New Patio Grow Log - Early Spring 2017!

CapsaicinAddictKathryn · Mar 26, 2017

One of the scarlet runner beans had sprouted a root by the time I checked today - I love Florida early-warm-season weather, at least for its effect on seed germination rates! - so now all of the beans are outside, about six each in two small pots of reasonably damp organic potting mix from Target.
None of the chile seeds have visible roots yet, although a few look as if they might be about to sprout. I realized that two Black Pearl seeds had stuck together into what I initially thought was one seed, so I actually have fourteen potential Black Pearl plants.
(Despite my enthusiasm about the patio, and the fact that it's quite spacious for a single-bedroom apartment's patio, I also belatedly realized today that I don't have enough room for all of the potential plants I'm trying to grow if more than a few of them survive to adulthood. I have about twenty-five habanero seedlings and at least four apple seedlings on the patio right now, in addition to eight adult chiles, four young citrus, at least two surviving young loquats, and six young cassia trees. I also want to grow marigolds and milkweed, and I have a beetle-infested batch of bhut jolokia seeds that I'm going to try sprouting as soon as I get hydrogen peroxide to soak them in, because I don't want to save them and continue to give the beetles a convenient food source. I'm going to offer a few potential plants to coworkers tomorrow...)

LocalFart · Mar 27, 2017

Good luck with your grow

seems like a good start

CapsaicinAddictKathryn · Mar 29, 2017

Thank you! I hope so!
Three of the Purple Cayennes have roots, as of a few minutes ago; I'm planning on putting them in soil tomorrow or Friday at the latest.
...I think I may have put the beans out too early, though. During a night of desperate last-minute paper grading, followed by teaching the class whose papers I was grading, then involuntarily crashing and waking up barely in time to teach my second class of the week, I didn't water anyone, and the beans' soil seemed absolutely dry when I remembered and soaked them. I'll see if they survived that, but this is why I'm leaving the Cayennes in their nice moisture-containing plastic bag until I know I'll have at least a few days to watch and water them.

CapsaicinAddictKathryn · Apr 3, 2017

All of the Purple Cayennes and Black Pearls are now in a seed-starter tray, as of two days ago, actually - one seed or seedling in each cell - and just experienced their first rain! That was an oversight on my part; I soaked them all earlier yesterday evening and didn't consider checking the weather. I happily listened to the rain for about a minute, assuming that my new chiles would love their first encounter with free water from the sky, and then realized how fiercely the rain was hitting the dirt and ran outside and covered the tray. I'll see if anyone needs repositioning later today.
Some after-the-fact updates - by March 30th, one of the Black Pearls had a root and several Purple Cayennes were growing long taproots into their paper towel, and by March 31st, two of the Cayennes had shed their seed coats. I finally got a chance to plant them on April 1st, to my shame. I wasn't trying to torture them! I wanted to plant them while I was awake and mostly sentient, and during daylight, and that usually means "over the weekend" at this point in the semester...
As of yesterday evening, three of the Purple Cayennes had visible cotyledons, and one seedling is purple. Yes, I know. They're called Purple Cayenne for a reason. I wasn't expecting such a strong, dark purple in the leaves, though, and it's beautiful! The other two don't seem to have quite such a strong tinge, and the undersides of the leaves are green. None of the Black Pearls had shed their seed coats by sunset, so I'm curious to see what they'll look like when they emerge! I'll include pictures shortly.
I know that the runner beans aren't chiles, but because I mentioned them earlier - at least eleven of the twelve survived my failure to water them promptly, and I transplanted six beans each into two large rectangular planters, with tomato cages for support once the beans reach climbing height. I've told them that I love them, but if they try to use any of my other plants - including the chiles - as trellises, they will find themselves suddenly missing parts of their stalks or vines, whichever is the correct word for climbing beans. Several of them are already about ten centimeters tall; I decided not to place them under my bhut jolokia, which is extending its branches all over one corner of the patio.

CapsaicinAddictKathryn · Apr 5, 2017

...I'm definitely still learning about plant care, usually at the expense of my plants...
Late yesterday evening, I came home to find the sprouted Purple Cayennes holding their cotyledons more-or-less vertical with the upper sides together - maybe because of lack of light? - and worried slightly about them, but not too much, because my cassias do the same at night. When I went out to check on everyone a few hours ago, I found that one of the Purple Cayennes had lowered its leaves again and looked normal and happy, and a Black Pearl had shed its seed coat and looked all right, but several other seedlings had wilted.
In retrospect, yes, of course most seedlings would wilt when I stick them in a black starter tray on a ~90-degrees-Fahrenheit concrete patio in full midday sunlight. Argh!
I dragged them out of the extremely bright sunlight and soaked them in cool water, and now they look relatively healthy again, to my relief. I'm not sure what I'll do for the next few days; I want them to get some sunlight, but not bake to death. I might put them close to the southern patio fence, where they'll get occasional stripes of sunlight between the slats, or north of some of my taller plants. In the longer-term future, I'm going to paint the starter tray in some much lighter color. I guess the black trays are for starting seeds indoors or in much colder climates than Florida's in April?
Here are some pictures of the recovering seedlings!

