Moshmans 2010/11 Grow Log

SeeYouJimmy · Oct 11, 2010

Looks like you'll have an early harvest. Your weather is much better than mine though....

geeme · Oct 11, 2010

Part of me is thinking "ouch" (lost seedlings), and part of me is thinking "hooray1" (successful seedlings.) You've got a really nice grow list; hope the season is overall very successful for you!

G

Datil Patch · Oct 11, 2010

Your Bhut Jolokia doesn't look very Bhut Jolokia-ish.

Sci · Oct 11, 2010

Nice Collection you have there

Moshman · Oct 11, 2010

Thanks guys, after last years dismal season this one has to be a lot better.

Datil Patch said:
Your Bhut Jolokia doesn't look very Bhut Jolokia-ish.

Yeah, it looks more like a hab at the moment Datil but I will have to wait and see how it turns out. Those pods are around a week old now. Everything is growing really quick, I guess that's because I am kinda close to the equator up here.

I will post some close up pics of the seedlings hopefully tomorrow.

Moshman · Oct 11, 2010

Just a temperature update for people who don't know much about the weather around here, it's about 23 degrees celcius right now with 88% relative humidity, it's raining and it's 9pm at night. Not bad growing weather for this time of year in Australia.

slick · Oct 11, 2010

wish I was reading this thread at the start of september - would have saved me from making a few mistakes...

also can you clarify the germination - you said DON'T plant the germinated seeds until 3 or 4 days after they sprout leaves to give them the best possible chance

I've tried some ziplock bag seeds with great success after some initial problems straight into seed raising mix (in jiffy peat pots) - with the seeds in the zip lock bag I just waited until I could see clear green and put them in seed raising mix the following day. Should I have left them in the plstic bag a few more days for better results?

Moshman · Oct 11, 2010

slick said:
wish I was reading this thread at the start of september - would have saved me from making a few mistakes...

also can you clarify the germination - you said DON'T plant the germinated seeds until 3 or 4 days after they sprout leaves to give them the best possible chance

I've tried some ziplock bag seeds with great success after some initial problems straight into seed raising mix (in jiffy peat pots) - with the seeds in the zip lock bag I just waited until I could see clear green and put them in seed raising mix the following day. Should I have left them in the plstic bag a few more days for better results?

If your seedlings are doing well I think you should generally keep doing what you are doing. The reason I would leave the germinated seeds in for a few days after you could see the leaves was I found that the ones I took out as soon as I saw leaves had a far lower success rate when moved to soil.
I think it may be because as they haven't grown very much yet, they don't get much spread through the soil to anchor properly and have reasonable access to water. One of the biggest do's I found with seeds is to get them from a trusted source. All my ebay seeds were pretty big failures and a waste of money.

Wasatch · Oct 11, 2010

Very nice. :dance:

Moshman · Oct 22, 2010

My first harvest for 2010/2011 season. An orange hab.
Sorry about pic quality, I used my blackberry to take the pic. I'll get my wifes 11mp camera and snap some better ones shortly.

Also, I have been looking at the overwintered plants and it would seem that they aren't what I thought they were, I am totally confused as to which is which and what they are, so my master plan is to wait another week or so for the first ones to ripen then get some opinions. It was kinda easy to get mixed up as I didn't label anything and only kept a few plants out of about 10.

dvg · Oct 22, 2010

Great growlist Moshman, and some nicely established beauties, so early into your growing season.

I can definitely see the benefits of getting the headstart with overwintered second year plants.

Best of luck to you for your pepper season, and hopefully you get a super harvest!

Cheers,

Doug
dvg

tooninoz · Oct 23, 2010

Josh, that looks like a great start to the season! I'm no fan of FNQ weather, but I could almost consider a change of thought...

By the way, any chance of a pic of the Big Red as a seedling? One of the ones that germinated from what you sent me is nuts. 1" long false leaves and the meatiest stalk Ive seen. The false leaves track the sun all day and you can almost see them move..

slick · Oct 23, 2010

that orange hab looks great - I got one too on a overwintered plant but the much colder Sydney weather seems to have stunted its growth. It's grown slowly and fully organge now en though it's only a third of the normal size I got last year. On the other hand last summer I was getting 25C to 35C weather and in the last month it got down as low as 13C at night... I'm almost sure it's the weather but not sure If I should pick the pod or not. Could it get larger after it's gone fully orange ??

SeeYouJimmy · Oct 24, 2010

Doing well there Moshman.
@ Slick.... If it's orange, eat it. It won't get any bigger now. Early pods are usually inconsistent so don't stress about it.

