. I'm actually starting to wonder how much bigger some of them will get given the limited space they have in their pots. Most have already outgrown my largest plants from last season.
 
The only real issue I'm having with pests at the moment are the damn fruit flies. I didn't see a single one last year, but I guess there is a whole lot more food for them this go around. I'm being conservative if I say I've only lost 50% of my pods to them in the last couple of weeks. It's bit of a kick to the guts to lose so many pods at the final hurdle right when I should be reaping the reward for my efforts. I've just sprayed some Yates Fruit Fly Control to see if that works, but for now it's too soon to say. It's REALLY expensive stuff though, so if anyone is able to share their own method for controlling fruit flies I'd be very happy to hear it. I'd also rather not go down the exclusion bagging route...that's way too labour intensive.
 
So this is a photo I took of a typical morning's pull of ruined pods. These are (or were) some Bhuts, Bahamian Goats and Chocolate Habs. Pretty foul. If you look closely at the top left image you'll see one of the maggots actually emerging from the flesh exactly at the moment I took the photo. It then proceeded to spring itself down onto the kitchen floor where it lived a full and happy life for the next 2.5 seconds. Nasty.

Again, if anyone has some good tips for getting rid of them please share!
 
 
Moving along. Some pods are escaping the carnage. Here are a couple of nice looking Bhuts that I harvested a day or 2 earlier then I otherwise would have. Pretty extreme pod variation for a couple of specimens growing right next to each other.

 
 
Speaking of variation, this is the new pod shape that my Naga Morich x Tabasco is starting to put out. Kinda neat looking, I like it.

 
 
It's quite a bit different to the first ones that came off it...

I actually decided to taste test this pod with Mel. The hottest thing that we'd tested fresh prior to this little guy was an Orange Hab. Personally I think anyone who eats a whole fresh Hab and doesn't admit that in the context of putting food in your mouth for nourishment it is pretty freaking hot, is bit of a dingbat. With that in mind, I'll gladly admit that that Orange Hab reduced me to a bleary eyed, salivating mess that day (the wife handled it a little better than I did ). Given the parentage of this one, I wasn't sure where the heat level would be so I was prepared for it to potentially be hotter than a Hab.
 
And. It. Was.
 
It was the first fresh pod I've eaten that had a slow build to the heat. We both thought that it tasted really great (an honest pairing of Tabasco and Naga flavours) and for the first 30 seconds we agreed that the heat was somewhere around Tabasco level. And then it built. And then we panicked haha. I'm not saying that it is as hot as a whole fresh Naga, I wouldn't know because I haven't tried a whole one yet. All I can say is that it tasted great, had a really neat heat that built for about 5 minutes to somewhere distinguishably above Habanero level, and that I then spent the next 20 minutes riding the endorphin express. I can't wait to try one of its newer pod variations to compare. This plant has delicious powder and sauce applications written all over it.
 
 
This one is the Primo x Choc Hab f3. It's another of my favourites and has put on the largest pods of all my plants so far. That pod in the middle was a beast, and I wish I had included something in the shot to give it some scale. Sadly, I lost all of the pods on this plant to the fruit flies shortly after I took this photo so I'll need to wait a little longer to taste this one. I'm expecting nothing less than a whole heap of pain from it.

 
 
 
The Jonah 7-Pod has surprised me lately by putting some more size into its pods. Maybe it's just a slow grower, but the pods had been on there for a while and weren't getting bigger so I assumed they would stay quite small. But no, now they are getting bigger again - not that I'm complaining. Assuming the fruit flies don't get them they will be going into the freezer and then eventually into some jam.

 
 
A canopy shot of the Chocolate Habs starting to ripen.

 
 
My Tabasco's are starting to repay the love  The moment I bit into a fresh Tabasco pod during my largely unsuccessful grow last season was the moment I committed to trying chillies again this year. So glad I did.