The Black Pearl who suddenly appeared overnight with fully unfurled cotyledons, and the first one with truly black leaves -

Another several Black Pearls, with, uh, green cotyledons, at least for the one on the left - I don't know if the cotyledons come in various colors and the true leaves will be black, or if some of these plants will always have green leaves...? -

Several Purple Cayennes, including the one with the most convincingly purple leaves so far -

Several more Purple Cayennes with green cotyledons -

I also discovered this afternoon that one of the scorpion chiles has sprouted a long taproot - I'm not sure how long ago that happened, because I'd only squinted at the seeds through their paper towel for the past several days and might have missed the root's emergence - so I'll plant it shortly, too!

CapsaicinAddictKathryn · Apr 13, 2017

We are in full-on drought conditions now. Another two scorpion chiles sprouted in the past week, but even though I've soaked the seedling tray quite often - about every day or day and a half - both seem to have died before even shedding their seed coats, and I water so frequently because the soil dessicates within less than two days. The potting mix I bought at Target seems to retain water slightly better than the mix I bought at Home Depot; I'll look at the exact labels next time I'm out on the patio.
The scorpion I mentioned in my previous post is still hanging on, along with many of my cayennes and Black Pearls; I rescued one wilting cayenne from scary near-death dehydration this afternoon, and I wasn't sure it was going to survive, but within about a half-hour of getting drenched, it was upright again. Here are some after-recovery pictures of that cayenne and its neighbors!

Several Purple Cayennes; the bright green one with twisted leaves in the left foreground is the recovering dehydration patient -

The other Purple Cayennes -

The surviving planted Trinidad VV7 Scorpion - yes, that tiny green dot in the center, not the taller Purple Cayennes at the right edge of the picture -

The Black Pearls -

I noticed the first true leaves on the cayennes approximately two days ago; I've also noticed that all of the true leaves on the cayennes and Black Pearls are green. If anyone reading this has grown chiles with supposedly other-than-green leaves from seed before, I'd love to know if some of them just turn out green, or if the leaves will change color...?

Devv · Apr 14, 2017

Good luck this season!

PaulG · Apr 23, 2017

Your purple plants' leaves will darken in the sun.
The more sun, the darker purple the leaves will get.
Sometimes a purple plant's seed can yield plants
with green leaves as a result of a cross of some kind.

I wouldn't worry too much as of yet. Good luck getting
the season underway.

CapsaicinAddictKathryn · Jun 14, 2017

Somewhat ridiculously belatedly - thank you both so much! And, now that I'm back from a month-long trip, I'm very glad to be able to say that you're right about the leaves, and my plants have survived long enough to show that!
When I left, my part of Florida was in a nasty drought, so I asked a friend to water and generally look after all of my plants, despite my conviction that healthy adult chile plants can be more-or-less self-sufficient in normal Florida summer weather. My friend is a thoughtful, responsible person, but not really a gardener - not that I'm an expert by any stretch of the imagination - so I had some trepidation about whether or not my seedlings, in particular, would survive.
...and my plants' response to that fear seems to be, "Maybe you should try going on vacation more often." A few of the seedling pots are empty and I'm fairly sure I lost my last calamondin orange - which didn't surprise me, but hurts - and all but one scarlet runner bean died, which was a painful shock; everyone wants calcium and probably some nitrogen by now, the adult chiles have whiteflies, and some of the young chiles' leaves got chewed by insects; but almost all of the former seedlings are now several inches tall and some of their leaves are gorgeously solid black! I haven't had a chance to check on exactly who did or didn't survive among the young chiles or take their pictures since returning, since I spent most of the last two days catching up on work, but I will soon.

