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Next to My Chair

Been thinking about it.. pretty sure I'm growing peppers because I'm bored.  Like, deeply, existentially bored.  Plus, a little harmless pain never hurt anybody, right?  Hell, it's probably even good for you.  We'll see if those are good enough reasons, I guess.  I bought me some "Scotch Bonnet Orange" seeds from Amazon before I found you fine folk, lurked around here for a while, then planted them anyway along with other, infinitely less suspect seeds I ordered from far flung places around the globe(!) as recommended by the very venerable Vendor Vault.  I've got them growing here by my chair.  I sit here and read. (The wall to my right as I took this picture is lined with bookshelves I'm slowing filling as I try to forget the world each afternoon.  Mostly scifi the last few years.)  It would be distracting to have a big boxy tent looming over me, so I've just got them sitting there on a cardboard box.  I hope to replace the box with a little table here soon.
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My rig consists of something like a quarter of the full Amazon Indoor Garden of Tomorrow-orrow-orrow-orrow ®.  This LED light I got is something else, man.  It's REALLY bright!  Paper towel germination, used a few Jiffy pellets, stuck some seeds straight in some old Miracle Grow I had, kept them in the Jiffy box there until they sprouted.  I'm glad to be rid of that Jiffy dome now; it was a pain in the ass.  Ahh.. let's see.. I'm mixing CNS17 Grow into RO/DI water, testing and adjusting up with GH pH kit, pouring it over my little darlings there in about 3:1 coco:perlite.  Just culled and potted up today to 3.5 inches.  All seems to be going well except for some slight canoeing of leaves, which I'm ready to blame on the 24% humidity (We wake up half mummified in the winter.  I know - grow tent.) and a few early spills on my rug.  Trying to keep it simple and not drive myself crazier futzing with dozens of parameters here, so I'm not going to sweat it unless things turn worse.  I'm not!  Worry verges on religion with me, so this will either be therapeutic or turn out to have been a bad idea.. 
Any and all comments or criticisms are very welcome and I thank you all most warmly for having me and schooling me and reading my noodlings! 
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Nice to see you back. I'm definitely downscaling next year also. Or maybe just being satisfied ignoring plants and not fretting about them.
 
I have gotten tired of picking lemon drops - there are three plants with probably a couple hundred pods each and I just can't bring myself to get out in the sun and sweat picking them all. Maybe I'll get up some courage this weekend.
 
DWB said:
 
Hey Unc. High temps strip the sugars and change the taste bigtime. Try drying some at a really low temperature (like below 105) so they qualify as dehydrated raw.
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Thanks, Dub. I've always dried everything under 105.

Siv, did those seeds ever arrive?
 
Little update.
 
I've taken down both garbage can plants.  I ended up with 8.8oz of whole dried Lemon Drops (hope they make good powder) and more oranges than I know what to do with.  At least one of the big cans will be back next year unless I can find something bigger I can use instead.  Been looking at 80-gallon rain barrels.  I'm interested in trying to grow a truly set-and-forget Kratky plant.
 
 
 
I'm still getting yellow bonnets, Reapers, and red "DouglahTs" here and there.  There's a decent flush of cappuccino bonnets about to ripen.
 
The vole-killed DouglahT clone has been doing really well.  Barring disaster, I'll get around 20 nice, gnarly pods to powder.
 
 
DouglahT clone again.  He picked up this whatever-it-is shortly after he went outside.  Several of my plants exhibited this almost all season.  It pretty much stays like this and doesn't seem to bother them much.  Over it.  Whatever.  (Proud of myself there!)
 
 
Lastly, I've got seeds germinating on my windowsill.  They're from the bag of Bold Badger mystery seeds I was sent along with my free bottle of hot sauce (thanks again for that!).  I picked them from what looks like yellow pith, so hoping for yellow superhot.. somethings.  I will grow one (ONE!) plant in a half-gallon jar next to my chair over the winter.  Gotta get a tent, though, so I can have some peace in my reading room.  Wonder if I should start a new glog.. 
 
Edit: Pictures won't post.  I'm sent back to the home page when I try to post with pictures.  Same thing when I try to add the pictures by editing the post.  I think it even didn't like the emoji I just tried to use..
 
DWB said:
 
Hey Unc. High temps strip the sugars and change the taste bigtime. Try drying some at a really low temperature (like below 105) so they qualify as dehydrated raw. That's a new term for me...
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Good call, DW! Not only that, pods dried at 95-105˚F hold
their color amazingly well and the seeds are viable. I set my
NESCO dryer for around 100˚F. Takes a long time to dry the
pods, but the results are much better, in my opinion.
 