 
 
Here's another one that I'm a huge fan of that I'm kind of surprised doesn't get more love on this site - the Aji Chombo. The only reason I'm growing it this year is because it stayed tucked away in the corner of the balcony all winter and I just never got around to throwing it away. But boy am I glad about that. It had a horrible start to life last year but has bounced back admirably this season. It has really great heat and zero habanero/chinense flavour which for me gives it so many more applications for sauces and dishes where that flavour would otherwise clash. Note to self - grow a #*%@ ton more scotch bonnet types next season!! From a purely aesthetic point of view I also like the contrast these pods bring to the garden - they stay a beautiful bright, light green until they go through a striking change to orange and then full red.

 
 
Well that's it for now. Given the delays I've had in trying to update the glog over the last couple of weeks I'll definitely try and squeeze another one in prior to Christmas. Thanks for stopping by everyone, and remember that any successful techniques you might have for tackling those fruit fly buggers would be greatly appreciated!
 
Happy growing 

 

[Trippa]

Queensland ... Got to love the pest varieties available ... If its not one thing its another ... But your plants look healthy which is more then I can say ... Pity about those freaking fruit flies!!! I think physical exclusion is about the only full proof method (net curtains over the rows of plants??)

 

[Mitch_from_OZ]

spewing about the fruit flies! What a pain in the butt! Your choc hab x primo's were looking amazing too! Oh well, plenty more time still left in the season.

 

[PIC 1]

I haven't had an issue with fruit flies here, but the white flies can be a dust storm.

Outside of the funky carnage, everthing else looks great. The plants appear to be alive with a very healthy green color. Plus they're podding up nicely.

I agree with you on the Aji Chombo. I haven't grown it for a few seasons now but the plants were big producers in containers whereas another neglected variety ( and a good one) the Aji Umba grows better in ground. Both would be good varieties for those who prefer tasty mid heat level peppers.

The chocolate hab is producing very well. That variety looks similar to the one I grow which is called the long brown hab. The outside turns a deep brown but the inside has a red tinge. Very prolific and a great pepper to dry and flake.

Good luck with the rest of your season !

 

[Devv]

I did some reading on the fruit flies, tough to control. Perhaps fly strips would help, at least you could get some pleasure seeing them stuck to it...
 
Plants look great, you're certainly doing your part. Shame about the pod damage.
 
And yes Internet Exploder is a broken piece of junk, I prefer Firefox.
 
Good luck! And keep it green.

 

[Cartz]

Queensland ... Got to love the pest varieties available ... If its not one thing its another ... But your plants look healthy which is more then I can say ... Pity about those freaking fruit flies!!! I think physical exclusion is about the only full proof method (net curtains over the rows of plants??)

 
Too right Tripp, you know that as well as anybody! I gotta figure something out though as there's no way I'm giving in to fruit flies after finally getting on top of the mites (even if it means having to look at exclusion options). Really hope things turn around for your grow in the new year mate...here's to a killer Autumn
 

spewing about the fruit flies! What a pain in the butt! Your choc hab x primo's were looking amazing too! Oh well, plenty more time still left in the season.

 
Too right Mitch...not happy! But it's all part of the challenge I guess. That Primo is already fixing to set more pods, and it has really good branch infrastructure, so I'm still expecting to get a stack of pods off it this season. Hope things are starting to happen for you down south mate.   
 

I haven't had an issue with fruit flies here, but the white flies can be a dust storm.

Outside of the funky carnage, everthing else looks great. The plants appear to be alive with a very healthy green color. Plus they're podding up nicely.

I agree with you on the Aji Chombo. I haven't grown it for a few seasons now but the plants were big producers in containers whereas another neglected variety ( and a good one) the Aji Umba grows better in ground. Both would be good varieties for those who prefer tasty mid heat level peppers.

The chocolate hab is producing very well. That variety looks similar to the one I grow which is called the long brown hab. The outside turns a deep brown but the inside has a red tinge. Very prolific and a great pepper to dry and flake.

Good luck with the rest of your season !