Meanwhile, I'm starting another time-consuming project - my first generation of habaneros now has grandchildren!
I found many ripe and a few rotting fruit on my adult habaneros and Thai hot chile plants and briefly wondered why my friend hadn't harvested them earlier, until I realized that several of the habanero fruit had ripened to an unusually pale orange, almost white, near their stems. I know that habaneros come in a range of colors, but my first generation of habaneros always produced bright yellow or orange fruit, so I expected that from their children and told my friend to look for those colors.
I tossed the rotting fruit on the compost, but I split open the not-quite-rotting ones to save the seeds as usual and discovered that the two palest orange fruits contained some already-sprouting seeds. I folded all of the seeds with any hint of root growth into a soggy paper towel, inside of a plastic container, very early in the morning of June 12th, and as of a few hours ago, almost all of them have easily visible roots!
I don't have much room left on my patio at this point and wasn't really planning on sprouting more chiles this year, but these are the first sprouted grandchildren of one or two of my oldest now-deceased habaneros and I couldn't throw them out after they sprouted themselves... So I hope they survive, and I'll find room for them somewhere on my patio or in a friend's yard, and I'm very curious to see what their fruit are like if they survive to adulthood! The fruit they came from were disappointingly mild, but the flavor was nice; I can always cook low-strength habaneros into dishes for less-capsaicin-tolerant friends and keep any ghost and scorpion fruit for myself.

PaulG · Jun 14, 2017

Welcome home Kathryn! Glad your chili plants survived
the 'baby-sitter' and that you have some sprouted seeds
to play with.

Good luck going forward...

CapsaicinAddictKathryn · Jun 18, 2017

Now that I've had a chance to take stock of my patio more thoroughly, and take pictures - update!
One Black Pearl and both scorpion seedlings died while I was away; on the other hand, I have four surviving Black Pearls and all nine Purple Cayennes whom I transplanted right before I left, and some of the cayennes are taller than their new makeshift Solo cup-style pots.

Here's what everyone looked like in very late April or early May!
The Black Pearls, I believe -

And the Purple Cayennes -

Now, here's what everyone looked like as of June 14th!
The Black Pearls, looking gorgeous and kind of scruffy because someone's chewed holes in some of their leaves -

The Purple Cayennes, one of whom is tall enough to slant out of the picture at the right -

I also have sixteen surviving young habaneros from this spring's guilt-trip batch, after giving away several to colleagues, and six little apple saplings, several of whom are slightly visible at the top of the Purple Cayenne picture. So now I'm starting to adopt out some of these not-seedlings-anymore, with a mixture of regret over letting go of them and excitement about clearing space for the self-sprouting habaneros and maybe some bhut jolokia and Thai hot chile seedlings...

So, although this may change as my surviving plants mature - as of now and out of this not-very-large set of seeds, the Purple Cayennes have the best overall survival rate, with nine out of twelve of the seeds I tried to germinate reaching Solo-cup size; I think two of the cayenne seeds never sprouted or at least never showed above the soil, and one seedling died very young. As I recall, only five of the Black Pearl seeds actually germinated, but four of those seedlings have survived this long. The scorpions - well - ...sigh. Maybe I'll try again with the seeds I saved from the original packet, if I did in fact save any, or resign myself to only growing two hot chile varieties for now...

...nah. I need to find those leftover seeds!

Also, more of the self-sprouted habaneros have shed their seed coats, so as soon as the current thunderstorm dies down or leaves the area, I'll put them in starter pots!

CapsaicinAddictKathryn · Jul 7, 2017

Update - one of my probable Purple Cayennes has flower buds!

This plant has leaves as dark as my Black Pearls', which is why I'm not entirely sure that I labeled its pot correctly, but if it doesn't drop the flowers, I'll find out soon! I am both ridiculously excited about this and somewhat bewildered - as far as I can tell, none of the roughly-same-age other plants have any buds yet, let alone three. On the other hand, I didn't see the two less-conspicuous buds on this one until I noticed the nearly-open large bud - actually, I didn't even see the third bud in person, I only noticed it in the photograph - so I may be missing all sorts of plant milestones. I also need to transplant everyone into their adult pots! I was thinking of this batch as still juvenile plants, not mature enough to flower...

CapsaicinAddictKathryn · Jul 7, 2017

Also, sixteen of the self-sprouted habaneros are still alive and have some little true leaves!

Yeah, these ones need transplanting soon, too...
I also relearned, to my shame and my plants' detriment, not to pull off seed coats with my fingernails. I'm not good at it. I suspect I killed one of the young habaneros that way several days ago. That one isn't really visible in these photographs, because it lost every trace of cotyledon.

CapsaicinAddictKathryn · Jul 7, 2017

Oh - for scale, the self-sprouted habaneros are living in six-fluid-ounce yogurt cups, without the yogurt, of course. My Black Pearls and Purple Cayennes are now living in full-size storebrand Solo Cup knockoffs, but the blurry red pots near the youngest habaneros are shot glass-sized Solo Cup knockoffs. The yogurt cups make excellent, durable pots - I've used these at least once before as seedling pots - and the fake Solo Cups also seem to make fairly decent and even cheaper temporary pots, as long as you poke enough drainage holes in the bottoms! I'll have a better idea of how well the material holds up to sunlight when I transplant the Cayennes and Black Pearls.