• Blog your pepper progress. The first image in your first post will be used to represent your Glog.

Mezo`s "super hots" Glog including the 'big' solar dehydrator.

The is thread with the humungous solar dehydrator. :D

solardehydrator3.jpg


G-Day, im Mez or Mezo & im new to this part of Australia having come from Perth (Western Australia) where growing chili peppers is so easy (except the heat).

I live in the border ranges in northern New South Wales (bordering Queensland) and its a mixed bag of temperate & tropical conditions, the summers are very hot, wet & humid, the winters are dry & sunny.



Average daily temps.

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And average monthly rainfall.

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Aussies reading this will already know this, but people in other country's probably paint a picture of Australia as a hot dry/dusty land but this is far from the truth, up north its full blown tropics with a wet season & 100% humidity (yuck). Down south its freezing cold & snow during winter, out west its a dry heat like in the Mediterranean & in the middle of Australia is desert country.

So im now growing for the first time "Super hots" and for a very important reason, whilst working away in Perth i had a double heart attack wich has left me permanently disabled, sadly they are unable to operate on me (bypass/stent) as its to far gone, so having worked all my life (Electrician) im now at the age of 45 claiming a disability pension & i hate not being able to work.

Now i take shovel fulls of dam tablets to keep my heart pumping & id rather not be taking any but right now there no option i have to take them or ill drop dead on the spot. After much reading i found out that cayenne powder has all sort of benefits to your health & well being, especially to your cardio vascular system. I had read that cayenne powder can stop a heart attack in its track & i put this to the test (twice) and yes it does work where the medication (Nitrolingual) had no effect.

So anyone reading this who spots a friend having a heart attack just flick some chili powder in a glass of water as fast as you can & get them to drink in right down, fast. It works within 30 seconds of drinking it & it saved me from two more attacks already.

So there's my life story in a nutshell & some sound advice on how to save a heart attack victims life.
And this ladies & gentlymen is why im growing "Super Hots" to make high heat cayenne powder for cooking to improve my circulation/remove fats & as a "just in case of emergency"

OK on with the first of my "Hots" the Bhut Jolokia, the reason i chose this was simple i just Googled "whats the hottest chili" and up popped the result, however further reading on the interweb i found threads from this forum & names like the Butch T, the Douglah & Brain Strain.

So ive ordered them from pepperlover.com after so many people gave such great reviews, Bhut in the meantime lets look at my Jolokia`s.

Bhut2.jpg



Bhut6.jpg


Must admit i just love the shape & color of these babies.
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More soon,

Mezo.
 
Boy, you had quite an adventure Mez, glad to have you back. It sounds like farm runoff might have got into your water supply... I guess you'll have to boil your drinking water for a bit...

Nice rebound with the chiles, and good on your mates for helping set up your new":Frankentent". All is not lost!
 
Its not the water, we get drinking water carted down once a week from Brisbane to be safe as cows upstream of us crap in the creek, although id say our creek water is fresher than city water.

Mezo.
 
And I'd agree with you there, Meez. City water is lifeless water. Dead water.

Geez, mate, what a time you've been having! I dunno, if you moved to where you did in the hopes of living a stress-free life, I think you made the wrong call! :P :P Bet it still beats the city though? ;) Great to hear you are getting back on your feet!

Some of those plants still look great and/or are bouncing back superbly! Just more proof the "love" we give our plants is totally and utterly unnecessary. And great to hear you have some podlies dangling there! :D

My guess on the Black Something-a-rather would be Black Pearl. Impossible to tell at this point but I'm still placing the bet.
 
Seriously though, you still have the 7-Pot Brown? ;)

HAHAHA!!! I reckon "Mezo's 7 Pot Brown" will go down in the history books.....it's a legendary tale!!!


Glad to see things are on the up for you plant-wise Meez....and obviously sorry to hear about the recent illness though.

But it sounds like you have yourself surrounded by fantastic people there mate...with the guys coming down to help with the clear up, and with Danny creating the "Frankentent"... :)

Onwards and upwards!!!

.......don't know why anyone would find that interesting, i mean they can always look in my profile to see what camera im using right?
Apparently not, eh?
 
So, what's the word on the Solar Dehydrator Mez, will she live to dry out pods again or is she gone for good? Love to see her make it.
 
I'm happy to see so much progress in a short time, Mezo.
Some of your plants look like they hardly missed a beat!
Maybe all the bad luck came in one big pile this season,
and you'll be on cruise control from now on. Right.

Good on ya!
 
So, what's the word on the Solar Dehydrator Mez, will she live to dry out pods again or is she gone for good? Love to see her make it.