 
Cheers for the well wishes Greg, and thanks for the heads up about the Aji Umba. I'll hopefully have a yard to plant in next season so I'll have to keep an eye out for seeds for that one. Yep I'm really liking my Chocolate Hab. I noticed more of dark greenish tinge on the insides of mine, but I might have pulled them a couple of days early due to fruit fly phobia. Hope you are enjoying your quiet time between grows, you've definitely earned it after yet another stellar season (But feel free to keep the food/sauce updates coming!)
 
 

I did some reading on the fruit flies, tough to control. Perhaps fly strips would help, at least you could get some pleasure seeing them stuck to it...
 
Plants look great, you're certainly doing your part. Shame about the pod damage.
 
And yes Internet Exploder is a broken piece of junk, I prefer Firefox.
 
Good luck! And keep it green.

 
Haha Scott - you know me well! I'd definitely get my kicks from that. But yeah the general message I seem to be receiving is that they are tough blighters to get rid of. Might be forced to resort to fly strips and exclusions if they hang around. Hope you are having a great Christmas.
 
 
Ok, so I had a good snoop through the plants this morning after spending the last couple of days on my back in bed (silly gym related incident after I skipped stretches) and I was pretty stoked to see some new pods on a couple of plants that hadn't produced anything as yet.
 
The THSC Chocolate Scorpion has finally kicked into gear after being cut right back to nothing when mites hit it a couple of months ago:

 
 
AND I've finally got a Manzano pod. These plants just kept dropping their early flowers so hopefully they've turned the corner and will start producing.

 
 
And lastly just a little harvest shot from this morning to show the fruit flies that they missed a few!   We've got white Devil's Tongue, Pimenta de Neyde, Bhut J, Goatsweed, Aji Lemon, Choc Habs, Naga Morich x Tabasco and Hot Fish...  

 
Well that will be it for me now until after Christmas, so I hope everyone on here has a safe, happy and  Christmas! 

 

[Sarge]

Awesome work man. Damn those fruit flies did some nasty damage. I really hope you can get those little fuckers under control. I'm having an potential aphid break out. I thought I wiped them out. 1 month no signs, the I saw an ant carrying a little fucker from one leaf to another so I crushed both.
 
Don't forget to save some seeds We'll do some exchanging when I've collected my pods!

 

[Blister]

Great looking grow so far! It's always cool to see how much growth happens when you're away isn't it? I rarely notice the growth because I check on my plants 3 to 50 times a day when I'm home. I have a bit of a problem...

I think the best method is prevention. I think that silica stuff I forgot the name starts with d? You put that into the top of the soil and they wont get a chance to crawl there way through since it shreds them.
You can use chemicals to kill them too but alot of people try and avoid chems on fruit bearing plants. I think the only other way is isolation and stripping of the plants. Apparently they're a challenge to beat.

I think you're talking about Diatomaceous Earth. Sprinkle it on the soil and it's supposed to cut the little buggers to bits when they walk over it. I've never used it so I can't say how effective it is for killing pests that primarily live on the plant.

 

[Devv]

Nathan,
 
I hope you and yours have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
 
Enjoy the time of year!
 
Scott

 

[PaulG]

Awesome grow, Cartz; sorry it took me so long to get here!
 
Have a great holiday!

 

[Cartz]

Thanks for the comments guys, I hope everyone ate too much, drank too much and had an all round great Christmas with their loved ones. I know I sure did - spent a couple of days with family up at the beach house. Somehow even managed to squeeze in a bit of fishing and crabbing between the food and booze.
 
Mrs C's favourite job is hauling in the crab pots. She refuses to do any of the real work like baiting them, setting them, or taking the crabs out...but she's always happy to take all the credit

 
 
Santa must have thought I'd behaved myself this year as I scored this package a few days early. Can't wait to read up and start creating more delicious things with my chillies...

