Refrigerator ghosts - 2017

    This is my second grow log of the year, because my over-a-year-old bhut jolokia - which is now a beautifully straggly small bush taking up a few square feet of patio sunlight - finally decided to stop sullenly shedding flowers and produced one ripe fruit with six seeds in it.  My friend harvested that and all of the other chiles' fruit that ripened while I was out of town and put it in the fridge, which admittedly saved me from walking into an apartment full of rotting chiles and feasting insects but may have killed the seeds.
    But I'm going to give them a chance to disprove that!  I wrapped them in a damp paper towel and sealed them in a plastic container, and I'll check on them every few days and see what happens!  I want more superhot chiles.
   No seedling pictures yet, of course, but here's a picture of the unripe fruit - I failed to take a picture of the ripe red fruit before I ate the rind...
 

 
    At least, I think this is a bhut jolokia.  I ate the fruit raw and almost whole - aside from the seeds I'm trying to sprout, of course - without scorching my mouth, and the shape is odd, but a lot of my habaneros' first fruits also had a trial-run quality about them.  I'm hoping that the plant produces more fruit for comparison.

 

[Gorizza]

I doubt the fridge could kill your seeds, but i hope you dried it out all the way before planting

 

[b3rnd]

I don't think you need to dry them out if you plant them straight away. Just if you plan to save them for longer.
 
That said, good luck with your grow! Hope it works out for you.

 

[Gorizza]

I don't think you need to dry them out if you plant them straight away.

 
 
The dessication process is a really important step between seed maturation and germination in many plants when lots of gene expression levels change to prime the seed to germinate. I just assumed this was the case in capsicum as well. Have you had much luck with planting seeds straight out of the pod?

 

[b3rnd]

The dessication process is a really important step between seed maturation and germination in many plants when lots of gene expression levels change to prime the seed to germinate. I just assumed this was the case in capsicum as well. Have you had much luck with planting seeds straight out of the pod?

 
Oh I didn't know that. I was just basing my comment of own experience. I have planted straight out of the pod yes. I found some ripe pods on a pepper plant here in December, and I planted the seeds straight away. They germinated just fine.

 

[Gorizza]

They germinated just fine.

 
Hey, thats good to know! Maybe its more important for varieties that have lower germination rates in the first place. I know a lot of the inbred super-hot lines get pretty poor germination, i would want to make sure to dry them out all the way before planting.

 

[CapsaicinAddictKathryn]

    Thank you both!  I can vouch for habanero seeds' ability to germinate without drying out whatsoever, at least - we've had a rainy past month or so, and I just had some seeds sprout inside of an habanero fruit, before I even removed it from the plant.  That's probably not a great survival strategy for them, but luckily I found them before they opened their cotyledons, and now they're growing their first true leaves.
    I can't vouch for bhut jolokia seeds' ability to survive refrigeration yet, but I can feign patience.  They've only been sitting in their paper towel for a week, and I know superhots can take a while to sprout...in the meantime, though, my adult bhut jolokia has two more green fruit!

 

[CapsaicinAddictKathryn]

    VICTORY!
    I can vouch for the seeds' cold-hardiness now, because one of them sprouted a root about half a week ago; two more had little roots by yesterday; and the other three had tiny roots by the time I planted them earlier today!  They're in shot glass-sized disposable cups with holes punched in the bottoms, three seedlings in each, and I hope they've just survived their first thunderstorm!  I'm not totally incompetent now as a young-plant caretaker.  I did put them under an overhang.
 
    Now I'm just going to do the written equivalent of jumping up and down and screaming, because I did that in person earlier.  One-hundred-percent germination rate!  One-hundred-percent germination rate!  Within twelve days of starting the wet-paper-towel treatment!  My chiles are AWESOME!
 
    So, yes, I realize that they haven't even shed their seed coats yet, so I won't declare complete victory now...but, YEAH BHUT JOLOKIAS!

 

[CapsaicinAddictKathryn]

    ...I shouldn't jump up and down so early.  I should also never try to remove seed coats myself unless the seedling will die otherwise.
    I killed at least one of the seedlings by panicking and pulling off its seed coat too early with my fingernails, taking off the cotyledons along with it.  I'm not sure about another seedling who also suffered from my impatience, and I'm fairly sure another two have died or are dying of damping-off.  Only one looks even halfway healthy at the moment - the first one to sprout, I believe - and that's after I yanked off its seed coat and one cotyledon, too, but it kept most of the other cotyledon and now has a tiny true leaf.  That's the one in the center of this picture - the pale stem near the bottom of the picture is one of its leafless siblings...