G's 2012

Found the first rocoto blossom this morning - whooooot!

I overwintered ten plants. They were doing absolutely GREAT until this spring. Came out of my bedroom one morning to find a plant dead. I am telling you, the plant looked FINE the day before. In fact, it had already started flowering and even putting out pods. But no, dead. Then another got hit - two down. These were both annums, so I don't know if that made a difference or not, though I can see that size may have been a factor.

At any rate, several of the other plants got hit, as well. Only two of the ten didn't show signs of any problems. Lost one douglah, too. However, the other plants that got hit ended up pulling through. Individual branches would suddenly die, but the main stem only got stressed. The two rocotos got hit pretty hard, though, and I really didn't think they'd make it. One in particular..... but wow, even it eventually showed signs of recovery.

So hence, here it is July. The overwinters that got hit pulled through, but recovery has been fairly slow. The other douglah that got hit was the least impacted, and is now big and bushy and full of pods. The aji habanero was behind the douglah, and it has been flowering and started putting out pods just a couple weeks ago. The rocotos took a long time to even start putting out leaves again, and then just a few to start with. Then within the last couple of weeks, they finally started putting out new growth. I won't call them bushy at this point, but MUCH better than they were looking. So to get up and find a flower on one this morning - WHOOOOOOOT! These gals are tough!

 

[Pr0digal_son]

Don't blame your camera. post up some photos!

 

[Justaguy]

yeah

 

[JayT]

You might ask AJ or Potawie why they think you lost some. Yeah you know the rules girl. Post some pics! Oh and I want to try some of the rocotos again while they have some heat!

 

[PIC 1]

Yeah................photo's first then you can talk ...............................with captions

 

[Alphaeon]

No pics didn`t happen Sis

 

[geeme]

You guys are a riot. Found the camera in the trunk of my car, so here goes.

The "plant hospital" first.

This is the base of the overwintered rocoto that got the hardest hit. You can see the number of stems I had to cut off, and even one dead stem off to the left which I left for now. You can't tell from this pic, but all things considering, it's pretty big now. This is the one I found a flower on, and it's also got lots of tiny buds starting to come out.

While I was away at one point, my son was supposed to keep an eye on the plants I had recently received from CCN. Nope, didn't happen. Came home to find all of the babies languishing, and three in particular likely dying. This was the hardest hit - yep, it managed to pull through. It was so bad it lost all its leaves, and the main stem was curled over. You can see the brown remains of the upper main stem that died off. Don't ask why I kept it and kept watering it, but I did. So it's tiny, yes, but how can you toss one with such a will to survive?

If you start with the yellow pot in the lower-left corner and go one blue pot to the right, that is the overwintered douglah that pulled through. You can see the one dead brown stem I haven't removed yet. But mostly, you can see that this girl has an iron will - she's big, she's bold, and she's beautifully full o' pods, flowers, and buds!

These are the small pots - a couple were overwintered jalapenos, but the rest are plants I ordered from CCN. You can see a couple are pretty tiny still, and those are the others that almost didn't make it when my son failed to watch the plants while I was gone.

And these are the big pots, really just a different angle from the douglah shot above. Some are overwinters, and some new from CCN this year. The couple with poles in them started to get damping off. They're tied up now, and I've watered with a hydrogen peroxide/water mix and have also sprayed the surface soil with straight hydrogen peroxide. Here's hoping they pull through!

Ok, and my grow list for this year....

New from CCN:
1 Douglah
3 Aji Habanero (YUM!)
1 Ancho Mulato
1 Bonda Ma Jacques
2 Jalapeno Purple
3 Jalapeno TAM
1 Pasilla de Oaxaca
1 Rocoto Red
4 Triidad Perfume (makes GREAT candied peppers)
1 Yummy Orange

You can see I'm doing more mild peppers this year. I still have a ton of dried HOT pods from last year.