 
 
It's been pretty warm for the last couple of weeks and I've had to up my watering to about every 2nd or 3rd day (I had previously been stretching it out to every 4th or even 5th day). I had just finished giving them a water this morning when I went down to the yard to turn off the hose and noticed a few previously unseen pods from down below. So I thought I'd take a few photos from ground level looking up at the balcony, just for a slightly different perspective.
 
This first one is an upskirt of my Bahamian Goat which has just put out its next round of pods. This plant just keeps repaying the love.

 
 
The next one is of my THSC Chocolate Scorpion. You can see from last week's shot of this plant just how much the pods have grown in a week. They must be loving the heat.

 
 
This is the Primo x Choc Hab. I hadn't even noticed these jumbo pods hiding out the back of the plant. Always a welcome surprise!

 
 
I was also stoked to see a few Aji Chombo pods ripening up. The first few are earmarked to go into some jerk chicken wings for a NYE snack. I really like the colour change these pods go through.

 
 
And just another small mixed bag harvest shot to finish off with. These are some white Devil's Tongue, Hot Fish, Aji Lemon, Pimenta de Neyde, Bhut J, Goatsweed, Naga Morich x Tabasco and Aji Chombo that I pulled this morning.

 
 
Cheers for stopping in everyone 

 

[PaulG]

"You have reached your quota of positive votes for the day"
 
Sorry, Cartz, the positivity police are after me today for
some reason so I couldn't like any of your great posts!
 
Your grow is looking great, always fun to see the southern
hemisphere grows while we're in the fog and cold!  Hope your
season just keeps rockin'!
 
BTW you guys have great crabs there!

 

[Cartz]

"You have reached your quota of positive votes for the day"
 
Sorry, Cartz, the positivity police are after me today for
some reason so I couldn't like any of your great posts!
 
Your grow is looking great, always fun to see the southern
hemisphere grows while we're in the fog and cold!  Hope your
season just keeps rockin'!
 
BTW you guys have great crabs there!

 
Haha no worries Paul, thanks for checking it out! Things are going really well at the moment, and with about 5 more months of good growing weather here in Brisbane I'll hopefully have a decent stash of peppers by the time things slow down. My only goals for this season were to try a few superhots and sample pods from every new variety that I'm growing. Things are on track so far  
 
I'll be sure to pass your compliments on to the crabs I really do love our Aussie seafood. These ones are simply known as mud crabs and have a fantastic sweet rich flavour that goes especially well with chilli! They are really mean, aggressive buggers, until you give them a hot bath. They used to be quite scarce until the powers at be made it illegal to keep the females, and now the population has bounced right back. We got 20 legal sized males out of 6 pots in the couple of days we were there, whereas 15 years ago you'd have been happy with 1 a day. Visitors to the beach house are always amazed at how plentiful they can be, as they retail at about $50 a kilo (so there would be something like $800 on that table if you were silly enough to buy them).  

 

[ivplay]

I love the mud crabs! Airlie Beach has a restaurant called Fish D'Vine which sells a mud crab with a sweet chilli sauce on it that you can add a bit more heat to with their garlic chilli paste, and it is to die for. Enjoy the bounty of the holidays!

 

[Cartz]

Hey guys, it's been a few weeks so I thought I'd put up some more pics. It has been STINKIN' hot here in Brisbane lately and the plants have been loving it. It's maxed out at about 43oC (110) and hasn't really fallen below 30oC. The extreme heat hasn't left the plants looking their most attractive (plenty of darkening/sun damage on foliage) but they are all putting out heaps of pods which is what it's all about.
 
This week I also made the tough decision to do a bit of a cull. The balcony was getting stupidly overgrown and I couldn't look after all the plants the way I wanted to. Plus I thought that getting rid of the weaker ones would probably improve the health of the rest of them. I tossed 20 of the smallest, least robust plants which has left me with about 45 of the best specimens.
 
