HabaneroHead Glog 2012 - Better late than never - Picture Heavy

Hi PepperHeads!

It's been a while since I posted anything about my peppers, but it does not mean I was not following what's going on THP. As usual I did not only get inspiration, but also useful hints and kindness from the team members. And on the top of that, I managed to infect some of my friends, my family and my girlfriend with this addiction.

Anyways, ling story short, last december Jack and Ela (aka Superhot and Ela on this forum) was so kind and sent me a batch of seeds (thank you for that, again):
- Bhut Jolokia Indian Carbon
- Fatalii Red/Yellow
- Tobago Seasoning
- Naga Morich
- Trinidad Scorpion CARDI Yellow

Unfortunately I could not make the Fatalii and Tobago Seasoning germinated, probably I cooked them with my reptile heat mat.

So the varieties I have now:
- Bhut Jolokia Indian Carbon (6)
- Naga Morich (4)
- Trinidad Scorpion CARDI Yellow (4)
- Bishop's Crown (2)
- Golden Habanero (6)
- Red Habanero (8)
- Aji Lemon Drop (7)

I was not taking into consideration the overwintered red habs, since I am not sure how they will perform, but I was giving them a chance, and they are trying to do their best in the ground.

Let's see some pics now!

6th of March 2012

Store bought Golden Habanero, i was taking out the seeds. Out of 10 seeds, 8 germinated, and now I have 6 healthy plants

My Bonchi, which I was making to my girlfriend, and it successfully survived the winter:

1st of April 2012
My babies having sunbath

Bhut doing weird things, I thought the stem may stay in this shape (what a Bonchi!), but in few weeks it straightened.

Superhots are doing well

Aji Lemon Drop: tall, but has strong stem. They were getting the same light, ferts etc, but they are a little bit of leggy.

 

[Mezo]

Upload the same picture to Photbucket but with another file name (rename it) then turn it the right way up in Photobucket & save (replace original) then post the new image to your post.

Its basically pulling the image from the cache (the wrong image) so rename the file.

Mezo.

 

[HabaneroHead]

Upload the same picture to Photbucket but with another file name (rename it) then turn it the right way up in Photobucket & save (replace original) then post the new image to your post.

Its basically pulling the image from the cache (the wrong image) so rename the file.

Mezo.

Thanks, Mezo.
Now let's see whether I can apply it in practice

Naga Morich

It's alive!!!!!
Thanks again!

 

[HabaneroHead]

Peppers in the raised rows are not doing so good.
Maybe it is due to the cold weather and the strong sun, as you can see they got sunburn. The plants are trying to compensate the damage with pumping out as many side-shoots as they can.

Bhut Jolokia

Bhut Jolokia 2

Habanero Red

Aji Lemon Drops are leggy

Overwintered Hab is showing signs of life

 

[Mezo]

Your soil does not look very rich (fertile) did you mix any manure in to the soil first?

Is it a clay soil (dry clay) or a volcanic soil? (gray ash)

I am very lucky to have this kind of rich soil as my chilli patch, 50yrs of cows have deposited poo in this very spot (next to the old milking shed)

And i have added a lot more poo since.

Mezo.

 

[HabaneroHead]

Hi Mezo,

Thanks for stopping by!
Our beloved garden has clay soil.
My parents live in the land called 'Tiszántúl', and this land was created by our second largest river, called 'Tisza' which filled it up with river drift in the last couple of thousand years. Therefore you may find 3 types of soil here:
- sandy soil which good for basically nothing, but used to grow grape there
- clay soil
- brown forest soil

We have lots of clay in the soil, I even remember the time when we had to dig a big hole in the garden, and in 80 cm deep we had plain, yellow clay.
What you can see on the pics is how the soil looks like after several days after the last heavy rains. The surface gets dry, and stone-hard, so we have to hoe it to let the plants to breath and grow. But it holds the moisture very well, which is an advantage.
50 years of cow poo is marvellous, but we do not have the same situation.
My parents raise two pigs in a year, and the poo produced by them is added to the garden soil for enrichment together with the production of the chickens.
I also mixed the soil used in the grow bags with shop-bought matured cow manure to be on the safe side.

Balázs

 

[PaulG]

Great looking grow, HH! The plants look healthy and happy.
I really like the overwinters.

Good luck going forward, man!

 

[HabaneroHead]

Great looking grow, HH! The plants look healthy and happy.
I really like the overwinters.

Good luck going forward, man!

Thank you PaulG!

Overwintering is really good thing if you have enough room for it. The above overwintered Red Hab survived the winter despite there was merely 10 Celsius degrees in the in the room it was stored. On the top of that there was no artificial light applied, and it had some serious aphid infection. It was put into the polytunnel a month ago, where it has lost almost oll of the leafes due to the 46 Celsius heat. I know it looks like I tried to murder it, but of course not!
It is a true miracle, and now setting buds...