Ive not had time to look at that yet well only briefly when three of us lifted it back upright again, nothing to major wrong with it (few cracks here & there) the roof was torn off & one wheel broke off but yeah few hours work & she will be drying again.

I'm happy to see so much progress in a short time, Mezo.
Some of your plants look like they hardly missed a beat!
Maybe all the bad luck came in one big pile this season,
and you'll be on cruise control from now on. Right.

Good on ya!

Hey Paul, i guess i was lucky i was hit early in the season so the plants have time to recover, ive got a ton of re-potting still yet to do on top of finishing the new area off.

The funny thing is, since the storm ive still not seen a single aphid. :P

And yes Gassy Black Pearl was my guess when i searched Google.

Mezo.
 
Spoke to soon, dam ants are back & i watched them carrying aphids up the plants, here we go again !!

Decided i was going to do a small experiment, i had read something about exoskeletons from crustation`s contain a chemical similar to what is found in worm castings, basically the plants thinks its roots are being attacked & in its defence churns out hotter peppers.

So two identical new pots clearly labelled "with & without" and two near identical Bhut Jolokia plants in the same new potting mix.

bhutjoloexperiment1.jpg


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And the leftover shells from a kilo of prawns.

bhutjoloexperiment2.jpg


And now to wait a few months to see if they are hotter with prawn shells as fertiliser or if they grown any faster?
I have actually put the better of the two plants in the normal (none prawn) mix.

bhutjoloexperiment4.jpg


Mezo.
 
Interesting experiment, Meez! Can't wait to see the results. I find good old QLD sun is enough to kick pods up to nuclear but still super keen to see the results nonetheless. I'm curious though, did you grind 'em first??
 
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Danny suggested i mush them up but the food processor is buried away in packing boxes so i just bunged them in as they were.

The article i read was last year & linked on from another article by THSC on how they got the heat up (worm castings) it was by some guy at an Aussie university who was talking about work they had been doing with farmers where they was using the waste from processing facility`s mixed to make a rich compost.

I forget the name of the key ingredient, but its found in exoskeletons of crustatious fish like lobster, prawn, cuttlefish etc.

Mezo.
 
Well its worth a try and finding out the results if it did make a impact on your plants grow... I remember a story from my childhood about indians teaching pilgrims to use fish as a fertilizer when they planted corn..
 
Well its worth a try and finding out the results if it did make a impact on your plants grow... I remember a story from my childhood about indians teaching pilgrims to use fish as a fertilizer when they planted corn..

Well yes this experiment is sort of fertilizer i guess, but its mainly to see if the heat level from pods "with prawns" are hotter than the plant "without"

I wish i had bookmarked the read it was very interesting, one of you Aussie`s must have read the article?

Well im sat in the middle of another storm, this time its all around me, huge claps of thunder & continuous fork lightning but no wind & just the right amount of rain, things are cooling down (103F yesterday) and virtually 100F today.

Weather for me for the next few days are plenny of thunderstorms.

Mezo.
 
Yeah looking like a cooling off period which is great for fruit set as long as these storms don't batter us about too much. I also like the fact we could be having a rainy/cooler Christmas Day ... means one thing ... you can eat more and drink more !!
 
Im keen for a cool Chrissy Trips, i come from the northern hemisphere & these hot summers? er winters? just kill me, what about you Nee? id kill for a bit of snow right now, don't mind falling on my "Buttocks" either. LoL

Hey Nee, did you ever (as a kid) put a stone in a snowball & lob it real hard at some other kids? and did you draw blood?

Mez.
 
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Im keen for a cool Chrissy Trips, i come from the northern hemisphere & these hot summers? er winters? just kill me, what about you Nee? id kill for a bit of snow right now, don't mind falling on my "Buttocks" either. LoL

Hey Nee, did you ever (as a kid) put a stone in a snowball & lob it real hard at some other kids? and did you draw blood?

Mez.

HAHHA!!! Naaa, can't say i ever tried that one Mez!!!

As for having Christmas in the Summer nowadays, we've gotten used to it now. We hated the first Christmas here, as it just didn't feel "christmassy" ...but don't mind it at all now :)
 
You bloody Aussie whingers.... I'm stuck in snowy Canada with my little seedlings stuck in a tent until May. I'm hoping that the aphids and spidermites don't do it my small crop before I can put them out in 5 months time THEN I have to try and get ripe fruit before the first week of September when the cold starts... :rofl:

Seriously though, you take care Mez. Protect those plants! And yes, I did the snowball and stone thing. No blood just a good welt. nee, how could you not have done that?
 
Only ever did the stone snowball thing once and cracked the window on my old mans car. Couldn't sit down the rest of the day. Was in a lot of pellet gun fights too. 2 pump max and anyone exceeded it learned not to pretty quickly. Ahhh the good ole days :)
 
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