Overwinters that survived:
1 Jalapeno Purple
1 Jalapeno (this is the 2nd time I overwintered this plant)
1 Douglah
1 Aji Habanero
1 Rocoto Red
1 Rocoto Yellow

 

[geeme]

It's about a week later, and we've seen some significant growth in this time.

These are most of the big pots. From left to right, the lone ancho mulato, then a column of 4 aji habanero, a column of 4 trinidad perfumes, then two douglahs. You can't really make out the baby douglah from this angle, but it's about doubled in size from last week, mostly side-to-side.

This is a close-up of the little one that could (a trin perf.) It's the 2nd pic down in the post above, and you can see that it's starting to take off.

These are mostly annums, but also a bonda ma jacques. The two yellow ones have not appreciated the rains we've had at all, and have hardly budged in their growth since last week, but the others are going to town. I'm going to move the two to the open door of the garage for a while, so I can better control their water uptake.

Rocotos: two overwinters plus a baby. Can't really tell from this shot, but the one on the right has a ton of flowers on it. The one on the left has one flower and a bunch of buds, so it's not far behind. The baby has one flower, too.

The first ripening douglah pod on the overwinter:

 

[geeme]

Kind of wishing I had a super-fast camera with a macro lense right now. We have all sorts of buzzy things here - bees, yellow jackets, wasps. The thing is that we have a much greater variety here than in any other part of the country I've been to. And they all love the Russian Sage in the front of my house. Go out there almost any time of day and you will hear their buzz and see tons of them getting at the flowers.

That's a good thing, because that keeps a good number of them away from the back of my house, so we can grill out there and generally be left alone. Still, just about the right number of them find their way to the back porch, which is where I keep my pepper plants. I went out there just a bit ago and was surprised to see a buzzy thing I don't recall having seen before. It was the teeniest, tiniest bee! I've seen teeny-tiny wasps, but never bees, and even the wasps are larger than these. Turned out there were a few doing their business with the pepper flowers. They were so small, they even crawled inside some of the flowers that were just barely beginning to open up from being buds. Wow. Rather mesmerizing to watch them!

 

[buddy]

looking good geeme! hope your rocotos produce some pods - i tried to grow them last year - too hot, only got a few - but the few that i were really really good. good luck with the balance of the season.

 

[geeme]

I also only got a few rocoto pods last year, but I am hoping this year will be different. If not, I definitely won't bother overwintering any. Last year I pretty much only used CalMag every other watering, while this year I'm using it with every watering. We'll see if that makes a difference or not.

Speaking of rocotos, went out today to find all the buds have now become blooms. Not the best angle to show all the blooms, as there are more than appear in the pic, but you get the idea. IF all of these turn into pods, I'll be a happy camper!

A mini-forest of aji habanero buds and blooms. There are pods starting on these, too, but they're too small to make out in this pic just yet. A row of Trinidad Perfumes is behind the aji habaneros, but those next...

Trinidad Perfume pods starting. I kind of laughed about these. If you look at the trin perf plants while standing, even from an angle, the foliage is so thick you can't tell pods have started at all. In fact, I didn't even realize they had bloomed as heavily as is now apparent. Today was the first time in a couple weeks that I squatted down to take a good look from underneath. BOOM! This was a heavy-producing variety last year, and since I've gone from 2 trin perfs to 4, I anticipate having a ton of them.

 

[PaulG]

Nice grow going there; great recovery from the
offspring neglect incident (ONI)!

Pinoy would say ONI is not ONO!

Did you overwinter inside or out?

 

[geeme]

Thanks!

I'm in the Cleveland, OH area, so overwintering is limited to inside - too much cold and snow here. I left a bunch of plants in their pots in the detached garage over the winter, in the off chance they just might survive. We had the mildest winter ever since I moved here, but none made it. I didn't expect any to, though, so no disappointment there.

 

[SocalChilehead]

Plants look great geeme it looks like they have taken off. The Douglah pod looks like a beast.