Here's a look at the overgrown garden before the cull:  

 
 
Next pic is of a few random ones. Clockwise L to R: My first Blondie pod. You can't really tell here but it's actually transparent. Beside it are the first Naga Morich x Tabascos pods to come from my other NM x Tab plant. These ones have the shape I was expecting and I'm curious to see if they are as hot as the ones from the other plant that is much more Naga-ish. Beneath them is a pic showing what extreme sun can do - there was a piece of dead leaf over part of this Bahamian Goat pod - has left a serious burn! Bottom left is just a pic showing how big my Biker Billy pods are getting - really love this Jalapeno variant.

 
 
Tabascos starting to ripen up...

 
 
This is the Superchilli finally starting to do something. It has been anything but "super" so far, but in its defense the mites did smash it particularly hard in Spring. 

 
 
The Fatalii has been getting busy..

 
 
As has the Aji Chombo. I've been getting quite a lot of pods off this one for such a stunted plant (I didn't do it any favours last season). I turned a few into some really good jerk chicken wings on New Years Eve. Will definitely take pics next time I do it.

 
 
This is JungleRain's Primo x Choc Hab f3. It has been putting out pods of every possible shape and variation, with the only constant being that they are all huge. It's been a really fantastic plant so far. 

 
 
The TS Butch T has probably been my least vigorous chinense, but it has kept plodding along and has finally decided to start putting out pods. Dunno what I'm gonna do if I get a heap of these..

 
 
The THSC Choc Scorpion must be very close to ripening its first set of pods. These are the first ones I've grown that have had genuine spikes on the pods. If it is trying to psych me out it's working...

 
 
And from spikes to wrinkles, the TS Morugas have sprung to life. I have a feeling this summer is only gonna get hotter! 

 
I've got a few more pics that I'll upload with a bump.
 
Cheers guys.

 

[Trippa]

More Delicious pod shots please ... looking freaking fantastic bro ... it sure has been hot lately ,... those pods will reflect the heat in their heat!!

 

[Cartz]

Thanks Tripp, and yep I'm a bit worried about that - I nibbled a tabasco yesterday and even that took my breath away haha! Gonna need to grow a pair to try any of those supers...
 
OK a few more pics:
 
The Bahamian Goat is starting to get loaded down again

 
 
The 7-Pod Jonah was another slow starter but it's getting there..

 
 
The Nebru (Trinidad Yellow Scotch Bonnet x 7-Pod Jonah) has finally set its first pod. I'm really excited to taste this one as it's supposed to be exceptional. It's a peculiar looking pod though. Kinda reminds me of a gumnut baby? (maybe just one for the Aussies haha)..

 
 
I like this view of the Choc Habanero canopy. The fruit flies got all of them last time, so I've got these bagged up now and am looking forward to trying them soon.

 
 
This is one that I almost gave up on - the Naga 7. The mites smashed it early so it has stayed small but it is trying to put out some pods now. At least I'll get to try it so I can make an informed decision as to whether I grow it next season or not.

 
 
And just another colourful mini-harvest shot to finish with.. 

 
 
Happy weekend everyone 

 

[Trippa]

great work bro ... hope those pesky fruit flies stay away this time!!

 

[Devv]

Very nice updates!
 
Plants and pics are spectacular! And poddage! We here are aways from that...
 
I see you have your hands full constantly with mites, flies and what not. Life in a warm climate, I know

 

[ivplay]

Thanks for the pics, Cartz.  The goats are looking great, as are the morugas.  You are going to have one angry stomach after you punish it with all of these peppers!  Looks like you have some good pods coming along.  As far as fruit flies, I have had a run in with them recently, and tried a few products.  The sticky traps caught a lot of flying bugs, not many of which were the fruit flies.  I then tried one of these:
 
http://www.searles.com.au/FruitFlypre.html
 
It works, and works great.  Overnight I had 8 male fruit flies dead in the bottom, and within two days 15.  I have bought a few more of these and placed them around my peppers, and the flies are dying and the pods are protected.  I have been quite happy with these, and thought I would pass along the information.