Good season, Unc! Looking forward to see your 5-pepper
grow next year. Seeding time only 3 months away :rofl: ! 
 
Yeah, I vote for a new grow log   :D
 
Hmm... I'm gonna try dehydrating at 105F then. I've been doing it hotter.
 
BTW, that picture thing happened to me also a while ago. I gave up and put my pics on Flickr instead.
 
lespaulde said:
Is it the cross that's often referred to as Sepia Serpent?
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Awfully sorry, les, I managed to miss this question somehow. 
 
I have no idea, never heard of Sepia Serpent, but I'm pretty new.  They were grown from seed labeled DouglahT X.  IIRC, CaneDog's sleuthing indicated it's a cross between Douglah and ButchT. 
 
I grew two plants.  One plant's pods ripened brown and the other's ripened red.  Not sure why, but I've always assumed brown was intended. Maybe because it was named DouglahT and not Butchlah or something.. 
 
Anyway, the red ones are just delicious (fresh, at least).  I actually haven't even tried the brown ones yet as I had that plant in the ground and it was sawn off at the base of the stem early in the season by some dastardly rodent.  The first cohort of pods on the clone I kept from the killed plant have just been coming ripe over the last couple weeks, will report on them soon. 
 
I think both Sepia Serpent and DouglahT X are Douglah crossed with ButchT and both are browns, but I don't know that they are the same resulting variety.  The crosses could have gone through different selection processes to stabilization and some of the differences I've seen in the pod shapes might support this.
 
Curious if that brown clone will step up the heat on you, E.  Rumor is it's a hot one.
 
So we ate the DouglahTs.  Very subtle flavor, slightly smoky. Dear brother liked it pretty well, said it reminded him of toast made from really fancy bread. I didn't really care for it. Very hot, but slow building - so slow that we didn't think it was even going to be hot.  
 
Daughter took down these cappuccinos today. 
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Uncle_Eccoli said:
So we ate the DouglahTs.  Very subtle flavor, slightly smoky. Dear brother liked it pretty well, said it reminded him of toast made from really fancy bread. I didn't really care for it. Very hot, but slow building - so slow that we didn't think it was even going to be hot.  
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Of course, you didn't have a douglah since your two phenos were crosses but the properties you describe are not douglah-like when compared to me and mine. The flavor of mine are sweet and fruity with maybe a touch of that toasty or nutty flavor. I never get the smoky flavor like I taste in a ghost.
 
Indeed, very hot but they hit me quick. Like a head-on collision rather than the slow motion train wreck I get with a reaper.
 
Please don't give up on the douglah based on your experiences of this year. It's one of my favorite peppers. I dearly love the powder.
 
DWB said:
Please don't give up on the douglah based on your experiences of this year. It's one of my favorite peppers. I dearly love the powder.
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Thanks, Dub.  Your endorsement is something I take seriously. Maybe I'll see if I can get some straight 7 Pot Douglah seeds for next year, splurge on isolated.   
 
I believe I like powders better than sauces.  
 
Thanks for the input and info on these DouglahT crosses, as your original flavor description involving cherries got me very intrigued Unc! ;) Nice to hear that the fruitiness is something Douglah-inherent as I might therefore include this variant in my grow next year or the year after (already running out of space fast for 2020 ;))

Hopefully you'll figure out how to preserve the special flavor at some point, so you can cherish it also in the off season!

Let us know if the brown variant tastes very differently, hopefully you'll be able to sample them soon

Sent from my LYA-L29 using Tapatalk
 
Uncle_Eccoli said:
 
Haven't been around much; haven't had much to say.  A little blasphemy: I'm really enjoying the powders and sauces I've made, but I'm getting sick of growing and processing chili peppers.  I just bit off too big a bite for my first go at this.  I will scale things back considerably next year.
 
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I just noticed this. (Finally checked out the whole thing!). You already had that feel in August, huh? I get that feel every year, I give so much away and still get buried in them. It all gets to be time consuming. Sometimes you feel like taking a year off.

But you won’t haha. You’re already growing one over the winter I see. It’s all good, that’s s how it goes. You look like you’re pretty damn good at doing it, so why not!

Very cool grow log man.
 
Got the cappuccinos in the dehydrator yesterday afternoon. 
 
Tried some of the Lemon Drop powder on some shitty pizza today.  It's pretty good!  Light and sweet and bright.
 
Will be making rice and peas from the last of the fresh Dreadies this week. 
 
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