Moshman · Oct 24, 2010

Thanks guys.

@slick - yeah what jimmy said. The cold nights wouldn't help much, it prob confused your plant and made it think it had to produce viable seeds as quickly as possible before it got too cold and died/went dormant, hence the small pod size.
One good thing is for their size, they may be a little hotter.

@tooninoz - sure thing, I'll have a go at it this afternoon. Mine have really thick stems too and are growing really quick.

I took the hab to a little evenings fishing and divvied some up for a few mates. It was pretty hot for a hab but I almost forgot that flavor and how good it is. I love how they taste hot before the heat even kicks in. You can't beat fresh ones.

Funny night, we got a fingermark, estuary cod, stingray and a sea snake. The stingray looked about 30kg and snapped himself off at shore but the sea snake was interesting.
He got hooked in the side just swimming by I guess, they're one of the most poisonous snakes in the world but not very aggressive so I chucked my shirt over his head and my mate held it down while I got the hook off. Just after I freed the thing, it got it's head loose and gave my shirt a few whacks while we all jumped back to a safe distance. I decided not to put it back on until I washed it

tooninoz · Oct 29, 2010

Josh, here's a comparison pic I took this arvo.

The Big Red of yours is on the left, Naga next, and Peri Peri on the right of that.

The Naga and the PP germinated a good 5 weeks earlier!

It's put on about an inch and a half in the past week.

Moshman · Oct 29, 2010

[font="arial][size="2"]Hey John, I tried snapping some pics just before, I'll have another try again soon. I've been kinda busy with the newborn at the moment, I was meaning to put up some pics for you so I will get around to it ASAP. The pods I got my seeds from are grown locally here in Mackay and Aerlie beach, they are a fav at the farmers markets. I'll need to find some and snap a few pics for you. They have a mild heat and grow quite large and ripen to red. They would be excellent fillers in salsa and to bulk up and flavor a sauce with. They either call them Big Reds or Sweet Reds when they sell them. I would make a calculated guess and say the plants will be quite large as the pods and up being 15-20cm long and prob about as round as a tennis ball at the stem end. I have used them on burgers before and they go well.[/size][/font][font="arial][size="2"]Your seedlings are looking a lot stronger and bigger than mine, I think the weather here while being good for established plants, can be quite hard on seedlings. A cane toad nearly took out a Trinidad Scorpion last night, he was digging in the pot and just missed it. Last week I lost a yellow bhut and a 7 pot to the little bastards. I am off to bunnings today to build a cage out of chicken wire before I lose the rest of them.[/size][/font][font="arial][size="2"]Here's a few pics until I get the camera situation sorted out. Sorry about the quality, they were taken on my blackberry.[/size][/font][font="arial][size="2"]

[/size][/font][font="arial][size="2"]

[/size][/font][font="arial][size="2"]Birds eye[/size][/font][font="arial][size="2"]

[/size][/font][font="arial][size="2"]Orange Hab[/size][/font][font="arial][size="2"]

[/size][/font][font="arial][size="2"]Hybrid[/size][/font][font="arial][size="2"]

[/size][/font][font="arial][size="2"]Hybrid[/size][/font]
[font="arial] [/font]

My setup

Chocolate Hab

tooninoz · Oct 30, 2010

What a difference a 1000km makes.....
Ive got some Hungarian Hot Wax (overwintered) that are starting to pod and I thought that was to be my stuffing chilli, but Ive got plans for the reds... fatty, meaty, cheesy goodness!

The cane toads are starting to go nuts here too - especially after the flooding we keep getting.

Moshman · Dec 5, 2010

Okay so my grow log has been lagging a little.I have harvested quite a few choc habs prior to now but here is my first major harvest from my overwinters.It turns out they were:

Choc Habs
Orange Habs
Hab hybrid x2
Birdseye

(For a sense of scale, the red looking hab hybrids are all bigger than a golf ball)

My apologies for not taking pics when they were all still on the plants.

One of my choc hab plamts:
It had aphids yesterday which I noticed from the black ants swarming the plant. I ripped off all the worstly infested leaves, squashed the ones that were on other leaves and threw all the affected leaves with live aphids into the weber to cook in the sun. Couldn't find any more today so I hope that's that.

Choc hab plant #2

Hab hybrid. There's twp plants in this pot, both are diff species planted from the same seeds I guess, they were sold to me as bhut jolokia but they are great for curries and have a good amount of heat to them.

Birdseyes

And the seedlings in my mini greenhouse, I built it for about $26 to stop the canetoads killing all my seedlings

A lot of my younger seeldings died because it didn't stop raining for 5 weeks straight