Drunken Bee's 2024

Decided to drop a few seeds in december for next year so decided to start a '24 Glog early.

I'm very lucky in that in addition to a small domestic greenhouse at our house I also have access to a significant space in a commercial greenhouse (our little island used to be the UK's leading tomato supplier but the industry collapsed in the face of cheaper imports from warmer climes so there are a lot of huge greenhouses looking for uses here). In it I grow a lot of perennial stuff that needs a mediterranean climate (or is marginal there) - bananas, figs, tamarillos, various passiflora and my peppers sit interplanted with them. With our mild climate it is possible often to overwinter capsicum of all species in ground in these big greenhouses - not always though so hope for a mild winter!

Taking these into the winter to hopefully overwinter:

Annum
Chiltepin Amarillo
jalapeno lemon spice
jalapeno maylon
jalapeno X purple tiger

Baccatum
Aji melocoton

Chinense
Bahamian Goat
Bhut Orange Copenhagen
Mustard Gum Naga Brain
Pockmark Orange

Pubescens
Chocolate XPS
Oculto CLEF

10 days or so I dusted off the propagator and put in some seeds of

Cardenasii USDA X Cap 500
Eximuum Cap 1530
Flexuosum

Pubescens
Arequipa giant yellow
de La Selva rojo Arequipa
mini olive
Orange giant
Pico mucho
various Rocopica crosses

A couple of Rocoto and Rocopica varieties are up already.....Really excited for 2024!

 

[Drunken Bee]

Chocolate CPS still looking very healthy after a long winter and oculto clef firing out new growth. Pubescens and Baccatum seem perfectly placed to do well in the climate the greenhouse provides here - hence my desire to build out my collection of them (and their wild relatives). Having big overwintered plants makes a decent harvest much easier here and leaves space to focus on the Chinense and Annums year on year too.

 

[Drunken Bee]

The joys of overwintering - Chocolate XPS….

This is made all the more pertinent by the fact my seedlings are growing at a glacial perspective

 

[Drunken Bee]

Pruned back Aji melocoton this morning.
She needs a feed but this gives some feel for scale

Meanwhile Oculto clef is also thinking about flowering. This is a much more vining type rocoto than most I’ve grown:

 

[Drunken Bee]

Not sharing seedling development photos because they’re not developing. I struggled with temperature control this year and now am grappling fungus gnats too.

 

[Drunken Bee]

Update is the season has been a pretty much unbridled disaster.
I did what I normally do which is germinate in those little compressed pellets and pot on. I think the make up of the pellets this year is very different. For whatever reason most seedlings didn’t seem to root out of those and just stagnated/failed. I’ve ended up rescuing just 8 plants and put them into quad grow hydro units. The survivors are:
Mini-olive rocoto
Rojo de la selva Arequipa rocoto
Sugar rush stripey
Rocopica red
chupetinho black peach
Pippin’s golden honey
KS Lemon Starrburst
And a tiny flexuosum which has grown nothing in 4 months.

I’m hoping I can get these to scale, get a couple of pods to preserve the strains and then look to overwinter to salvage the season.

I’m tempted to try and germinate some more flexuosum or some other rocotos or hardier wilds now and overwinter as small plants if I can lay my hands on seeds to try and get something going if I can but don’t know if people think that’s worthwhile.

At least the three year old rocotos are going ok.

 

[ChilliCrosser]

Hope things turn the corner, Rocotos looking good!

Ignoring my own lack of time to get my season running properly I’m also struggling with the conditions outside so far in the UK. May was a strange month even if the averages don’t look too far out. June needs to perk up else it’s going to be a tough one for me too.

 

[Tinkerbelle]

weather totally shitty this year and it's started raining again

 

[Drunken Bee]

Thanks @ChilliCrosser and @Tinkerbelle - nice to know I’m not struggling alone.
Plants in the quad grows starting to look a little better albeit bit of whitefly showing up now. The tiny one is my sole flexuosum

 

[Drunken Bee]

Starting to see a little acceleration and a flower on the rocopica….

 

[Drunken Bee]

Not much to report pepper-wise but in the interests of showing I can successfully grow some things….
Decent crop of passion fruit coming on

Some nice size figs

And an actual solanacae - tamarillos coming in….

 

[Drunken Bee]

Oh and I flowered my puya alpestris for the second time which is hard enough here that one of the Botanic Gardens got on national breakfast news for it (mine just sits in the garden)

 

[Drunken Bee]

Does anyone have any good preserve recipes for rocoto? Chocolate xps is kicking in…..

 

[Drunken Bee]

Big chocolate rocoto ferment set….

My overwintered Florida Wild Bird is getting huge (almost as big as the weeds after 10 days of weeding neglect). The passionflower behind it is a Florida seedbank accession of p. Incarnata so I like to think of this little bit as my little patch of Florida - maybe need to add some Datils next year

 

[Drunken Bee]

Ludicrous amount of this made with those rocotos. Honestly wasn’t sure about them fresh from the brine very sour and garlicy (there were a couple of cloves in with them) on the front before the heat and rocoto flavour kicked back in. Made a hot sauce with ginger and lime juice which has freshened it up quite a lot and I can see myself using this plenty. Have frozen a bunch of it to use in other recipes too.

 

[Drunken Bee]

Quick update-
In the quadgrow, biquinho black peach is over head height. Really wanna overwinter this one at size, it’s gorgeous!

Meanwhile the one surviving flex is flowering

And in the big greenhouse pepper harvests continue and some stuff is happening in the overstorey……
Pea aubergine harvest went to some friends who run a CSA box scheme

Dwarf brazillian bananas incoming

 

[Drunken Bee]

Mini olive doing its thing…….

And a first sugar rush stripey….

In other spice news i harvested the Szechuan pepper last week:

 

[wiicek]

First stripey is always soo beautiful, right?