Growing Chiles in HEL - 2019

podz · Sep 4, 2019

Bishop's Crown - this plant is huge. I was outside this evening trying to think of how I could get a photo of the whole plant, but it's just not possible. This plant now has over 500 pods on it and it is STILL FLOWERING.

I finally decided on an aerial shot and stood on top of one of my deck storage boxes to take it. This is only a small part of the whole plant and in the area of the photo there are about 50 pods.

CaneDog · Sep 5, 2019

Yeah, that's a beast! Bishop's Crown gets in done here too with huge plants by late season and massive amounts of really big pods. Getting them to ripen by season end can be a white knuckle ride though. Seem to hang on the plant forever before they finally flash.

podz · Sep 5, 2019

CaneDog said:
Yeah, that's a beast! Bishop's Crown gets in done here too with huge plants by late season and massive amounts of really big pods. Getting them to ripen by season end can be a white knuckle ride though. Seem to hang on the plant forever before they finally flash.

You ever tried the abusing the plants technique to trigger the color break? Like stripping them down to a bare minimum of leaves and breaking off non-bearing branches and / or growth tips to simulate predator damage? There are a few highly respected commercial growers here in Finland who swear by this technique, so I also thought to give it a try this year.

Inoks · Sep 5, 2019

podz said:
You ever tried the abusing the plants technique to trigger the color break? Like stripping them down to a bare minimum of leaves and breaking off non-bearing branches and / or growth tips to simulate predator damage? There are a few highly respected commercial growers here in Finland who swear by this technique, so I also thought to give it a try this year.

Seemed to work with my aji fantasy, did that because it seemed like summer was about to end here on Finland. Then it didn't

podz · Sep 5, 2019

Inoks said:
Seemed to work with my aji fantasy, did that because it seemed like summer was about to end here on Finland. Then it didn't

Then it didn't :-) How long did it take after you attacked them?

Inoks · Sep 5, 2019

podz said:
Then it didn't :-) How long did it take after you attacked them?

Maybe a week? Also nooticed a butterfly and larva hanging around wreaking havoc too. Was wondering why I had holes on leaves

CaneDog · Sep 5, 2019

podz said:
You ever tried the abusing the plants technique to trigger the color break? Like stripping them down to a bare minimum of leaves and breaking off non-bearing branches and / or growth tips to simulate predator damage? There are a few highly respected commercial growers here in Finland who swear by this technique, so I also thought to give it a try this year.

Nah, I've pretty much taken a laissez-faire approach to ripening. The most I've done is the "stare at the unripe pods with a displeased look" technique and the times that's worked I kinda suspect they were about to ripen anyway.

I have cut container plants back at the very end of the season (non-bearing branches and bearing branches back closer to the pods so I could more easily move the plant inside/outside to accommodate low temps) with the hope more pods would still ripen, but I haven't really noticed that speeds them up any compared to the non-cut ones around them.

Will be curious to see your results if you try some things.

podz · Sep 5, 2019

Inoks said:
Maybe a week? Also nooticed a butterfly and larva hanging around wreaking havoc too. Was wondering why I had holes on leaves

I have a lot of those attacking my pubes but they don't bother the other pepper plants at all.

podz · Sep 5, 2019

CaneDog said:
Nah, I've pretty much taken a laissez-faire approach to ripening. The most I've done is the "stare at the unripe pods with a displeased look" technique and the times that's worked I kinda suspect they were about to ripen anyway.

I have cut container plants back at the very end of the season (non-bearing branches and bearing branches back closer to the pods so I could more easily move the plant inside/outside to accommodate low temps) with the hope more pods would still ripen, but I haven't really noticed that speeds them up any compared to the non-cut ones around them.

Will be curious to see your results if you try some things.

Yeah I'm gonna try it on the pubes once they stop flowering. That may last for some time still, though, as we are expecting a warm front again next week.

Regarding the Bishop's Crown, there isn't really anything to cut off - every inch of the entire plant is bearing fruit. Never quite seen anything like it before.

CaneDog · Sep 5, 2019

Brazilian Starfish grow like that for me too; huge bushes by late season with pods everywhere (but much smaller pods and ripen sooner than the BC's). I'm just not a particular fan of the BS pods, while the BC have those big lobes and are super sweet. Have been thinking a BC cross to bring a little heat into those big tasty pods could go well.

Yeah, most of your pube's are killing it. Good to see you having such success with them.

podz · Sep 6, 2019

CaneDog said:
Brazilian Starfish grow like that for me too; huge bushes by late season with pods everywhere (but much smaller pods and ripen sooner than the BC's). I'm just not a particular fan of the BS pods, while the BC have those big lobes and are super sweet. Have been thinking a BC cross to bring a little heat into those big tasty pods could go well.