 

[HabaneroHead]

Just thought I'd share some more pics This time about my grow-bag project. The reasons I am trying them out this season are the following:
- they are cheap (2 dollars for a 40 liter one)
- at least I scarify the soil and I can mix it with some manure
- I may extend my growing season by digging them out in autumn and put them into the polytunnel when the first frosts come

20 liter grow bag, last weekend I buried 5 more into the ground.
Originally there was only a couple of holes at the bottom, so I burned a lot more, basically because I would like to let the roots grow into all directions

I buried them because I would not like to keep the root zone a little bit colder

After plantout

Golden Habanero

The Golden Habanero plants were weak, so I put plastic case over them to protect them from the full sun. It works also well against the strong winds we had this week

 

[Mezo]

Im using old stock feed bags as pots (same material, woven plastic) they are big & free.

Just go to a nearby farm & ask if they have old bags, ours contained chicken food & grain.

Mezo.

 

[HabaneroHead]

Im using old stock feed bags as pots (same material, woven plastic) they are big & free.

Just go to a nearby farm & ask if they have old bags, ours contained chicken food & grain.

Mezo.

Hi Mezo,

Thanks for sharing it. I have already seen these pics in your glog. I wish I had seen them before. Of course we have lots of these bags (my parents are growing pork and chicken), so next season I will be using them as well. This season is a pilot season, trying to experiment with the different methods, to find the one which is the best in my climate.

Balázs

 

[PaulG]

Will be interesting to see how the grow bags in the ground work out.
Great use for those plastic crates, HH; you are an inventive gardener!

 

[stickman]

Thank you PaulG!

Overwintering is really good thing if you have enough room for it. The above overwintered Red Hab survived the winter despite there was merely 10 Celsius degrees in the in the room it was stored. On the top of that there was no artificial light applied, and it had some serious aphid infection. It was put into the polytunnel a month ago, where it has lost almost oll of the leafes due to the 46 Celsius heat. I know it looks like I tried to murder it, but of course not!
It is a true miracle, and now setting buds...

Hi HH
Just getting around to rechecking your glog... Can you get rolls of agricultural row cover fabric? When my weather warmed up enough I swapped out the poly sheeting on my hoophouse for the fabric to avoid burning the plants. Maybe you could do the same. They also make shade cloth that you could drape over the hoops to protect your plants from the hot sun. Everything looks great that you have out. Good luck with your growing season!

 

[HabaneroHead]

Hi Stickman,

Thanks for stopping by. Yes, actually I am tinking about to clean up some space in my parent's garden and put strawberries next year, so I have another reason to buy row cover fabric. I will definately try it out on the peppers as well, thanks for the advice. In case of the shade cloth I may try to relocate the plants next year into a (partly)shady area. We have some space (2.5 x 50 m) between the fence and the sour cherry trees, I might try to put the peppers there. I realized what the others on this forum have already known: the Chinenses does not necessarily like the full sun.

Balázs

 

[HabaneroHead]

Hi Everyone!

Just thought I would share some more pics about my babies. :-)

Red Habanero Bonchi

Got some pepper seeds from my father-in-law last year, do not know what it is. Maybe Tabasco?

Different angle

11 upright killers in the crown

 

[HabaneroHead]

9th of June 2012

Small update

Trinidad Scorpion CARDI Yellow (on the left)

Bhut Jolokia Indian Carbon

Naga Morich

 

[HabaneroHead]

Naga Morich Side shoots

TS CARDI Side shoots

Latest plantout - doing pretty fine

Naga

Bhut

TS

Red Hab

Golden Hab

Overall pics

Pigs having siesta

 

[PaulG]

Plants looking good, HH! That 'bouquet' of pods is outrageous.
Never seen that many from one node before!
The in ground bags look like they are working okay.

Good growin', man!

 

[HabaneroHead]

Thanks, PaulG!
I counted 11 pods from that node...crazy.
The plants are doing quite OK in the ground, and hopefully it won't change. We had quite unstable weather in the last weeks, lots of hailstorms (5 cm diameter...25% of the watermelon crop has been destoyed in the country...) and big storms, but till now we are lucky (knock on wood) and besides the heavy rains my parent's garden did not get anything worse.
I am checking the weather forecasts and radars in every hour, I am like a meteorologist Maybe I worry too much, but I have been playing with my little babies since 5 months, I would not like to loose them. :-)

Balázs

 

[HabaneroHead]

Continued update

I know it is kind of silly to take picture about every single plant, but they have their own personality, and story :-)
As I see, here in this forum we all have this obsession.

Bhut1

Bhut2

Bhut3 - bushiest in the ground

Naga Morich

TS

RedHabs

 

[Pinoy83]

Nice pods and plants...