Yeah, most of your pube's are killing it. Good to see you having such success with them.

Maybe no need for the scissors - thunderstorm just came through and flipped a three of the pubes as well as a few annuums. Some small branch tips broken off of the pubes but nothing significant - the staking system I learned from Paul is really awesome as these pots have flipped multiple times now and there is either no damage at all or very small amount. I will have to re-stake and re-clip them due to being shaken by the storm, though. Annuums aren't staked that way and they have suffered some serious damage now, albeit partially because of being hit by the long bamboo stakes in the pube pots.

The rojos are so large now that their 30 litre (8 gallon) pots look like little sewing thimbles attached to the bottom of a huge tree. I'm guessing it will be a constant struggle between the rojos and the wind for the rest of this autumn.

podz · Sep 8, 2019

Days are getting shorter and the weather is turning very autumn-like - cool, windy and rainy but the pubes are still flowering.

Not much gardening going on during the past few days, I skipped the nutes this weekend and didn't even do watering because of all the rain we've had. According to the 10 day forecast, in about 8-10 days from now it will start to drop down to 8c (46f) during the night. Guess I need to harvest pretty much everything except for the pubes next weekend, then.

Laid up in bed now eating opiods and barely able to move after hurting my right-side lower back earlier today while lifting my toolbox in the garage. It's not particularly heavy, just that I lifted and twisted in the wrong way or something and the severe pain started pretty much immediately. Tramadol to the rescue!

Mr.joe · Sep 9, 2019

Good luck nursing your injury, careful with those pain meds.

podz · Sep 9, 2019

Mr.joe said:
Good luck nursing your injury, careful with those pain meds.

Yeah, thanks. I only had to take two of them yesterday, one in the afternoon and one before bed. Today, the pain has been tolerable without them.

I got that 100-count box of Tramadol in October 2004 and it is still over half-way full. I only need them a couple times a year. 15 years old and they don't seem to have lost effectiveness at all.

podz · Sep 11, 2019

18 meters per second (40 mph) straight-line winds going non-stop for the past 12 hours, expected to continue for the next 40 hours.

All my shit has been flipped over multiple times, came home from work and not a pot standing. Now I huddled all the rojos back into a corner of the deck but if they manage to get flipped now then it will be serious damage because they are all right next to each other.

Had some involuntary rojo harvests - green balls flung here and there from the pot flippings.

Fuck this weather. That's all I got to say.

Mr.joe · Sep 11, 2019

Wind sucks no question. Good luck

podz · Sep 11, 2019

Mr.joe said:
Wind sucks no question. Good luck

Thanks, Joe. The peppers growing in the huge boxes are fine, even though the staking is not much different. The pots just can't handle it, though. These long lasting, straight line windstorms are a European thing though they normally happen in January or February.

podz · Sep 13, 2019

Wind storm finally over, moved all the big plants out of their holding position in the corner and back to their normal stations all across the deck.

Started going "Edward Scissorhands" on many of the pubes but didn't manage to get it all finished in one evening - there was just too much. Hauled several armfuls of clipped pube branches to the forest.

So far no color break on any of the pubes except one of the Montufar plants which has two pods (out of about fifty) that are starting to brown up a bit now. Ten days from now, nighttime lows are supposed to be 4c (39f) and even daytime highs of 6c (42f). It always does this for a few days toward the end of September, then it warms back up for a few more weeks before the freezes start to happen.

Attached is our 10 day forecast showing daytime highs in celcius. This now indicates the beginning of mushroom hunting season!

Mr.joe · Sep 16, 2019

Hopefully old man winter holds off for you, it's getting to that time of year.

podz · Oct 4, 2019

Temps dropped down to -2 celcius last night and it was raining snow for several hours during the evening so I harvested the rest of my outside crop.

They are all still green, excluding 3 Bishop's Hats and 1 Montufar. Hopefully they ripen up inside, but the seeds won't be viable except from 1 Bishop's Hat and 3 Montufars (2 harvested previously). No worries, those who I have promised seeds will get them.

The pubes are mostly all full-sized, so they have heat but are lacking a bit of flavor. The Bishop's are half full-sized and half otherwise - not much heat and also not much taste.

Manzano Rojo: 7040 grams (15.5 pounds)
Montufar: 2139 grams (4.7 pounds)
Bishop's Crown: 2453 grams (5.4 pounds)
Pico Mucho: 510 grams (1.1 pounds)

Manzano Rojos:

One of the Pico Muchos (they are all pretty much the same size 115 grams = 4.0 ounces):